We welcome you to the PROS Pricing Leadership blog. We focus on delivering thought-provoking insights to industry leaders, partners, prospective customers and anyone interested in learning more about the topic pricing and the extraordinary value it delivers to companies. This blog features PROS employees, customers, partners and industry thought leaders who share their perspectives and invite discussion on the relevant issues related to pricing and pricing initiatives.

Guest Bloggers

Steven Forth | See my posts
Steven Forth is the CEO of LeveragePoint Innovations Inc. a Software as a Service platform for value-based pricing. He led the spin out of LeveragePoint from Monitor Group, a strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Mass. Forth  is focused on the development of software platforms that implement collaboration around business frameworks with a focus on the intersection of pricing, product development, marketing and sales. He lives in Vancouver, B.C.

Paul Hunt | See my posts
Paul Hunt is the president of Pricing Solutions and has specialized in pricing for more than 20 years. During that time he has worked with leading companies on a global basis.

As a pricing strategist, Hunt has developed a vast array of proprietary methodologies that go straight to the heart of the problem. He has helped clients with such pricing issues as bundling/unbundling, competitive pricing, customer categorization, new-product pricing, perceived value, price complexity vs. simplification, pricing policy, price structure, price wars, price/volume relationship, and value-added pricing.

He has a particular interest in helping companies implement the cultural changes necessary for them to become more effective value-based pricers. In this capacity, Hunt has helped companies make significant changes that have led to substantial bottom-line improvements.

He also lectures and writes on pricing strategy. Hunt regularly conducts in-house training for corporate clients, speaks at industry conferences and works with leading MBA programs.  Hunt has written articles for leading publications and associations such as Marketing Magazine, American Marketing Association, Marketing Research Industry Association and the Professional Pricing Society.  To learn more about Hunt and his company, visit the website at www.pricingsolutions.com.

Matt Johnson | See my posts
Matt Johnson has more than 20 years of experience in pricing and currently serves as a managing partner at Simon-Kucher & Partners. His current work focuses on helping companies develop effective marketing strategies and optimize their pricing processes to maximize revenue and profit growth. Johnson is also a globally recognized expert in pricing optimization software and processes.  He has led pricing projects at more than 100 companies in 22 countries across industries including: travel/transportation, cargo, energy, manufacturing, distribution, industrial, chemical, semi-conductor, electronics, software and Internet. In aggregate, these companies have recognized more than a billion dollars in incremental revenue from their pricing projects. He earned an M.B.A. from Rice University, and holds degrees in history and computer science from Duke University.

David Mok | See my posts
David Mok is director of pricing at DePuy Spine, a Johnson & Johnson company, where he leads the pricing function for a $1B business.  Previously, he managed the worldwide retail pricing team for Seagate’s $1B branded storage solutions business, where he helped turn a barely profitable business, and attained the highest profit dollars and profit percentages in in the history of Seagate’s branded solutions. Mok also worked at Xilinx, where he led transformational pricing efforts, deployed pricing software, architected the company’s global pricing model, and developed pricing strategies across a broad spectrum of semiconductor, software, IP, products and services for a $2B business.  He also managed the communications segment marketing team and led value-based pricing efforts using solutions.

He speaks at various conferences around the country on the subject of pricing. Mok currently teaches pricing at the Haas School of Business, Center for Executive Education, at the University of California, Berkeley.  He began his career as a naval officer, serving aboard a nuclear-powered attack submarine, where he conducted missions vital to the national security of the United States.  He has earned three degrees, including an M.B.A., an M.S.  and a bachelor of science.

Cecilia Bonfante Nguyen| See my posts
Cecilia Nguyen is a member of Accenture’s pricing and profit optimization practice.  Her experience spans chemicals, energy and professional services clients.  She has been involved in several systems implementations that have successfully delivered analytics for marketing and sales, supply chain and finance functional areas.  Specifically, Nguyen brings unique expertise in helping clients realize the benefits associated with implementing their pricing strategies by designing and enabling pricing processes and technologies. Nguyen is co-author of Contextual Pricing, a book that uncovers the “death of list price and the new market reality.” It describes how buyers are influenced by comparison points and contextual messages more than by actual price levels.  She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Delaware.

Robert Rutledge | See my posts
Rob Rutledge is the managing partner of Accenture’s Pricing and Profit Optimisation practice in Asia Pacific, and leads Accenture’s strategy practice in Australia and New Zealand. He has more than 15 years of consulting experience, including strategic planning, benefit analysis, and business case development and architecture. Rutledge focuses on the communications and high-tech sectors, and has experience across several additional industries including retail sales, oil and gas, financial services and utilities. He has delivered client work in APAC, North America and Western Europe. Rutledge specializes in using his technology background and business experience to define, design, and develop achievable and creative business solutions to client challenges. Prior to joining Accenture, he started and ran a computer and network system integration company based in Denver.  Rutledge drove 80%+ growth over several years before leaving his company to pursue his master’s degree. He earned an M.B.A. from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in aerospace engineering with a minor in management information systems.

Sanjay Seth | See my posts
Sanjay Seth is a partner with Carlisle & Company, an aftersales management consulting firm. He has more than 16 years of automotive and consulting experience in North America and Europe. Seth’s   background includes a broad array of strategic and process initiatives related to motor vehicle parts and service industry, with particular focus on revenue growth. These include identifying and implementing revenue and margin enhancement strategies, pricing management, market sizing and share assessment, service marketing and retention, and supply chain management. As a practitioner, he also often provides subject matter expertise and executive leadership to program implementation teams. Prior to joining Carlisle, Seth was a corporate strategy and operations consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. His background also includes engineering experience at Ford Motor Company.

He holds an M.B.A. in strategy and finance from the Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan; a M.S. in mechanical engineering from Pennsylvania State University; and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Punjab Engineering College in India.

Patrick Taylor| See my posts
Patrick Taylor is a business and process improvement expert. As Managing Director of Strategy Process and Analysis LLC, he brings more than 22 years of experience in both international and domestic engagements. Taylor enables his clients to drive bottom-line results through a focus on pricing-related processes, system implementations and strategies. His industry expertise includes software and services; upstream oil and gas; media/advertising; personal-care products; over-the-counter pharmaceuticals; and telecommunications, including wireless and enterprise solutions.

Taylor earned a master’s degree in international management.

PROS Bloggers

Neil Biehn, Ph.D. | See my posts
Neil Biehn is vice president of science at PROS where he leads science and research teams on multiple projects and pricing system implementations. He also heads the company’s market segmentation science team. Prior to joining PROS, Biehn received his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University, where he published numerous papers on automatic and optimal control. He resides Houston, where he was the local chapter president of INFORMS from 2002-2005. Biehn continues to be an active member of the INFORMS national chapter and regularly presents at its annual conferences.

Michael Davis | See my posts
Mr. Davis currently leads the professional services team in Europe, which is responsible for all pricing implementations across the continent in three major industries – Manufacturing, Distribution, and Services. He is responsible for all European customer relationships and focuses on decreasing his customers’ Time-to-Value on their pricing initiative.  Prior to joining PROS, he spent many years in the manufacturing and services industries as an Application Project Manager. During his time there, he was in charge of global applications, focusing on the development and deployment of multiple home grown and third-party systems and applications including ERPs, CRMs, SCMs, and a contract analysis and management tool. Mr. Davis received his M.B.A. in international management from the University of Texas at Dallas and his B.B.A. in management information systems from Baylor University.

Ed Farquhar | See my posts
Ed Farquhar serves as director of marketing for PROS EMEA operations. He is responsible for developing the company’s European-wide marketing strategies and managing operations for its business-to-business vertical markets in the service parts, chemical, manufacturing and distribution markets. Based at PROS EMEA headquarters in London, his scope includes strategy, solutions marketing, demand generation, partner marketing and inside sales leadership.

Prior to joining PROS in 2011, Farquhar worked for Mindjet, a collaboration and information visualization software company. He has also held vice president and director-level EMEA marketing leadership roles with publicly traded IT corporations including Parametric Technology, Microstrategy, Arcsight and Cisco.

Farquhar earned a B.A. with honors in business and finance from Strathclyde University in Glasgow.

Doug Fuehne | See my posts
Doug Fuehne is vice president of strategic consulting with PROS. He previously served as its vice president of professional services and as senior director of science solutions. Prior to joining PROS, Fuehne consulted with clients in industries including oil and gas, chemical, discrete manufacturing, financial services and retail, where he focused on science- and process-based solutions for supply chain, and mergers and acquisitions. Fuehne worked directly for manufacturing, energy trading and financial services companies, performing operations and running e-commerce groups. He earned an M.B.A. in quantitative operations from Vanderbilt University and a B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois.

Tim Girgenti| See my posts
Tim Girgenti serves as PROS Chief Marketing Officer, leading its global marketing teams. He brings to PROS a wealth of experience in creating and leading revenue acceleration strategies for B2B software companies.

Prior to joining PROS, he was managing partner at Lifecycle Marketing, where he developed strategic marketing programs for mid-market B2B software organizations, including FileNet (now IBM), VMWare, Guidance Software and BindView (now Symantec). His clients achieved organic sales growth by aligning strategic value propositions to industry-specific business challenges, and then deploying integrated sales and marketing programs that resulted in greater market awareness, increased deal flow and improved success rates.

A graduate of the GE Capital Leadership Development Program, Girgenti spent ten years honing his business acumen in sales and marketing positions of increasing responsibility within GE Capital and Wells Fargo Bank.

He earned an M.B.A. from Brigham Young University and B.A. from Wake Forest University.

Phil Gorman | See my posts
Phil Gorman is a member of the professional services team at PROS. His primary roles include assessing customer pricing solution needs and configuring PROS applications to meet those requirements. Gorman also offers guidance on data and interface development. As part of the PROS Pricing Professional Services Center of Excellence, he helps the company’s implementation teams develop innovative solutions that deliver exceptional value to its customers. Gorman received a B.A. in chemistry and economics from Rice University.

Phil Holladay | See my posts
Phil Holladay is a strategic consultant with PROS, where he focuses on companies in the high-tech, medical device and industrial manufacturing industries. His primary role is to understand the issues faced by prospects and to demonstrate how PROS software can help overcome those challenges. Prior to joining PROS, Holladay worked in pricing and revenue management for fifteen years, with Boston Scientific and Delta Air Lines. He earned an M.B.A. with a concentration in decision sciences from Georgia State University and a B.A. in economics from the University of Richmond.

Matt McClung | See my posts
Matt McClung joined PROS in 2007 and serves as a manager in its Professional Services group. He leads the company’s medical/pharmaceutical distribution team, where he manages customer relationships and gap analyses between his clients’ pricing models and PROS solutions. McClung also works on project installations as both a project lead and an account executive.

He earned an M.B.A. from Rice University, and a B.S.B.A. in marketing and international business from Kansas State University.

John Salch, Ph.D. | See my posts
John Salch is vice president of product development at PROS.  He leads groups responsible for the company’s SOA strategy, as well as extending PROS functionality onto multiple platforms including Microsoft Office, SharePoint, and mobile devices including Apple and Blackberry.  Salch’s 15-year tenure with PROS includes work on its science team developing forecasting algorithms. He has also served in several development positions across a wide variety of PROS products.  Salch has been a proponent in the use of agile/lean development approaches at PROS, and he participates in several organizations in the technology community. He earned a Ph.D. in statistics from Rice University.

Patrick Schneidau | See my posts
Patrick Schneidau joined PROS in 2004 and today serves as vice president of product marketing. He is responsible for development of the company’s go-to-market strategies and positioning for its portfolio of pricing and revenue management products. He previously served as vice president, strategic consulting, leading a team of 15 consultants responsible for worldwide pre-sales pricing engagements.

Prior to joining PROS, Schneidau worked at BMC Software, where he managed a pricing portfolio of more than 450 products with annual sales of more than $500 million and led the pricing integration of four acquisition targets.

He earned both an M.B.A. in finance and a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from the University of Notre Dame.

Martin Simoncic | See my posts
Martin Simoncic serves as vice president of professional services at PROS. He has led PROS customer implementations in numerous industries, including petroleum, chemical, oil field services, office products distribution and shipping services. Prior to joining the company, Simoncic worked in the transportation industry where he developed integrated pricing management and optimization systems.  He earned an M.B.A. with a concentration in logistics and finance from the University of Arkansas, and a B.S. in computer information systems from Louisiana Tech University.

Maarten Oosten, Ph. D | See my posts
Dr. Oosten is currently Senior Director of Science & Research at PROS and responsible for Science Innovation. He joined PROS in the summer of 1999 after holding teaching and research positions at various schools, including the University of British Columbia, the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (business school of Carnegie Mellon University), and Maastricht University in The Netherlands. Since joining PROS, he has contributed to the successful deployment of several large scale revenue management and pricing optimization applications. Currently, Dr. Oosten manages the science and research group. He received his M.Sc. in Econometrics in 1988 from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and his Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Maastricht (The Netherlands) in 1996.