Join Zilliant at Pricing Strategy USA Summit 2022 in Houston, Texas, on September 28-30 to learn how to get ahead of inflation with proven price and agreement management strategies. Preview two Zilliant-led sessions here.
Manual Processes Are No Match for Inflation and Volatility
Two of the biggest challenges facing B2B companies in 2022 are unprecedented inflation and market volatility. Both of these challenges are presenting an influx in what we consider to be “pricing triggers,” external events that cause a B2B company to execute price changes. As inflation and volatility increase the volume and velocity of pricing triggers, inefficient pricing processes are exposed. The practice of setting and updating pricing in B2B remains largely a manual process that’s often handled with spreadsheets and email.
This over-reliance on manual processes is a major hindrance for global companies when it comes to setting and managing price lists as costs change. It is no longer tenable to manually aggregate cost and other reference data, make updates to global price lists in spreadsheets, email spreadsheets to various country pricing managers, make more manual updates to account for currency exchange and other country-specific adjustments, and wait on technical resources to update the pricing system of record with new list prices.
As difficult as managing price lists has become, customer-specific pricing agreements may be even more complicated to keep current when costs are rising. There is often little visibility into agreement health at any given point in time, and it becomes a monumental task to pass through cost increases to hundreds of thousands of agreement lines. The result is margin leakage, as transactions drift further below the target price and closer to cost over time.
There are a variety of strategies a company might employ in response to this period of hyper-volatile costs and inflation. But in the end, manual tools can hamstring a pricing team that is trying to execute new pricing, an executive team deploying new strategies, or even a sales team that must act on new strategies.
Get Ahead of Inflation with Proven Pricing Strategies
As cost changes increase in frequency, some questions must be considered when determining the best inflation and volatility-response strategy:
- What are the gaps in typical B2B pricing strategies that must be bridged?
- How does a modern pricing strategy halt margin leakage and increase profits?
- Can you approach price and cross-functional collaboration within one system of price management?
On Thursday, September 29, at 10:30 a.m. CDT, Zilliant Senior Vice President of Products & Science Pete Eppele will present a keynote at Ardensi’s Pricing Strategy USA Summit 2022 in Houston, TX. The keynote, “Get Ahead of Inflation with Proven Pricing Strategies,” will offer a deep dive into inflation’s impact on the price management status quo, and how companies can embrace an innovative approach to get ahead of economic volatility – and their competition. The keynote will also explore how Zilliant’s Quick Start package for Global and Country Price Lists is purpose-built to streamline global and country list price management with a standardized price waterfall.
Additionally, Zilliant Director of Customer Success Alex Wilkerson will host a workshop, “Price Agreements: How to Actively Manage the Most Entrenched Price Mode,” on Wednesday, September 28, at 9:00 a.m. In this workshop, Wilkerson will lead a brainstorming session on how pricing and sales teams can collaboratively manage agreements to ensure profitability, and why better deal and agreement management is especially important in an inflationary era. Learn more by downloading the complete event agenda.
Register for Pricing Strategy USA Summit 2022 Today!
