The difference 38 hours can make to your pricing, profit and future!

EPP's Certified Pricing Manager programme is not only a pricing education, it is a one-of-a-kind learning and networking experience dedicated to all aspects of building your pricing maturity in the 21st century.

Going further and deeper than any other pricing course on the market today, the CPM programme offers you a 1 week, intensive, face to face training which equips you with the insights, tools and techniques required to realise the full potential of your pricing efforts at your current pricing maturity level.

By working side-by-side with pricing peers from different industries, you learn through a unique blend of expert knowledge transfer and hands-on best practice sharing.  You get inspired!

Certification is not for the faint hearted - it is awarded after the combination of 38 hours of training plus the completion of a successful business project rendering a min 30K margin improvement.

The programme:

The programme is designed around the organisational and personal skills needed to increase the pricing capabilities in the organisation, regardless of industry.

Four levels of pricing maturity have been identified by the EPP and the CPM programme is essentially based on helping practitioners get grips on two of these, Level 2 and Level 3.  Read all about the four levels in our recent white paper: Crossing the Pricing Chasm : A guide to Pricing Maturity Development

CPM Level 2: Taking Transactional Control (03-07 Nov)

In order to qualify to join CPM® Level 2 certification, a minimum of 6 months of relevant experience in pricing analytics, cost price analytics, reporting, price setting, and margin management is necessary.

more information here

CPM Level 3: Full Value Capturing (19-23 Jan 2015)

CPM® Level 3 certification requires a minimum of 3 years of relevant experience in value based pricing, pricing research, TCO, economic value calculation, people management, and fruitful cooperation with marketing/sales/finance.

more information here

Note: CPM can also be run as a customised, in-company training.

Call Nicolene Barnard for more information on +32 51 32 03 72, or email nicolene.barnard@pricingplatform.eu

The Certified Pricing Manager programme: developing the skills and talent of the new generation of European pricing leaders. Join us in November 2014 or January 2015 and give your company, and your career a boost.

Value Analysis as a Foundation for Price Setting

By Roberto Bedotto, European Pricing Platform – Italian Chapter Board Leader
- Summary of an article in a current issue of the magazine L'Impresa, one of Italy's leading business magazines -

The analysis of value and of the willingness to pay are core elements of the definition of the price strategy. The impact of a proper analysis was measured in several basis points, too important to be ignored.

The rationale of this approach is simple and well known: price is function of the perceived benefits, and of the next best alternative available to customers.

The benefits come from the performance of the product or solution purchased – and this is the area, which is most frequently analyzed -.

However there are at least two other areas for benefits, which are worth investigating.

The first one is linked to the Order to Delivery (and Payment) process, and the interaction between supplier and customer. Even in the most commoditized business, there are reasons why a customer buys from a certain supplier instead of another. Reasons which do not relate necessarily with the best price, but rather to the process of acquisition and fruition of the good/ service, and how this process triggers benefits (measured in money) in the customer.

The second area worth looking into is even softer, however it is well present in the purchase decision; it includes factors such as the reputation, or compliance with relevant legislations, or most importantly, the so called “brand value”.

The actual methodologies to measure value and the related price are well known, and  include for example the conjoint analysis method; they are anyway out of the scope of the present article. 

• I'd rather instead spend few more words on the actual usage of such an analysis, namely understanding which functions benefit from it; this can help the reader “sell” this analysis internally.The first usage is clearly the verification of the value/ price ratio of the goods/ services sold. A best practice in this respect is to involve both the customers and the sales force. Sales is our face towards the market, and shall be on board of the analysis and endorse the results with confidence. The best way to make this happen is to have Sales perform the analysis as if they were themselves customers. The outcome is that all discussions and opinions and emotions are replaced by the results of the analysis. The benefit for sales consists in a more structured and granular understanding of what makes the market segment tick, hence allowing for a more effective and tailored pitch to customers;
• Marketing Communication is another area where a proper value/price analysis allows to define relevant and impactful MarCom campaigns;
• Finally, Product Managers need support in defining the price during the new products development phase. And on the other hand, they also will be happy to understand which specifications of the offer can be eliminated for the sake of cost saving, without impacting too much the value delivered and hence the price.

Special thanks to the Italian Chapter Board members who contributed to the article.
Danilo Zatta - Simon-Kucher and Partners; Giancarlo Curro - Enel Energia; Paolo De Angeli - Syngenta; Raffaele Vitale - ValueLab; Stefano De Angeli - Fiat. 

4 Key Themes in Managing Better Financial Outcomes for High Tech Industry

High-tech professionals highlight data accuracy, availability and reliability as key to optimising price and profit performance

Model N and European Pricing Platform survey reveals 30% of high-tech companies are still using manual pricing mechanisms

Chertsey, UK and Brussels, Belgium, 15 March 2013: Only 50% of European high tech companies are successfully integrating and using data in managing pricing and profitability, with 30% still using spread sheets, making it almost impossible to implement effective reporting as part of a process of continuous improvement.      

Yet the majority identified the importance of data accuracy, availability and reliability as the foundation of a sustainable corporate price and profit optimisation strategy. These were among the main findings of a survey of leading high-tech professionals from 14 countries across Europe and South America attending the recent High Tech Forum in Cologne, sponsored by Model N and the European Pricing Platform (EPP).

“Companies in the semi-conductor industry face a challenging year, with analyst IHS predicting a volume decline of 2.3% in 2013,” says Niels Skov, managing director, Europe, Model N. “This year’s Forum, which saw a 60% increase in attendance over last year, reflected how firms are currently addressing this, by taking a long, hard look at issues around operational effectiveness, technologies, skills and strategy in optimising price and profit performance.”

Board-level issue

The Forum identified four key themes in managing better financial outcomes:

• Pricing and the CEO: Effective pricing and profit management needs to be on the boardroom agenda. The CEO needs to engage directly in pricing strategies and how these will deliver broader business goals. Board-level sponsorship and support is essential to transform pricing from a series of isolated projects to a company-wide ‘price and profit’ culture and mind-set. The survey identified that a structured pricing organisation and business-wide sales and process disciplines were central to competent pricing and profit management;

• Data quality and reliability: Data is a core component in developing pricing and related processes. Ensuring quality data from all internal and external channels is also seen as critical in supporting strategic decision-making, detailed analytics and ensuring accurate rebates, for example. However, as the survey found, half of the firms surveyed believed they were not currently making the most of their data in achieving this goal; 

• Strategic customer alignment: Where manufacturers see individual customers as strategic partners, it is important that these customers see them in a similarly strategic light. Where the customer’s behaviour in areas such as price negotiations indicates a potential misalignment, this is likely to have cost implications for the vendor;

• Channel distribution: Attendees identified a widening gap between channel partners who add value that customers want and those who simply ship product. Almost three-quarters (73%) of those surveyed agreed that this evolution was happening, but already had plans in place to identify this change in each case, in order to make the right pricing decisions and retain effective control of the relationship.   

   

“These findings strongly echo our own experience in working with customers,” confirms Skov. “Pricing cannot be regarded as a single isolated activity, as it impacts directly on other connected processes, including the management of contracts, rebates, margins and their effect on market share and market capitalisation. 

“Pricing is one of the most influential elements of profitability. As a result, the monitoring of pricing and its execution is key, yet our survey highlighted that three-quarters of participants have yet to define the KPIs to help them identify revenue leakage from list price to invoice price and take steps to correct the situation. Improving data quality and end-to-end automation are the two main contributors to better revenue management performance.” 

   

EPP president Pol Veraerde adds: “It is very apparent that senior management in European high-tech companies are increasingly focused on further developing pricing and profit optimisation skills in their organisations, something we have seen at first hand at this event.

“As a priority, they are looking to get better-organised and move along the pricing and profit optimisation maturity journey from ‘good’ to ‘excellent’. To achieve this, they are looking for strong knowledge partners and the opportunity to see what their peers are doing, which is the very purpose of the EPP.”

For more information, contact: 

Alexandria Rumble
Model N
Tel.: +44 (0)1932 895090
Email: arumble@modeln.com

Britt Dejager
European Pricing platform
Tel.: +32/51.32.03.72
Email: britt.dejager@pricingplatform.eu