The European Pricing Blog

10.5.16

Bjorn Willemsens, director at Monitor Deloitte about the EPP Certified Pricing Manager programme

Bjorn Willemsens is director at Monitor Deloitte and acts as lead member of the European Pricing and Profitability Management Community. As such he is one of the key members in the further development of pricing related methodologies and market awareness. Bjorn was one of the first trainers joining the CPM programme. We asked Bjorn about the programme and why it's important to join.

How do you evaluate the CPM programme?

The CPM program submerges pricing managers for a week in the concepts and good (and bad!) practices of pricing. What I especially like is that we bring together people with different skillsets and pricing experience so they can learn from each other on top of what they get from the trainers and materials. The interactive discussions help in understanding and framing the challenges of each participant. This in its turn is a very good input for the personal business case/pricing improvement programme.

How did your share in the training evolve during the years?

As a first day CPM trainer I have seen the program evolving over time, improving the setup based on participants ‘feedback. Depending on the CPM objective (gaining transactional control, going for price optimization or even dedicated in company CPM sessions), I vary my content and cases from my experience as a professional pricing consultant. I like to use own cases rather than schoolbook material because I know from practice where the pain comes from and how we got to resolve it. I very much enjoy to see the participants training their grey cells on the exercises – can’t be too easy to make it a good learning experience!

What is the outcome for the participants?

Being part of CPM broadens your horizon on the potential of pricing. It is only partially about tools and techniques, yet mainly about sharing experiences and being able to ask questions about your pricing challenges as a participant. You will not go away with the perfect answer to your needs, but hopefully with a good cook book and plenty of examples to start working your pricing kitchen.
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Bjorn talks about transactional control and pricing optimisation. Do you want to know how far your organisation is in its pricing journey. The European Pricing Platform has developed a tool - the Pricing Maturity Indicator (PMI) - which allows you to know immediately your own organisation's pricing maturity level: going from level 1 (price list maintenance) to level 4 (full profit optimisaton). Take the survey here!

And reserve your seat at the next edition of the Certified Pricing Manager programme in Göteborg on June 13-17, 2016.

Some pictures of the last edition in Barcelona

13.4.16

ESADE and the European Pricing Platform, a strong collaboration

ESADE is the 4th best Business School in Europe, according to the Financial Times (2014), the 8th in the world in Executive Education, again according the Financial Times (2015) and the 6th in the world in Executive Education according to Amêrica Economía 2014.

The European Pricing Platform is Europe's leading knowledge sharing platform for pricing and profit optimisation managers. The EPP offers industry focused forums, workshops, seminars, open and in-company trainings on pricing matters and access to a vast digital library of articles, research and white papers.

Together with Marco Bertini, programme director ESADE and 2 other experts in their domain, Pol Vanaerde, Founder and President of the European Pricing Platform have put together this strong executive programme: a pragmatic, action-oriented study of the different—and at times surprising—roles that prices play in capturing, communicating, and even enhancing a company’s competitive advantage.

Monetization: How to Turn Value Creation into Lasting Revenue
Where? Barcelona
When? June 27 – July 1, 2016

Monetization policies are little more than collections of tactics held together by questionable
assumptions and crude conclusions that, in many circumstances, put financial and brand health in jeopardy. This program will equip senior and mid-career professionals in business and consumer markets with the necessary confidence and skills to design and execute a superior strategy. A key challenge will be to embed monetization decisions in the context of a company’s overall market orientation and evaluate their effectiveness in achieving broader managerial goals.

For these and other reasons, the program takes the perspective that capturing value from
customers is a general management responsibility.

For more information on the detailed programme, trainers and other information, click here or mail to Ursi Van der Herten, ursi.vanderherten@esade.edu. Or give her a call on her mobile +34 638 424 586.

24.3.16

Curious about the Global Maturity Pricing Report 2016?

+200 companies throughout Europe completed the PMI (Pricing Maturity Indicator), developed by the European Pricing Platform and PROS in the fall of 2015.

Today, we are very proud to present you the cumulative results of these companies in the '2nd Global Pricing Maturity Study 2016.

Here are some of the general findings:

- the overall pricing maturity is about the same score than the 2013 survey.
- the hightest score in this survey is given on 'price list management', the second highest score was for 'price governance', both of which are typical level 2 tasks in the pricing maturity levels.
- there is a relatively low score for 'price reporting'
- only 29% of companies are still giving local sales organisations full freedom to determine their local market prices. At the same time there is important lack of discount discipline in the sales teams.
- the low score on 'Price Strategy' indicates that pricing managers are fully aware of their struggle to 'get the price policy implemented'.
- the typical 'level 3 maturity' challenges, such as 'understanding price elasticity' and 'understanding willingness to pay' have the lowest score. It's clearly a level most companies have not yet reached.

Want to see the in-depth analysis of these findings? You can find the full report on SlideShare.

'Only 45% of the companies in this survey do not (yet) have a vision about how to develop the pricing skills and maturity in their organisation. That's a huge concern.', says Pol Vanaerde, President EPP

Feel free to make the survey yourself as it is still online: www.pricingmaturity.eu. You'll receive your individual report right away.

The Certified Pricing Manager programme (CPM) is developed by EPP and is the global standard of certification for today's pricing leaders. The programme is built around the skill cards of pricing maturity in your company. ROI of the programme is min. 10x the investment with certification based on real business project success. You can find more information on the programme here.

9.3.16

EPP | Endorser of the Australian Pricing Summit in Sydney, Australia

For those of you based in Australia, we just want to let you know that the Australian Pricing Summit will be held on April 27-29, 2016 in Sydney.

The final agenda is now available.

The summit will serve as a proactive vantage point for more effective pricing strategies for any organisation that wants to get the pricing of their product right. With that in mind, savvy organisations understand that they need to become more innovative, develop better pricing approaches and make sure they are selling to the right customer at the right time for the right price.

The summit will focus on the following 3 key themes:

implementing a clear pricing strategy that aligns with your business goals
effectively using data and analytics to drive pricing strategy
aligning your price to end user expectations

Ahead of the Australian Pricing Summit we caught up with Sian Rowlands, Strategy and Pricing Professional at Domain Group, who shared their value-based pricing strategies.
The Domain group have created a number of key principles to underpin their value-based pricing
     strategy. In January 2016 the Domain Group rolled out their new pricing model. This was off the
     back of a review and reset of their pricing strategy 6 months ago which already saw improvements
     in yields, reduced discounting and consistency in how they price their products.

Read all about it in the article.

Interested? Read all about the Australian Pricing Summit here.

And profit from an additional discount of 10% on the EARLY BIRD rate by using the code EPP10 when registering. To receive this rate, call (02)9229 1000 or mail to registration @igpc.com.eu using the discount code.

23.2.16

ATTENTION! Do not miss out on this week's PROS & SKP pricing webinar on driving incremental profitability!

Research consistently demonstrates that pricing is the most powerful profit lever available to companies. Yet, European companies are not taking advantage of it.

A recent study conducted by (EPP) European Pricing Platform in collaboration with PROS found that:

91% of companies are operating at a low level of pricing maturity.
60% of companies actually operates at a much lower level than what they perceive.
50% of companies targeting the highest level of pricing maturity are underestimating the level of capabilities needed to actually achieve it.

Join SKP and PROS at this webinar to learn more on how you can leverage these insights and quickly gain competitive advantage for your company.
Get insights on:

How to better capture the value of your products and services.
What you need to do to drive incremental profitability from your pricing execution.
How to structure your organisation to make it all happen