Philippe JEAN, Vice-Chairman of the Board, Altime Charles Riley
and
Xavier ZAKOIAN, Senior Manager, Altime Charles Riley , Head of Revenue Management Services

will receive as guest speaker:

Daniel RUEDA
Founder President, Open Pricer

on the topic:

How to  Improve Profit through
Pricing & Revenue Management

We will cover the following topics:

• PRM provides powerful profit levers, often not optimized
• Usual errors leading to profit leakage
• Some practical tools and quick wins
• The golden rules for project success

The seminar will be held in french

About Altime Charles Riley

Altime Charles Riley is a consulting firm specialized in strategy, organization and management. It helps enterprises to put in place strategic thinking, improve operational efficiency, align information systems and accelerate change.

Paris, France – 23/10/2009: Open Pricer SAS announces the release of OP Advanced Quote, a new module of its B2B Pricing & Revenue Management (PRM) software suite. This new module enables account managers and pricing analysts to generate quotes for B2B contracts with maximum precision, flexibility and ease of use.

Key features of OP Advanced Quote are:

• Multiple Business Units. OP Advanced Quote enables the use of a unique database instance for a set of business units. A specific configuration (product catalogue, tariffs, zonings, discount policy, workflows, proposal templates and user access rules) can be defined for each business unit. For example, in the case of a global company with business units in different countries: a user in a given country will have access to its products and customers, a user at the regional level will have visibility on all countries in its region and a user at the head-offices will have global visibility. The system can handle multiple currencies with management of exchange rates.

• Advanced Profiling. A multi-dimension profile (MDP) is generated for quotes of type “new business” or “business update”. The MDP contains forecasts of order/usage quantities across tariff and cost dimensions. It is used for revenue and profitability simulation. In the case of prospective customers the MDP is generated based on known customer and deal characteristics, using as reference the historical order/usage records of most similar customers to supplement missing/unknown information. The user is then able to modify the MDP through different views to reflect his knowledge of deal forward profile. This feature permits to model different order/usage scenarios in situations where the knowledge of the profile is uncertain and to build more precise quotes for complex tariffs involving multiple dimensions.

• Personalization of Tariffs. The user is able to modify the dimensions of a tariff and its rate parameters using XLS export/import capability. For example the zoning of an international tariff with the mapping of countries to zones can be exported to XLS. The user will then change the mapping in XLS and import the new zoning to OP. Thanks to this feature the modification of even very complex tariffs is simple and very quick.

• High Scalability. OP Advanced Quote module is scalable in terms of number of users and data volumes. It supports an unlimited number of products, pricing  workflows, proposal templates, cost models, cost types and cost values (several millions).

• Accounts to Contract Mapping. It is possible to initialize a quote/contract and to generate the MDP through a selection of accounts. Accounts can be selected using advanced search criteria and filters.

• Cost Overrides. During a quote the entitled user (ex: pricing manager) is able to override the cost model at a cost category level. This feature requires the implementation of the OP Cost module.

OP Advanced Quote is particularly suited to the following situations:

• B2B deal/contract quotes with uncertain profiles requiring to build order/usage scenarios in order to assess profitability and limit financial risk
• Complex tariffs including several dimensions (ex: logistic tariffs by origin, destination, weight band…)
• Quotes for key accounts with need to personalize the tariff structure
• Global companies with multiple business units needing a central quote system to improve pricing visibility/control and reduce system TCO.

OP Advanced Quote module is proposed as an upgrade to current users of the OP Quote module.

Open Pricer, based in Paris – France, is a specialist in Pricing & Revenue Management (PRM). We deliver customer centric PRM solutions with two core application areas:

• B2B contracts in transportation & logistics, telecoms, travel, industrial services, utilities, media…
• Transactions through electronic systems: e-commerce, B2B portals, telesales…

In these areas, customer characteristics, preferences and order/usage profiles are captured before presenting/quoting offers to the customer and the offers can be tailored customer by customer to maximize expected profit.

_______

Daniel Rueda
Open Pricer

Phone: +33 1 72 71 25 10
Fax: +33 1 72 71 25 13

Web site: www.openpricer.com

Pricing errors cost companies millions €/$ every year. PRM Best Practices series present real life cases of such errors taken from our consulting experience. The names of the operators have been changed in order to protect confidentiality.

This White Paper analyzes the consequences of imprecise B2B deal quotes. Many companies use complex pricing structures and must manage the risk related to uncertain customers order/usage profiles. These situations are usual in Transportation & Logistics, Telecoms, Utilities, Industrial Services, Travel, Media…

Using transportation & logistics examples, we show why the lack of efficient quote tools and simplistic assumptions concerning customers’ order/usage profiles cost a company up to 5 points in net margin.

Download White Paper…

OP for Business Contracts (OP) enables enterprises to optimize their contracts
with business customers. It is used in all phases of the sales cycle: for customer
acquisition, regular price increases, re-rating in case of deviance between actual
business and expected business and for negotiation of business extensions.
It permits to manage all types of deals from recurring contracts with major
accounts to spot deals.

This document provides a high level description of the functionalities
of OP for Business Contracts PRM v3.4. It presents its main business
objectives, modules, functional components and key features.

Request Document…

This company identified 3 M € potential profit improvement (representing 2 points of additional net margin) by analyzing in detail the price charged to its customers.

Request Case Study…

This parcel express operator was experiencing the following situation:

• Sales Executives most often used to quote the “bottom-price” with numerous price adjustments requests
• Low conversion rates in many segments
• Long quotation cycles
• Incomplete and disseminated win/loss data not used to adjust dynamically the pricing policy to market conditions
• Low contract materialization rates in many segments and no tool to track contract compliance in a systematic way
• Sales team compensation bonuses do not include incentive to sell at higher prices

The implementation of a pricing tool permitted to bring the pricing processes under control.

Request Case Study…

This case study shows how a transportation operator uses price optimization techniques to improve revenue. The context is the following:

• Prices are negotiated up-front (once a year) and promotions are then defined to grab additional traffic
• Enterprise can charge a premium over competition due to its better service (shorter transport time, more frequencies, reliability…)
• Some competitors are adding capacity and trying to increase market share with aggressive price plans

Request Case Study…

Despite its successes, Revenue Management (RM) has some shortcomings and potential frictions with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) objectives. This white paper shows how the two disciplines of RM and CRM can be reconciled.

Request White Paper…

New tools are now available to improve pricing decisions. This presentation is an introduction to these new tools with case studies from different industries:

• Discover which pricing decisions can be improved
• Learn what type of data is used
• Understand the vital steps of a project and the requirements
• Discover how your company will benefit from implementing a pricing solution
• Quantify ROI through price optimisation

Request Presentation…

More than 80% of business to business (B2B) transactions are conducted through negotiated
contracts, a large number of them involving a long term relationship between the trading parties.
These contracts are becoming the standard way of doing business in many industries. This
white paper presents seven keys for improving the pricing of these contracts:

• Calculate incremental costs
• Assess business potential
• Micro-segment by value
• Measure price sensitivity
• Monitor competitive prices
• Rationalize the pricing process
• Adopt the right company infrastructure and organization.

A new generation of pricing systems can assist pricing analysts and sales executives in
systematically applying these seven steps and negotiating more profitable contracts with customers
and distributors.

Request White Paper…

CIBLEX, with sales of € 150 M, is a specialist in express distribution and maintenance. The company delivers over 100,000 objects per day through a network of 120 depots permitting to serve at D+1 in the morning all the french territory.

In 2005, following an MBO, the management team decided to implement OP pricing and revenue management system in order to improve the financial performance of the company.

This implementation was a full success. The new pricing processes based on OP contributed to an increase of +3.5 points in net margin between 2005 and 2007. The new pricing tool enabled CIBLEX to:

• Increase price and margin per shipment
  
• Renew its customer basis concentrating on more profitable deals

Request Case Study…

AGIFORS’ annual Airline Revenue Management Conference is being hosted and organized in conjunction with Air France KLM in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Amsterdam is often known as the Venice of the North with its extensive network of canals and waterways and wonderful architecture. This year’s annual study group meeting and conference has been scheduled for 17-19May 2009 at the Mövenpick Hotel Amsterdam City Center, conveniently located in the city center.

Conference Overview
The Revenue Management Study Group offers the latest in innovation on airline operations research as it applies to revenue management. All topics in the area of reservations and revenue management systems and activities are covered by this Study Group of AGIFORS. These include revenue optimization, overbooking management, demand forecasting, distribution channel issues and some marketing issues. Recent topics of presentations include revenue integrity, revenue management without restrictions, O&D forecasting and control, migration from leg-based to O&D-based systems, O&D abuse, forecast unconstraining and Cargo revenue management.Representatives from airlines, air transport associations, universities, industrial research laboratories and consultants will discuss new ideas and present technical papers. Come and share with us your ideas, thoughts, current trends, philosophies and latest technological advances on any of the above or related topics.

See full details…

Positions are available for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for qualified social workers.

Preference is given to applicants who have prior social work or counseling volunteer experience.

Positions are available for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for qualified social workers.

Preference is given to applicants who have prior social work or counseling volunteer experience.

Positions are available for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for qualified social workers.

Preference is given to applicants who have prior social work or counseling volunteer experience.

Positions are available for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for qualified social workers.

Preference is given to applicants who have prior social work or counseling volunteer experience.

Topics that will be covered during the conference and the certification workshops include:

• Measuring & Managing Pricing Effectiveness with Loïc Le Corre and Tony Hodgson
• Channel Pricing – The How and Why of Pricing to and through Indirect Channels with Stephen J. Martin
• Core Pricing Skills with Mark Billige
• The Pricing Organisation Transformation Workshop: How to Organise and Successfully Transform the Pricing Function Inside Your Company with Marc Abels and Geert Vercaeren

See conference details…

Based in Paris, France and Cicago, IL.

In a market where there is an increasing pressure on prices, a top priority for Chronopost Portugal is to maintain a good level of profitability by improving the accuracy of pricing decisions and achieving maximum network capacity utilization. The Open PricerTM system will provide Chronopost Portugal sales forces and management with advanced contract quotation, negotiation and deal monitoring functionalities designed for the optimization of B2B transactions as well as state-of-the-art sales force automation and reporting capabilities.
“Our clients have a diversity of delivery needs, type of shipments and traffic profiles. For this reason, each price quotation requires a precise analysis of the impact on service costs and network utilization. The Open PricerTM system will enable us to provide our clients with contract proposals that meet their requirements while optimizing our resources. Furthermore, the Open PricerTM system will streamline our pricing processes, enabling sales forces to provide precise and fast quotations to clients in coherence with company strategy. It will give management a total vision of the sales activity and performance in real time” said Olivier Establet, Managing Director of Chronopost Portugal. “We selected Open Pricer due the adequacy of their product with the needs of transport operators and the capability of their consultants to understand our business” said Ana Cristina Martins, Financial Controller.

About Chronopost Portugal
Chronopost Portugal is a division of GeoPost, the parcel holding of Group La Poste. It is one of the market leaders in Portugal and transports every year over 6,3 million parcels for different markets: Computer, Electric Equipment, Textile, Spare Parts, Electronics, Health Care, Home Appliances… The company has a network that is able to serve any point in Portugal and in Europe with shipments up to 30 kg.

About Open Pricer
Open Pricer is a leading provider of Pricing & Revenue Management solutions and consultancy in Europe. It serves clients in the Transportation, Travel, Pharmaceuticals, Energy and Finance sectors. It is based in Paris, France.