Open Pricer is sponsoring one of the most important pricing event of the year: 23rd PPS Annual Spring Pricing Workshops & Conference.

Visit the PPS Calendar of Events…

A Pricing Diagnosis leads to margin improvement by enabling price disparities reduction among existing customers.

The methodology consists in calculating price and margin scores for each customer. Customers rating serves as the framework for implementing differentiated price increases.

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Pricing Wiki is a free and easy to use collaborative platform hosted on the web. This means the knowledge base will always be up to date and accessible via a standard web browser.

Professionals, teachers, students or any pricing enthusiast individuals will be welcome to contribute and maintain the articles up to date.

All you have to do is access Pricing Wiki at www.pricingwiki.org. It uses the same powerful wiki engine as Wikipedia which makes it easy to use. Then, just type in the keywords you would like to learn about and read the article. It’s that simple.

To contribute to Pricing Wiki, please send a request at .

Open Pricer, as a pricing expert, is always interested in supporting efforts to create knowledge and new theories to improve the pricing field.

Stephan M. Liozu, Ph.D. in Management candidate at the Weatherhead School of Management (Case Western Reserve University) and member of the Professional Pricing Society is conducting a 5-minute survey about:

“How firms make pricing decisions and
how they manage pricing problems and challenges.”

If you are working in sales, marketing, pricing or revenue management, please follow the link bellow to help Stephan carry out his academic pricing research.

http://weatherhead.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0GtnNLRyBVyQTuA

This survey takes about 5 minutes. The questionnaire is completely anonymous, and, should you volunteer your email address to receive a summary report, this information won’t be linked to your survey response.

Please contact Stephan Liozu at if you have any questions regarding this survey or the research project.

Open Pricer is proud to announce the EUREKA organization has labeled its innovative solutions.

EUREKA is a european organisation established in 1985. It brings together 40 members, including the European Union.

The prestigious EUREKA label is given to companies developing high value added projects passing stringent assessment procedures.

This label gives Open Pricer the recognition of its customer centric pricing solution at an european scale and reinforces its innovative technology actor position.

This relationship brings together Open Pricer innovative customer centric pricing software and Oracle leading database for large-scale implementations of the system.

The Gold Partner status will give Open Pricer the proper tools to even better meet its global customer’s requirements.

Finally, the latest enhancement to the Oracle PartnerNetwork will give Open Pricer the ability to strengthen its expert position through “Specializations”, which is a recognition of competency development, business results, expertise and proven success.

Open Pricer has been selected to be part of the Cap Digital knowledge engineering community.

Cap Digital is the business cluster dedicated to digital services and content of Paris/Ile-de-France area.

It is the first European business cluster with 600 members and 170 research laboratories.

Since its creation in 2006, the organisation has endorsed 500 innovative projects out of a total of 1100 projects presented.

Subscribe now to Open Pricer’s YouTube Channel and iTunes Podcast to receive upcoming videos about pricing.

This simulation shows that a better knowledge of costs and willingness to pay at the transaction level drives to improved pricing decisions and translates into higher margins. It provides three lessons:

1. Calculating the costs of each transaction, even imperfectly, is always beneficial
2. A greater precision in cost calculation leads to a significant margin increase. Reducing the cost calculation error by 50% can bring 3% additional margin.
3. Assessing willingness to pay along with cost calculation drives to even better results

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Open Pricer, as a pricing expert, is always interested in supporting efforts to create knowledge and new theories to improve the pricing field.

Stephan M. Liozu, doctoral candidate at the Weatherhead School of Management (Case Western Reserve University) and member of the Professional Pricing Society is conducting a survey about:

“How firms organize for pricing, manage the pricing process
and make pricing decisions.”

If you are working in sales, marketing, pricing or revenue management, please follow the link bellow to help Stephan carry out his academic pricing research.

http://weatherhead.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_1M2YEAVwxwScl5a

This survey takes 10 to 15 minutes. The questionnaire is completely anonymous, and, should you volunteer your email address to recieve a summary report and/or wish to be entered in a raffle to win an Apple iPad, this information won’t be linked to your survey response.

Please contact Stephan Liozu at if you have any questions regarding this survey or the research project.

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Open Pricer Suite™ is the only pricing solution for this vertical on the market, recognized the transport & logistics professionals.

The german international fair trade gathered more than 51,000 visitors from 134 countries.

With almost 2000 exhibitors, every logistics market was represented, from road transport to express and parcels but also sea freight or even rail transport.

The next european Transport Logistic exhibition will take place from 4 to 7 June 2013 in Munich. Meanwhile, Messe München International, which organizes the trade fair, will set up the asian edition, Transport Logistic China, from the 5 to 7 June 2012 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre.

The event gathered nearly 500 participants in the conference rooms and in the wide sponsor hall where several interesting networking opportunities took place.

After a warm welcome by the President, Kevin Mitchell, we had two days of keynotes and sessions dispensed by world class experts. Then, we enjoyed every coffee or lunch break filled with opportunities to meet people and share knowledge.

It was really hard to chose between all of the breakout tracks. As a result, we were only able to attend half of the sessions which we will try to summarize:

• Price actions must stay ahead of material inflation. (Charles A. Peters, Emerson)
• Provide your sales force with the right tools to give them the power to identify and renegotiate non-profitable customers’ contracts. (Paul Hunt, Pricing Solutions)
• Organizational mobilization is the key to integrate value-based pricing. (Stephan Liozu, Ardex America)
• An end to end sales process is crucial. (Gregg Hansen, Advanced Micro Devices)
• Variable costs tend to turn into fixed costs on the long-term. (Stephen Nyquist, AACG Keith Hohman, Price for Profit)
• Pricing enables you to stand out from competition. (Jean-Manuel Izaret, Boston Consulting Group)
• Pricing is a journey where the destination, speed and route must be defined. (John Norkus, Deloitte)
• The key to create competitive advantage is to turn analytics into actions. (Kenneth Dickman, Accenture)
• Align sales‘ retribution with company goals to boost your profit. (Doug Fuehne, Pros)
• Pricing is a science, not an art. (Alain Meloche, Strategic Pricing Management Group)
• Tertiary sector companies only have to treat the same competing customers. (Eugene F. Zelek Jr., Freeman & Peters LLP)
• Risk must be part of the equation when pricing a service. (Mark Burton, Holden Advisors)

We would really like to thank the Professional Pricing Society team : Kevin Mitchell and Fabricio Lopez (on this picture), but also Lisa Miles-Atkins, Katrese Phelps, Julie R. Martin, Chris Buckingham and all the staff who managed to put up such an incredible event.

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

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.

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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.