Competition is a major threat to any business. In today’s highly competitive eCommerce context, a powerful Price Intelligence solution is indispensable for survival. On this, a question that naturally arises is – How to choose the right price intelligence solution for my business?
Here, we discuss 5 important features to look for in a Price Intelligence Solution.
1. Accurate Product Matching
A fundamental feature of a Price Intelligence solution is that it lets you track and compare your products against your competition. So, a Price Intelligence solution must take care of matching each of your products across all other sources, so that you can make a straightforward comparison and take action. The more accurate the product matching the more confident you are as a category manager about your decisions.
2. Extensive Product Coverage
Information is most useful when it is as correct and as complete as possible. If product matching is accurate, you are assured that the data is correct. But a Price Intelligence solution needs to do this at scale.
What good is it if a large number of products you want to track are not covered? Undoubtedly the depth in coverage of products is one of the most important features of a Price Intelligence solution. Whether the product you’re monitoring is a high-end flat-screen TV or an oven mitten, a Price Intelligence solution should be able to cover and deliver intelligence on the chosen product.
3. High Data Update Frequency
Data points like product prices and offers get stale fairly quickly. Ideally, we want to see real-time data. Real-time is not achievable at scale, or might even be overkill in many cases.
However, an effective Price Intelligence solution must present up-to-date data to the extent possible. Based on requirement this can vary from a day to a few hours thus helping the business stay ahead of the price curve.
4. Historical Pricing
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” But they also say history can be a useful predictor of the future. Nowhere is it truer than in competitive price intelligence.
An analysis of historical data almost always shows a trend that can be capitalized on for competitive pricing. A good Price Intelligence solution stores and presents historical pricing data in a useful manner. Also, it’s very important to have the ability to import the pricing data right into your Pricing Software (Pricefx, PROS, Omnia, Vendavo, Competera, Zilliant, Price2Spy, Prisync) and BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, Qlik Sense, QlikView, ThoughtSpot, Sisense, Salesforce, Looker, Domo, SAP). Import our data right into your Pricing Software (Pricefx, PROS, Omnia, Vendavo, Competera, Zilliant, Price2Spy, Prisync) and BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, Qlik Sense, QlikView, ThoughtSpot, Sisense, Salesforce, Looker, Domo, SAP) to upgrade your pricing decisions. Keep an eye on prices, analyse your competition and set the right price for the right person at the right time.
5. “It’s not [just] about the money”
Retail is a highly competitive and commoditized sector. So, price is an important factor for a consumer when making a decision to buy a product. Having said that, as a retailer, you don’t always want to compete on pricing.
You may want to compete through better packaging or giving the user more choice (variants/colours/sizes). This is where a Price Intelligence solution needs to go beyond just pricing. It needs to capture and present all other relevant data points associated with a product such as stock availability, delivery times and inventory of your competitors as well.
Also, a good Price Intelligence solution can analyze your products assortment, compared to your competitors, monitor and report your competitor’s promoted articles in Home Page Banners, Newsletters & Brochures.
Additionally, a Price Intelligence solution can centralise the price and stock information of the online and offline channels in order to greatly simplify the price management in your company. The integration of both sources of information in the same solution allows you to compare both strategies and to know what your competitors are doing in eCommerce and in physical shops, answering questions like; does my competitor have an omnichannel strategy? or on the other hand; what margins does my competitor apply in each channel?. This way you can give your sellers in the physical store a great advantage so that they can negotiate with the customer.
Last but most important – Don’t Sacrifice Quality For Cost
Choosing the cheapest provider leads to quick disillusionment. The proverb “You get what you pay for!” also applies here. Quality has its price. Many work steps and processes are necessary to maintain data quality – and this is naturally reflected in pricing. Don’t make your choice based on the cheapest rate!
Today you have the opportunity to choose a Price Intelligence Solution from a large list. Of course, the options and the costs are multiple. There are solutions that are quite attractive and start at a very low cost but do not offer services tailored to your needs cause Price Intelligence is a part of their services among others. In this case, your company should adapt its needs to the data that each solution has to offer (limited competitors and products). As a result, all you have to gain is a partial market view that will not help you in the long run and may lead you to the wrong conclusions about Price Intelligence in general.
Choosing the right solution for your company should be considered as an investment that will bring profit. In this case, the cost for a start will indeed be much higher but in the end, the profits and benefits you will have will be amortized.
In a nutshell, the cost of price intelligence has a value that is undoubtedly affordable for any company or business that wants to succeed in the sector. Price Intelligence solution will be a structural ally for your company, both brands and retailers. From the sales department to the marketing or customer service department, you will benefit from the advantages provided by this powerful solution.
What you need to count in for the right choice will be all of the above without the cost is an obstacle as long as there are guarantees for the accuracy of the services.
What makes TGN Different & Premium
Automated Product matching – 90% Machine 10% human
All products are matched automatically and are checked by a quality assurance team that consists of experienced data analysts.
Matching & Coverage – SLA Guaranteed
All services are performance guaranteed via SLA on 3 KPIs: Quality (quality of matching), Quantity (data coverage of the monitored products), Update time.
Unlimited Competitors
Our customers have true access to unlimited competitors worldwide without extra cost on their license.
No Geographical restrictions & Identify
Price Discrimination based on location
TGN can monitor any direct webshop worldwide and is able to identify different retail prices based on different countries, cities or postal codes.
SMART data updating – Real-time data
Our systems dynamically reschedule the update times of SKUs by analyzing your competition movements and predicting price changes. All data is being updated dynamically within 90 minutes 24/7/365 irrelevant of the number of products. This means that at any time of the day you have access to fresh data.
Ready to connect with major ERP-BI systems
TGN’s data can be connected and imported
into any pricing system, ERP or BI tool.
Simple billing calculation
Unlimited Competitors, URLs, users. There is only one variable for each service. That way you know the costs beforehand which gives you full control over your budget and if a scale-up is required it’s very easy to perform without calculating multiple variables.
Software Development services for
custom reports & charts included
TGN includes in all licenses the possibility of requesting custom reports and charts based on customers’ needs.
It’s Time to Harness the Power of Advanced
Competitive Price Intelligence Solution for eCommerce
The days when you could make pricing decisions & monitor your competitors manually are gone. Today, when you are competing against thousands of retailers online globally you need to leverage advanced price intelligence to tilt the scales in your favour.
With our Competitive Pricing solution, you will be able to monitor your competition in real-time, and implement what you learn in order to give your organization the upper hand. Insights that used to require a team of analysts to create, and took days to implement, are now available automatically, accurately, and in real-time – right at your fingertips.
