Achieving simulations in the retail business is one of the most strategic parts when defining and applying both marketing and operational policies. Indeed the ability to measure impacts of different decisions is the key-part in order to take the right decision. ibs Pricing allows retailers to simulate a huge amount of data, getting fast and accurate simulation results and providing business alerts on calculation results.

“find the right price at the right time for the right place”

Why Retailers needs to simulate Prices?

• Applying Company's Pricing Policy using advanced Pricing rules
• Meeting the objectives set at the category level in terms of market position and/or profitability.
• Enhancing Retail Price image, Sales and Margin
• Reacting to Competitive Pricing Policy
• Adapting Price to triggers happening at the Item level such as cost change, tax change during Item lifecycle
• Optimizing Retail or Dealer Price
• Forecasting future sales, units and margins
• Analyzing Market trends and competitive aggressiveness
• Calculating and analyzing impacts of Price change at different hierarchy levels

RESULTS ANALYSIS AND IMPACT

ibs Pricing gives the ability to retailers to view the details of the simulation calculation and understand the results step by step through reports (market index, paired index, summary tracking, customer basket) and impacts indicators. ibs Pricing possesses a complete library of reports already present in the system. Retailers can keep a 'dynamic' set of results that allow users to perform some changes on different information. Our Solution ensures timely execution of price changes to maximize sales and profits.

DECISION-MAKING

Soft Solutions, knowing scepticism is natural, provides thus a full and detailed analysis. Indeed, some managers can be afraid to hand over at least part of the decision-making process to software application because merchants feel they're the experts and they have been doing it for years.

This is the reason why ibs Pricing calculates simulated prices which are recommendations leaving the final decision to the pricing manager. The decision-making is easier and managers can understand the results readily and quickly, thanks to a time-to-time update.

Users can change prices manually, one by one or in a massive way, and observe the results consequently straight away.

The Pricing strategy will generate retail or dealer Price change, or not, based on multiple Pricing rules and objectives. Once the prices are validated, the Retailer can create conflict and export rules to manage price conflicts resolution and export the retail price change to the stores. Indeed, a conflict can happen between two Price changes: a certain number of days can be define between two retail price changes to limit the number of price changes and avoid to disconcert the consumer (or a certain number of days before and after a promotion). ibs Pricing can set up a threshold to control the number of retail price changes that are sent to the store for a given period.

EXECUTION

Retailers need to seamlessly transform category-pricing strategies into prices at the Point Of Sale and Soft Solutions gives them the Solution to support the entire pricing process, from corporate to stores. ibs Pricing manages full price validation cycle, thanks to a configured Workflow. Alert messages are sent to the concerned user when one of the process steps is accomplished and needs to be closed in order to start the next one. For instance, the Pricer receives a message by workflow when the simulation is executed. Once he has validated all prices, the category manager gets another message to confirm and execute final prices to send them to the stores.
ibs Pricing incorporates all the necessary Price Management capabilities required to manage the entire pricing process and life cycle. Our Solution is modular and allows retailers to implement it based on their current and future business needs.