Gathering competitive pricing information is a serious challenge in all industries, particularly so for those who serve B2B markets. This is because competitors' prices are an essential reference point for setting price for your own products. This webinar shares best practices for how companies collect, analyze, and make strategic decisions with competitive pricing intelligence. Learn how competitive pricing intelligence is getting more complicated, why typical data collection tools for pricing are not good enough, and how you can enhance your competitive pricing intelligence strategy.

1. Monthly Webinar Series – September 19, 2012
Competitive Intelligence and Pricing
with
Brian Clarke, IDC
Copyright © 2012 by LeveragePoint Innovations Inc.
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This document provides an outline of a presentation and is incomplete without the accompanying oral commentary and discussion.
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2. Sponsored by LeveragePoint
the Software Solution for Value-based Pricing
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3. Today’s Presenter
Competitive Intelligence and Pricing
Brian Clarke is Program Vice President of IDC's Pricing
Evaluation and Leasing Evaluation Services. His services are used
by all of the major IT vendors to assist them in establishing
successful price and product positioning strategies, by dozens of
lessors and financial institutions to predict the residual risk of
their portfolios, and by hundreds of corporate IT buyers and
lessees who want to make informed purchase and lease
decisions. His opinions are often quoted in numerous business
and daily newspapers including USA Today, The Wall Street
Journal, Investor's Business Daily, Business Week and The New
York Times.
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4. The Golden Age of Competitive Pricing
Intelligence
Never been easier to collect
competitive pricing intelligence
Democratic – Competitors and
customer have access to tools
Heightened market awareness –
Amplifies pricing actions and
reactions
© IDC Source:/Notes: Sep-12 4

5. Growing Complexity of Competitive
Pricing Intelligence
More data equals a glut of information
Trend towards marketing custom or “build to order” solutions
modularizes offerings into endless pricing combinations
Additional markets to cover – geographies, and buying groups
Shortened product lifecycles, plus more products grouped into more
segments
New pricing models SaaS, cloud, utility
© IDC Sep-12 5

6. A Challenge For Those Tasked With
Pricing Products and Services
Competitive price tracking typically part of the job
However, outside inputs are typically limited:
 Reliance on “inwardly-focused tools” such as CRM
 Ad-hoc spreadsheets, like bid analysis, or web collection
© IDC Sep-12 6

7. Data and Tools to Collect Pricing
Widely Available
Wealth of Data in Public Domain
 Published price lists – GSA, state
 Online stores, both vendor and retail
 Media monitoring
Many tools for data collection
 Web Harvesting (spiders, scrappers)
 OCR software
 Cheap labor
You Can Build Competitive Pricing Tools
 As simple as an automated spreadsheet
 Or complex as a large scale business intelligence tool
© IDC Sep-12 7

8. Still Not a Complete Picture
 Vendor and retail pricing typically reflect only MSRP or single quantity
street
 Published contracts show discounts but only to one buying segment and
timestamp is questionable.
 A large segment of enterprise products have minimal pricing on the web.
 Representative pricing hard to determine, will always be anomalies
© IDC Sep-12 8

9. Getting to the Whole Pricing Story
Expand Collections and Tools
Dig deeper into pricing
 Special bid
 Customer buy price
 Channel cost
Combine with supporting data
 Product specifications
 Sales rank
 Other pricing impacts –promotions, rebates,
inventory
Build analysis that is flexible, repeatable
© IDC Sep-12 9

10. The Many Lenses of Pricing
A product or service can have any number of combined pricing
lenses, each with a unique set of pricing
Geography Customer Size Delivery
• Region • Corporate CIO’s Office• Segment
CIO
• BTO
• Country • Government (SOHO)
VP IT Strategy & Planning
CTO • SaaS
• City • End user • Purchase
Product or Service
• Educational
Sourcing
band (50-
VP Global IT Sourcing
100 seats)
VP/Dir IT Sourcing
VP xyz Tech Sourcing
Showing a price without its context is dangerous
© IDC Sep-12 10

11. How IDC Enhances Competitive
Pricing Intelligence
Syndicated Feeds Reports
Consistent, fresh, proven Reliable, repeatable
Historical Pivot Table
Retailers
Retailers End-user (Street) Pricing
Retailers
Retailers
End-user Rebates
eValuator
Est. Cost Database
Retailers
Retailers Product Data Spreadsheet
Channel Promotions
Retailers
Distributors
Channel Inventory
MS Excel API
Flexible, extendable
Retailers Example: =IDC_LIST_HISTORY_QUARTER(A1,"US")
Retailers List Pricing
Retailers
Vendors
Specifications Product Comparison Builder
© IDC Sep-12 11

12. Using MS Excel IDC Functions
An HP product web page enhanced with
a wealth of competitive intelligence
© IDC Sep-12 12

13. Product Comparison Tools
© IDC Sep-12 13

14. Detailed Analysis of Combined
Hardware, Software and Services
Complex multi-vendor
review of multiple pricing
lenses
© IDC Sep-12 14

15. Up Coming Events in October
“Pricing… It Matters!” Professional Pricing Society
Western PA Pricing Professionals Fall Conference
Friday, October 12th October 23rd – 26th
Rivers Club, Pittsburgh, PA Omni Orlando Hotel, Orlando, FL
For More Information: bit.lyOaHeDv For More Information: bit.lyS2wPoc
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16. Thanks for Watching!
Brian Clarke
bclarke@idc.com
(508) 935-4765
sales@leveragepoint.com
www.leveragepoint.com
(617) 252-2876
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