In case you’re just now joining us, the team is here in Budapest for the 7th Annual Manufacturing Pricing Excellence 2019 Conference hosted by Copperberg. We’ve been enjoying two full days of networking and learning amongst our pricing peers, where we’re working together to optimize the power of pricing through value-based pricing, recruiting pricing professionals, bridging the gap with sales and navigating the many ways digital pricing impacts processes today.
This week, we learned some strategies on getting a clear perspective on pricing during digital transformation and breaking some of the pricing habits we’ve adopted over the years in order to evolve with our customers. And Syncron took the stage to talk about navigating the most disruptive change in pricing to date: pricing for product uptime.
A World Pricing for Product Uptime
From demographic, to economic, political, and social changes – everything around us is evolving. As customer expectations continue to increase, subscription-based service models that guarantee maximized product uptime are becoming the norm and forcing pricing teams to redefine their organizations and processes. This changing field of view is pushing pricing professionals to also change how they’re pricing, evolving to selling subscription-based uptime service contracts over individual service parts.
This transformation introduces a whole new lever for pricing teams to pull, as manufacturers have more sense of urgency than ever to appease these increasing customer expectations. Optimized pricing provides an opportunity to ensure prices are competitive – creating both an exceptional customer experience and improving financial results. And, amidst those changes, disruptors like digitization, the Amazon effect and new emerging technologies are creating a significant business opportunity for manufacturers when it comes to maximizing product uptime – the proactive maintenance of products before failure occurs. The status quo is no longer sufficient, and it’s time for companies to capitalize on these changing times, or risk losing customers in the process.
Digital Disruptions
To fully understand this market shift, let’s take a look at some of the external factors that are having an impact on this shift to maximized product uptime and the ways that pricing can play into each of these. Organizations need to be able to adapt to these and any future digital disruptions that could come into play – this means having strategies and technologies in place that can evolve and scale as the landscape changes.
- Emerging Technology. As these technologies evolve and new trends emerge, manufacturers must be equipped to use them to their advantage to become more efficient and effective.
- Digital Transformation. While digitization used to be incredibly expensive for companies to consider, its finally becoming more attainable as the technologies to support this shift are becoming more affordable to implement, track and optimize.
- Ecommerce + The Amazon Effect. The ecommerce wave means that those who want to survive this new wave of technological expectations need to embrace systems like intelligent price management, along with an infusion of emerging tech advances.
- Predictive Analytics + Proactive Maintenance. Smoothly-operating supply chains are vital for stable profits, and predictive analytics and proactive maintenance are both ways to combat that loss of productivity caused by downtime and maximize product uptime instead.
Product Uptime is Part of Digital Transformation
From the competitive proliferation of digitization and ecommerce, to a shift in ownership to subscription-based products and power-by-the-hour-type usership, customers now demand and expect maximized product uptime. Ultimately, it’s clear that uptime and predictive maintenance solutions are all around us, impacting pricing from all different angles. Several industries are already taking steps to move to this uptime-driven model.
Machine learning will make supply chains less brittle and reduce the effects of digital disruptions for many goods and services. And in order to ensure that their products are working as expected, maximized product uptime is something that consumers and businesses are incredibly likely to pay for in order to ensure that they have access to their machines and technologies the moment they need it. It’s becoming more important than ever to ensure downtime is minimized to improve the customer experience and maximize revenue – which is why product uptime should matter to pricing teams now more than ever.
Navigating the most disruptive changes in pricing requires an entirely new lens – one focused on intelligent algorithms based on customer behavior and the landscape of product demand. Product uptime is woven into every aspect of the after-sales service experience, and smart solutions like data-driven price management tools will be the ultimate compass for modern organizations.
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Syncron is proud to sponsor Manufacturing Pricing Excellence, the premier event for European pricing professionals. Join us as we share our experience via social and on the blog during the roundtable meetings, performance workshops, content sessions and more. Tweet us @SyncronSCM to connect with a Syncron team member at the event!
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