Uptime: The Most Disruptive Change in Pricing History

Hot on of the heels of Field Service USA, the Syncron team is already back on the road. From coast to coast, this team’s covering all the industry’s best after-sales events. This time, we’re in Chicago for the 29th Annual Spring Pricing Workshops & Conference at the Loews Chicago O’Hare Hotel.

The event is hosted by the Professional Pricing Society (PPS), an organization founded in the mid-80s by Eric Mitchell as a gathering of more than 4,800 members from a whopping 75 countries! The organization hosts five major pricing conferences a year, and since its founding year, PPS has been focusing on bringing pricing’s foremost thought-leaders together for events, workshops and online courses to facilitate ongoing learning, networking, and shared experiences.

That’s why we’re showing up with some of our top pricing experts in the Syncron organization to learn from some of the best in the industry – and to uncover the expanding scope of pricing today. Our very own pricing expert and Director of Pricing Solutions, Cliff Isaacson, is speaking today to cover uptime: the most disruptive change to take place in pricing history.

Product Uptime and The Pricing Revolution

So, what exactly does uptime have to do with pricing? Simply put, with an increasing emphasis on maximizing product uptime, or using predictive analytics to proactively repair products before they break down, manufacturers must ensure their service supply chains remain efficient and optimized – and this revolution in service creates a powerful and unique opportunity for pricing departments.

This changing landscape is pushing pricing pros to change what they’re pricing, evolving to selling subscription-based uptime service contracts over individual service parts. This transformation introduces a whole new lever for pricers to pull – manufacturers’ sense of urgency – which can have a huge impact on a pricing department’s contribution to profit margins, and creates a unique opportunity for pricers to automate and optimize their pricing strategies.

As he shares today, Isaacson is walking through attendees on how the movement to “selling uptime” creates this new opp for pricers, how to use emerging tech to modernize the way goods and services are priced, and ultimately, how to get started today to make the biggest impact on your organization.

From the competitive proliferation of digitization and eCommerce, to a shift in ownership to subscription-based products and power by the hour type usership, uptime is all around us. Isaacson is walking us through service contract pricing, pricing service parts and labor over the life of the contract, amortizing the cost of the finished good through the contract lifetime, and the residual value of the finished good at end of contract.

Ultimately, it’s clear that product uptime and predictive maintenance solutions are all around us, impacting pricing from all different angles, like:

• Tracking real-time data to predict the remaining useful life of an aircraft engine.
• Using sensor data to predict the failure of an ATM cash withdrawal transaction.
• Employing data to predict the failure of electric submersible pumps used to extract crude in the oil and gas industry.
• Predicting the failures of circuit boards at early stages in the manufacturing process.
• Forecasting energy demand in small communities regions to predict the overload situations of energy grids.

More customers than ever are requiring SLAs, which often guarantee product uptime – or proactively repairing equipment before it fails. It’s becoming more important than ever to ensure downtime is minimized (or preferably eliminated) to improve the customer experience and maximize revenue – which is why uptime should matter to pricers now, more than ever.

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When it comes to product uptime, we’re here to talk about all of the ways to adapt to our changing world and ensure the most impactful after-sales service experiences to date.

That’s why we’re publishing our latest eBook, Navigating the Most Disruptive Change in Pricing: Product Uptime, this month! In the literature, we’ll be taking a closer look at the topics discussed today at PPS, as well as future steps your organization can take to put product uptime at the forefront of your pricing priorities.

Stay tuned for the official launch later this month! In the meantime, contact us today to speak to Cliff Isaacson directly to get the best tips and strategies for all of your pricing needs.