* I rate as: Pricing Manager & Data Analyst
* Time of cooperation (from the evaluator's point of view): during the conception phase of the pricing project = approx. 2 years.
* Scope: New pricing concept and custom pricing logic for future pricing tool implementation with focus on Rule-Based Pricing.
Main components: Reference pricing, segmentation and item roles,
Pricing. Additional tasks: Excel pricing solution for a selected
assortment part as a transition phase.
The general assessment: very positive and recommendable.
The main positive points:
1. performance & creativity:
In the area of data and pricing processes, our initial situation was rather difficult and strongly connected with change management. Therefore, I especially appreciate the determination of our consultant and her solution-oriented attitude. Even though we had to change or adapt our theses several times for internal reasons, she accompanied us smoothly through every single "sudden change of approach".
She had set realistic goals and then worked with us to achieve them. She was always able to complete tasks in a timely manner, especially those with tight deadlines - and she also has the ability to coordinate multiple tasks and projects simultaneously.
Conclusion:
After a lengthy and adventurous period, together we have succeeded in creating a reasonable and comprehensive pricing concept that provides a very good basis for implementation and further development. The recommended pricing models and procedures have already survived the first time test.
2. attitude & cooperation:
Undoubtedly the most important point is: our consultant not only shared her knowledge with us, she rather trained us. From my personal point of view, it was the biggest advantage of our cooperation. Complex topics are communicated in a transparent and understandable way (with examples) and over time we have learned to think in the "pricing" way. At the end of our cooperation we were well prepared for independent work and further development (although the unusually long period of cooperation naturally played a role in this). So, from our point of view, the investment in this consulting was more than worth it.
In general, our consultant is oriented towards the culture of cooperation, which means: we have found a good balance between "customer and service provider" and "we are a team".
3. soft skills:
Sense of humor. Indispensable when people have to work under pressure in chaotic environments.
Optimization potential:
1. this is just a subjective opinion based on this case experience, but looking back it would be good to focus more on practical examples and calculations (even if with dummy data) in Excel than on theoretical process description in Word. Don't misunderstand, theory was very important to us as a pricing team and essential for documenting our logic decisions. But it turned out that, unfortunately, no one else (including all our developers and even the tool vendor tech team) ever wanted to "actively" read it. To solve this problem, we created Excel models for each logic part - and then we realized that this approach was much more practical both in workshops and when making adjustments and changes. So for future large projects of this type, we would prefer to use Excel as the base format: Excel spreadsheet with text description plus Excel spreadsheet with algorithms and calculation models plus hyperlinks to them.
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