Implementing A Retail Price Engine:

Best Practices And Considerations

This article originally appeared on techuniverses.com

Adding a retail price engine to your operations arsenal will not only streamline your pricing research and process, but it will also allow you to set your prices in real time. Using tools like competitive intelligence and ML-product matching, retail price engines go above and beyond price optimization. Best of all, you never have to worry about inaccurate pricing, as your data is industry-specific and relevant to your scope.

Supercharge your research and assessment protocols by relying on next generation pricing and category management tools built into your retail price engine system. With these tools, you can empower your business and stay clear of pricing pitfalls with accurate pricing data collection. It’s never been easier to assess trends in pricing and optimize pricing for value.

Although just the implementation of a retail price engine will set your business ten steps forward, there are some key factors and practices to keep in mind before getting started. Below, we discuss the best practices and considerations to review before implementing a retail price engine. For more information on how you can succeed with your retail price execution, read on.

Select systems with all-in-one tools for retail price execution. 

Invest in a retail price engine that contains everything you’ll need to streamline your retail pricing operations. End-to-end systems will incorporate automated features for retail price execution, price optimization, data collection, product matching, price analytics and insights, and assortment gap management. You want to invest in a product that offers the full picture of processes necessary to evaluate and implement effective retail price execution.

Succeed with system-embedded retail profitability tools.

Make sure that the retail price engine you go with offers ways to maximize your retail profitability. Many retail price execution systems are embedded with retail profitability tools that make it easier to improve your business’s profitability by reporting and analyzing industry-specific data aimed at increasing the profitability of your bottom line. Don’t settle for systems that are limited in their scope of available retail pricing data. The goal is to replace manual data mapping, not supplement it, so only consider a retail price engine that includes retail profitability tools like competitive intelligence and ML-product matching embedded into the software.

Choose systems that use competitive intelligence.

Competitive intelligence is instrumental for retailers looking to improve their retail price execution. With this smart technology, you’ll achieve accurate and detailed match coverage for each competitive catalog. Data will even be collected from hard-to-match websites and those that are challenging to access, such as private labels. The more data you uncover, the greater the accuracy of your retail price execution, setting your business ahead of competitors without these tools.

Opt for ML-product matching.

Incorporating a retail price engine with ML-product matching is just as important as integrating competitive intelligence. With ML-product matching, you gain the advantage of staying ahead of your competition. The in-store and online data you receive will not only be reliable but offer granular competitive insights so you can narrow in on your competition and get ahead of them quickly.

The accuracy of the data you obtain is backed by machine learning and human-verified exactness, so you get accurate product matching every time. You’ll spend less time cleansing for accuracy in data assessment. Instead, you’ll put your time into implementing strategies that keep your retail price execution on track.

Win your market with data insights that cover all the bases.

The more of your market you cover, the better your retail price execution. When it’s time to purchase a retail price engine solution, opt for choices that contain all of the data insights you’ll need covered. Look for coverage for data insights at the zip-code level, data for growth opportunities, and data for promotion positioning. You want to do more than get ahead of the competition; you want to flourish with industry-specific intel that can directly influence your operational strategies for successful retail price execution.

Choose retail price engines with geo-level pricing data.

Get all the components of local pricing data, including those that span categories and competitors. Make sure that your system includes a 24/7 team that is ready to update data collection findings based on adjusting retailer websites. When you’re able to review more products across more areas, you get a better grip on your retail price execution, maintain accuracy, and outperform your competitors.

Get market data that impacts assortment gap management. 

Make sure your retail price engine includes data analysis across markets that indicate potential missed opportunities. With this expansion of data, you can be in a better position to fulfill customer demands and establish a more substantial retail business with conversions that encourage loyalty and business growth. When you’re ready to assess your assortment data, you can better understand the products and classifications that are doing the best and those that are not.

This takes things a step beyond feedback gathered from surveys, customer reviews, and other methods of customer-volunteered feedback. It also eliminates bias and inaccuracies in patterns of feedback by tracking what customers are and are not buying as well as products stocked by competitors. The information you gather is much more accurate when it comes from assortment data across a greater outreach of assortment gaps in the market.

In summary, you want to find a retail price engine solution with the capacity to do the following:

• Implement assortment gap intelligence and identify missed market opportunities.
• Calculate the impact of possible revenue of incoming products.
• Identify opportunities and simplify rankings.
• Narrow down to the total market impact.  

Get the system that does it all and sets the stage for growth.

Speed up your pricing and category operations by utilizing a system that can do it all for you. Track your market analysis, price optimization, retail price execution, and impact analysis, all under one secure system. With innovative tools that complete the entire pricing process for you, you receive accurate data and insights every time, giving you the details you need to get ahead and grow your business further.