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April 8th, 2020 (Updated 04/26/2022) | 5 min. read

 

O-I Glass, a Fortune 500 company specializing in container glass products, is a large and globally-dispersed company. They needed a tool that could help them evolve a data-driven global pricing strategy that gave them the power to price and quote quickly and accurately yet still reflect regional needs, which their previous pricing solution could not provide.

For a company that can boast that one in four of every glass container made worldwide is manufactured by them or one of their affiliates or licensees, being able to centralize all necessary data sources and use them to drive an overarching global strategy, which still reflects the needs within specific regions, are essential to give them the flexibility to provide a more holistic pricing strategy. They knew that by adopting a more “value-based” model, sales would be able to quote quickly and profitably by providing a more consultative experience to their customers and prospects.

O-I Glass needed a tool that was able to scale to their both functionally and technically, to enable them to move away from a pure transaction model to a more “value-based” one. The limitations of their current legacy pricing solution meant they were not able to optimize pricing across their regional sales teams. This was due to the fact that it could not provide their salespeople with the information they needed to become more consultative, and have a complete understanding of the value drivers that made up the pricing of each contract.

In order to support standardized global processes around price setting and quoting and then drill that down to a local level, the system needed to be able to handle multiple data interfaces. This was something that the former pricing solution was also not able to do. This led to poor adoption as it only met the needs of the EMEA team. This was complicated further by the fact the tool they were currently using didn’t have the technical capabilities to handle the necessary data streams to ensure that all pricing logics were up to date.

To ensure that O-I Glass was able to execute its new strategy, Pricefx implemented a complete pricing solution that was able to scale globally by launching the new system region by region. After the initial European roll out, they continued rolling out in the Andean region (LATAM), South (Brazil, Argentina) and in the North (the USA and Canada). By implementing the solution in these regions separately, it allowed for modifications to the tool to fit the local geography as needed, while still providing uniformity across the organization. The solution also brought transparency and global scalability to the company’s pricing operations.

O-I Glass’s need for its sales teams to have access to an automated approval process, a negotiations simulation tool and automated quotes was met by Quote Configurator. In fact, this module has transformed how O-I Glass sells by automatically preparing the product portfolio based on current conditions records and historical data.

This gives their salespeople immediate access to useful information such as profit waterfall, negotiation power gauge, and services recommendation. This, in turn, ensures, that they are quoting at maximum efficiency and profit margin based on localized market information that aligns with the global pricing strategy. The process is fast as the automated approval process validates many factors and thresholds, but, at the same time, the tool still remains flexible and is easily modifiable by power users to fine-tune it further.

In addition to Quote Configurator, the Price Builder and Price Analyzer modules are helping drive the platform’s usage and adoption, and provide the team with valuable information in order to do their jobs better. The tool’s speed and flexibility in implementing the company’s global pricing strategy at a local level has provided O-I Glass with the ability to streamline their processes. It also gives their salespeople access to the information they need at their fingertips to be able to get the most out of every contract and interaction. Having access to this kind of pricing insights means that every deal is being quoted with the margin maximized at levels suitable for that region.

Pricefx has provided O-I Glass with a system that is as global as they are and is fully integrated with all of their systems, giving them full bi-directional access to all essential data. As the localizations continue to roll out, the platform serves them with the pricing services that drive the maximized profit margins that only a truly holistic view, territory by territory, can provide. This means the sales teams now enter negotiations with full visibility of the increased margins, while the solution also provides the company, as a whole, with an unprecedented level of transparency.

Since implementation, O-I Glass already has 10,000 quotes in production. Having access to accurate and timely data at all deal stages means that sales have adopted a “consultative approach” and are leveraging the speed and analytics Pricefx provides them in the quoting process.

As O-I Glass continues to expand through the multiple phases of their global rollout, they are able to simultaneously streamline across the organization geographically. Pricefx’s team’s special affinity towards their project managers has led to a project based on friendly and familiar faces and productivity.

The speed of implementation has been possible because the solution is a cloud-native one. This means that any changes, such as modifications, are fast and easy due to their configuration living in the cloud and not some black box. With a newly empowered sales force quoting quickly at a local level while at the same time adhering to the global pricing strategy, O-I Glass is finally able to implement its vision based on driving profit margins even further through effective quoting and up-to-date, relevant and actionable data.

We have decided to switch from a first-generation price optimization provider to Pricefx in 2018 because of its flexibility, responsiveness and implementation speed.

Jose Redondo

Global Pricing Excellence Leader, Owens-Illinois