How Pricefx Supports Business Intelligence Systems

Pricing your products and services effectively and maximizing your desired business outcomes can be a challenging undertaking at the best of times. However, in these current periods of unpredictable market forces, supply chain disruptions and a range of uncontrollable events like pandemics and regional conflicts, it has become doubly so. To achieve real-time reactivity in your pricing and pinpoint the areas in which you want to do well, your business may need to look beyond your current business intelligence systems (BIS). While BIS technology is great at developing charts and visualizations to use in your pricing, purpose-built pricing analytics tools are far more likely to provide you with the kind of deep pricing insights you will need to reach your desired business outcomes. That’s why in this article, we will explain precisely how Pricefx pricing software supports your BIS. 

At Pricefx, we have spent more than a decade analyzing the pricing requirements of each individual client and customizing their technology solution accordingly. With Pricefx’s standing in the pricing software industry reinforced by our shortlisting in the Best SaaS Product For Business Intelligence Or Analytics category for the 2022-23 SaaS Awards, we feel perfectly positioned to give you the kind of honest and expert advice that your organization requires to answer both your Business Intelligence and general pricing questions.

Consequently, with this article, we will let you know the difference between Pricefx and a BIS platform and exactly how Pricefx supports your company’s BIS. As each company is unique, we hope the information supplied will help you to determine if Pricefx is the right pricing software solution for your organization or not. 

What is the Difference Between Pricefx and Business Intelligence Systems? 

It is important to remember that price analytics software like the award-winning Pricefx solution and the kind of analytics that are used by your BIS are two entirely different things. Yes, for sure, they complement each other nicely but they are different. 

What Your BIS Does 

BIS software collects and processes substantial amounts of unstructured data from internal and external systems. 

These BIS tools provide a way of amassing and preparing data to find information primarily through queries, so that you can use the accompanying data visualization software to create reports and dashboards.  

 

The results can supply your team with the power to accelerate and improve decision making, increase operational efficiencies, pinpoint new revenue potentials, identify market trends, report KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and identify new business opportunities. 

Leading business intelligence software vendors include Tableau, Oracle BI, Microsoft Power BI, Qlik Sense and Sisense, among others. 

What Specialized Pricing Analytics Software like Pricefx Does 

Pricing analytics software like that of Pricefx on the other hand is a precision tool distinctly designed for specialized use within the pricing industry.  

In other words, the Pricefx pricing solution can lead the way to unearthing your company’s maximum profitability. Answer all your top-of-mind business questions— such as “Who is my most profitable customer?” and “What is my most profitable product or region?” quickly, efficiently, and easily. 

 

With Pricefx, you can create a customized mechanism that functions as both a catalyst and a metrics engine for managing your company’s profitability.

 

The technology allows you to better perceive, interpret and predict the impact of the prices on your strategic business goals. At its core, Pricefx software assists companies to determine the optimal price for their goods and services. It uses advanced methods to process substantial amounts of historical data to quickly supply you with an optimal price recommendation.

Pricefx can factor in market conditions, competitive analysis, promotions, product availability and revenue goals to make the best competitive pricing strategy according to your unique set of business circumstances. 

The Top 3 Ways that Pricefx Supports Your Business Intelligence Systems 

Now you know that price analytics software like Pricefx and BIS perform distinct functions and can work together to power your pricing in a symbiotic relationship (rather than as disparate entities), let’s take a closer look at the top 3 ways that Pricefx can support your BIS.

1. Pricefx is Pricing Specific & Can Support your BIS’ General Uses

To really get the most out of your BIS tool insofar as pricing is concerned, you must have some subject matter expertise to know what data that you need to collate, how to put it together, and how to use the tool in a pricing-specific way. 

On the flip side, Pricefx pricing software filters precisely the targeted information you want or need depending on the pre-determined business outcomes your unique organization requires of its pricing strategy. 

Think of it like this.

 

In terms of pricing, using a BIS to perform pricing functions is like trying to perform surgery with a blunt knife. Sure, you might get some of the job done but the outcomes generated may not be as precise as you would like them to be. Yes, the pie graphs you generate out of the data will look great, but the information itself may lack some of the professional pricing insights you were hoping for.

 

On the other hand, if you are seeking a precision tool with which you will be able to surgically analyze your optimal prices so you can explore your pricing at a granular level to identify drivers for value and uncover segments, patterns, and opportunities you never knew you had, with built-in CPQ (Configure Price Quote) capabilities that can support your sales team in understanding, communicating, and defending your prices during negotiation, then Pricefx pricing software is for you.

What’s more, with Pricefx, it is much easier to filter through the columns you want, or for you to establish what data attributes you want to see. The Pricefx also has enhancement capability by drawing historical transactional data into the system and creating additional attributes that allow you to generate more insights from the pricing data. 

In other words, Pricefx pricing software turns your data into smart outcomes, not only pretty BIS dashboards (although the Pricefx dashboards can be pretty neat too). 

A Pricefx Customer Insights Dashboard Example 

Pricefx is a holistic pricing system, where you can manage other tasks that your business may require like price optimization, rebates, ship and debit claims, allowances and promotions, sales compensation etc. out of the one location.

What’s more, because it is an automated process, Pricefx allows you to have both the information at your fingertips with dashboard display with charts and analytics faster at your fingertips as opposed to a general BIS tool where you may end up waiting a while to have your IT team generate all the information and place it into the visualization tools. 

Meanwhile, while you have been waiting for your IT team to complete the job inputting the correct data into your BIS, inflation has skyrocketed and the raw material costs that you require in your production are increasing daily. It is simply not up to speed. 

Your competitors that are using Pricefx have the jump on you, because their system is up to date in real-time. 

Sure, use your BIS and produce great charts by all means. But make sure you use the data insights that your Pricefx system or other pricing software is providing you with for the best results. 

2. The Flexible Pricefx System Lessens the Load on your IT Team 

As we alluded to above, your BIS system requires a certain level of subject matter expertise and technical know-how to operate as efficiently as possible 

As your pricing requirements and business objectives shift (not to mention simply changing your mind and pivoting if circumstances require), your IT teams will be needed to make updates to your BIS to keep it up to date as it is a closed system. And that takes time and a lot of IT resources. 

For example, imagine your company is adding new lines to your product portfolio or even a range of other attributes require updates (railroad, shipping or trucking strikes, inflation, supply chain disruptions, new government tariffs) that need to be added to your BIS analytics.  

Those new data attributes need to be added to your BIS and once they are there, then they need to be managed. With BIS, every time you need to add, change, or develop new functionality it can be an arduous process for your IT and pricing teams. And the chances are, a lot of manual work will be required to input Excel spreadsheet data into your BIS. 

Your data once it resides in the Pricefx system is more organized and as a result more easily enhanced than in a BIS. New attributes for your pricing can be added easily without the intervention of your IT people and that makes for better and more reactive real-time pricing.

3. Pricefx Values-Adds to Your Data Where BIS Cannot

The data that comes out of a purpose-built pricing platform like Pricefx is far more valuable to accentuating your desired business outcomes than what your BIS can produce.  

The entire Pricefx system is designed to empower your business into having your pricing software as the home for your sole source of data truth. 

The data that comes out of the Pricefx pricing software is 100% truth, 100% accurate because it has been 100% consolidated. 

Once your data is arranged in that coordinated fashion, the analytics has fertile ground to work its magic in helping you to determine the right price – for the right product – at the right time – for the right customer. 

What Pricefx does that your BIS cannot is answer important questions that you need to know in your pricing forays. For example, do you want to know things like: 

• What color of your products is selling the best? 
• What combination of products are selling the best? 
• Are your products selling better in Florida or California, or is Europe hot for your business right now? 

The number of data points you wish to analyze is only limited by your imagination.  

Much of that data becomes more valuable than it is with your BIS, as it is managed, filtered into a sole source of data truth for your business, and it can be pushed through our system and transformed to give you more structure and insight into your pricing. 

Looking for Additional Ways to Manage Your Pricing? 

Every business is unique in what requires from a pricing software solution. Now that you know how Pricefx’s award-winning pricing software can support your company’s BIS, you may be thinking if there are other ways to transform and streamline your organization’s pricing efficiencies.  

Check out this article below on how to align your company’s departments for pricing success: 

Or if you are ready to talk turkey, certain in the fact that Pricefx will be able to drive the kind of pricing expertise that your organization has been seeking, talk to one of our pricing software experts now.