Pricefx vs Vendavo? – Choose the Best Software for You

We live in times of rampant market uncertainties and rapid price shifts across most industries. As such, large and small or medium-scale enterprise organizations are increasingly turning to pricing software to assist them in adopting relevant and data-informed pricing strategies. If you have been scouring the internet for potential pricing software that could best suit the unique set of business objectives, you may have narrowed down your search to Pricefx vs Vendavo. It can be confusing, both options look great on paper, but how do you choose the best software for you and your business?  

At Pricefx, we have been helping clients choose the best possible pricing software outcomes for their businesses for more than a decade. That’s exactly why we have put together this comparison article on Pricefx vs Vendavo. Before we dive in, four important points to note; 

• This comparison article is based on information available to the public, including information gathered from publicly available reviews, rankings, and testimonials. 
• As such, most of the information on Vendavo is based on their first-generation legacy software. Where known, information on Vendavo’s two latest software company acquisitions, Endeavor CPQ and Navetti Pricepoint (to modify their first-gen system) is also included. 
• We suggest you also undertake your own research in combination with the information supplied below to reach your own decision. 
• Please also note that the “Vendavo” trademark is owned by Vendavo, not Pricefx, and nothing in this article is intended to suggest any affiliation with or sponsorship by Vendavo. Similarly, the “G2” trademark is owned by G2, and references to G2 are not intended to suggest affiliation with or endorsement by G2. 

So, let’s get started and take an in-depth look at Vendavo and Pricefx and check out how the two pricing software providers stack-up concentrating on the strengths and weaknesses of each, and what they offer to your organization. 

Pricefx vs Vendavo? – The Top 8 Comparison Features 

Conditional upon what your company will require and your specific pricing software needs, there are a distinct set of “features” that you can use as a guideline when comparing Pricefx head-to-head against Vendavo. 

Each of the two pricing software companies has a different range of functionality and their strong or weak points. 

Let’s move forward and examine the top 8 comparison features that we’ve found companies use to compare leading pricing solutions against each other.  

Wherever possible, we also provide a clear winner in each category for your decision-making purposes; 

1. Self-sufficiency/Training/Ease of Use – Who comes out on top? 
2. Who best solves multiple top line problems? 
3. Shortest time to ROI?? 
4. Which integrates best with my existing system? 
5. Which has the best data science? 
6. Who has the best AI capabilities? 
7. Which provides a comprehensive solution based on innovation?  
8. Which solution works best for my industry? 

Prefer an independent assessment?  

Please feel free to check out this review from Gartner on Pricefx vs Vendavo or read on to see how we compare them. 

1. Self-sufficiency/Training/Ease of Use – Who Comes Out on Top?

Winner – Tie

For those businesses that prefer an option that can be used simply by your own pricing team and can build your own self-sufficient pricing rules flexibly into the system, Pricefx takes the title over Vendavo. 

With Pricefx, you will be able to have your staff trained by the Pricefx Team to independently use your pricing software. At Vendavo, difficult to use pricing analytics  and changes to the pricing logic being difficult to comprehend should your pricing strategy change, means that going back to Vendavo staff may become a regular occurrence. The inherent flexibility of the Pricefx system means less work, done easier, for more results, configured and performed seamlessly by your own staff, with the ability to independently update the technology in the future. 

Pricefx will allow for use of the pricing software without prescriptive input from the provider should you prefer.

 

Get your staff involved in whatever training you wish to make any changes your organization requires to become pricing self-sufficient.

However, let us give credit to Vendavo where it is due.  

The Vendavo User Interface looks and feels better and easier for use with its intuitive design and navigation. According to a G2 compare report, leads with ease of use by .3 points. However, the underlying architecture lets down the great Vendavo design and going back to their team to solve problems is commonplace. 

2. Who best solves top-line problems? 

 Tie – Pricefx/Vendavo 

It is potentially a case of an unfair comparison like trying to compare apples with oranges, as Pricefx and Vendavo both have tools that solve different top-line problems well. Let’s go through them. 

Vendavo has a great feature that Pricefx does not in this category. A nice risk management tool will help you learn from historical pricing behaviors in your transactional data and calculate optimized prices that maximize margin and minimize the risk of losing customers during the sales negotiation process. 

However, Pricefx also has some great exclusive features that act as top-line problem solvers. For example, if your business depends heavily on rebates, promotions, and discounts in your quoting procedure, Pricefx has the perfect tool to cut downtime of managing Rebates and more time on optimizing your prices. The Pricefx Rebate Manager defines, manages, simulates, calculates rebates, discounts, bonuses etc. so that you can accurately deliver rebates on time to clients. 

With the Pricefx Channel Manager, manufacturers can implement a quick and efficient claims management process that reduces miscalculations, decreases turnaround time, and improves transparency – while delivering cost savings across the board.  

And Pricefx Plasma provides for industry-level benchmarking to B2B enterprise companies, empowering your pricing team to compare how long it takes your staff to process a quote against other players in your industry-specific market, and across other industry-relevant KPIs. 

3. Shortest Time to ROI?

Winner – Pricefx  

Return on Investment (ROI) times are usually calculated considering the initial outlay of your software (annual subscription costs), the total operating costs (TOC) of your choice of pricing software, and the positive financial benefits the software delivers to your organization over time. 

However, a 2022 study on ROI in the pricing software industry by peer-to-peer review site, G2, unearthed that 56% of Pricefx customers achieved ROI in 12 months or less, while 30% reached ROI in 6 months or less.

That study showed that Pricefx is faster to ROI than their 3 fellow pricing software vendors, Zilliant, PROS and Vendavo. 

For those looking to learn more on ROI in the pricing software industry, check out our recent blog articles on “What ROI can I expect from Pricing Software?” and “Does Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Matter in Pricing Software.”  

Or if you would like to know more about pricing software’s up-front costs, check the article link below; 

4. Which integrates best with my existing system? 

Winner – Pricefx 

Pricefx edges Vendavo for ease and speed of integration with your system, regardless of which system you are looking to integrate with.  

The pure architecture of the system – Pricefx is a modern native-cloud software system with no reliance on the baggage of a legacy system, making for smoother and faster integrations.

 

Simply put, when you integrate your data with Pricefx, you are connected through a single interface. 

Many Vendavo clients frequently report that implementation takes much longer than expected and a great deal of customization and frequent interaction with customer support is required to get the system to function as it is designed to.

The REST (Representational State Transfer) is a critical difference for Pricefx over Vendavo. With an Integration Manager also built-in to the Pricefx system that Vendavo does not yet feature, integration is a clear category win for Pricefx. Platform Manager allows Pricefx to set up any number of inbound and outbound integrations with any solutions in the market from ERPs like SAP and Oracle to CRMs like Salesforce and MS Dynamics. The integration model of Pricefx enables businesses to bring unlimited data amounts into the system regardless of its source. 

5. Which Has the Best Data Science? 

Tie – Pricefx/Vendavo 

As mentioned above, Vendavo has some nice features, such as the risk management tool for sales and transactional data in addition to the in-memory data analytics that can identify past trends to avoid bad deals. 

However, Pricefx pulls even with Vendavo in the data science category thanks to the robustness of its overall architecture and functionality. 

From a price optimization point-of-view, the Pricefx optimization engine is fully integrated with the rest of the solution to allow for price optimization, win rate analysis, price elasticity, product and customer segmentation, margin and discount optimization, and much more. And of course, being able to do-it-yourself rather than depend on your pricing software vendor to do it for you at a price is a huge bonus. 

6. Who has the best AI capabilities?

Winner – Pricefx

With Pricefx, the AI is designed to deal with multi-agent constraints and therefore achieve multiple synchronized pricing objectives to maximize profit. For example, track the impact of applying a 5% price increase on your products in Canada but break it up by region (2% in British Columbia, 3% in Ontario, and 7% in Alberta while applying discounts only in Manitoba). In the Pricefx system, you could possibly even break those numbers even further by looking at additional constraints like the different sizes and colors of your products. 

If you wanted to perform the same task in Vendavo, it may require the AI to be tweaked with several time-consuming AI rules-based changes, check-ins with customer support staff and results can become skewed. It has been reported that the Vendavo Profit Analyzer is not easy to use and can crash at times. 

Subsequently, it is accurate to say that the Pricefx AI allows for faster work, greater accuracy, and more transparency in price decision-making than the Vendavo AI. 

What that means is that when using the AI power of Pricefx system, your salespeople can understand and have a clearer insight as to why prices are what they are. It makes the task of enabling your sales team to better negotiate and defend their prices  and quotes much easier.

7. Which provides a comprehensive solution based on innovation? 

Winner – Pricefx 

In the pricing software field, Next Gen providers are inherently at the forefront of innovation. Next Gen native-cloud providers like Pricefx can innovate quicker as there is no underlying legacy system creating a ‘technical debt.’ First-Generation pricing software providers (despite cloud-hosting abilities – a different thing to native-cloud) are in a state of constant catch-up. 

Native cloud-based pricing software allows you to set and manage prices in real-time, with AI-informed optimization that gives you the flexibility to adapt your approach to meet changing conditions without getting bogged down by potential technology upgrades. 

It is impossible for a first-generation ‘on-premise’ pricing software provider to innovate as quicky as a native-cloud-based one. The result is the nimble flexibility of Pricefx to develop of a one-stop ‘pricing shop’ that supplies a comprehensive 360-Degree pricing solution that includes: 

• Data analytics revealing profit drivers for every transaction, product, salesperson and customer. 
• Target price setting and guardrails, powered by AI-based optimization.
• Easy price list management with simple price updates across customer segments, product categories or regions.
• Transparent net margin, competition and contract pricing.
• Respond faster to quote requests. 

8. Which Solution Works Best for My Industry? 

Tie – Vendavo/Pricefx – it is contingent on your company’s industry 

The ultimate answer will naturally depend on your specific industry. 

As a result, the industry specialties for both Vendavo and Pricefx may help you to decide. 

Vendavo is known as B2B (business-to-business) specialists with special emphasis on the process, chemical and industrial manufacturing industries.  

Pricefx specializes in our recognized ‘Big 5’ key vertical industry sectors: 

• Discrete Manufacturing  
• Chemical and Process Industry  
• Distribution
• Food and Beverage
• Retail/eCommerce 

I Now Know the Difference Between Pricefx & Vendavo – What’s Next? 

Now you have the lowdown on Pricefx vs Vendavo, you have all the information to plan on selecting the best pricing software for your needs.  

Vendavo might be best for you if you are on the lookout for a first-generation legacy pricing tool with more than 20 years’ experience in dealing with big-name industry manufacturers. 

Alternatively, if you’re looking for a more overall price management tool driven by real-world AI capable of multi-agent price decision-making and be self-sufficient in its use with a proven faster time to ROI, Pricefx is for you. 

Pricefx and Vendavo both fit any number of business cultures and are exceptionally reliable software experiencing little downtime. Both are great options; however, it is understandable if you are yet to make up your mind.  

At Pricefx, we have spent more than a decade listening to different organizations on how difficult it can be to decide on a pricing software package. For example, many organizations give us feedback if they are not certain they have the resources and infrastructure for pricing software.  

If you’re also unsure, check out this handy article;