Our customers use Profimetrics Integrated
Profit Optimisation to address all pricing functions in
order to improve operational efficiency, manage pricing
performance, and prevent price inconsistencies, margin loss,
bad consumer price image and non-compliant procedures.
Forrester spoke with
the leadership team at Miquel Alimentació Grup that runs 60
cash-and-carry outlets as well as 135 superstores across
economically diverse regions in Spain to find out how it
successfully introduced Profimetrics IPO to improve its
ability to shape demand through more responsive pricing.
In
response to competitive initiatives and continual
fluctuations in local demand, Miquel must frequently adjust
its dozen different price lists for 25,000 SKUs.
By
2006, Miquel had grown so large that its 20 category
managers could no longer handle the manual adjustments
required for each location. In addition, Miquel needed a
process that would help category managers and private label
managers work together on the same categories, without
creating price inconsistencies. Senior management worried
that prices across its broad and fast-growing range of
merchandise could easily fall out of alignment and that
spreadsheets were insufficiently sophisticated to control
adherence to pricing policies across multiple price zones,
hundreds of stores, and thousands of SKUs.
To meet its need for
less-labor-intensive pricing while retaining a high level of
response to market conditions, the division chose to work
with Profimetrics, a software vendor specializing in “right
pricing” process solutions. Miquel implemented Profimetrics’
Integrated Profit Optimization to start automating the
pricing function and then advance to markdowns and
promotions.
Within one year of
implementing its new system, Miquel was able to:
Maintain prices at the category level. Miquel
manages multiple price lists for the same item. By
establishing systematic relationships between the price
lists, Miquel buyers are able to drive automated updates
when they maintain a single master list.
Manage price relationships. Miquel’s buyers
maintain a relationship between the prices of items such
as 1 liter and 2 liter cartons of orange juice, and a
separate relationship between the prices of orange juice
and pineapple juice. By establishing these relationships
in the system, Miquel has vastly increased its price
agility, enabling merchandising managers to focus on a
single price change and feel secure in the knowledge
that the system will maintain its price relationship
with affinity items.
Manage a price “image” automatically. Like
many other retailers and distributors, Miquel has
established a “price image” that supports its other
marketing policies. Merchandise managers can maintain
prices in bulk, and by exception in detail, at the SKU
and location level in order to comply more closely and
promptly with the target price image when competitors
change their prices or market conditions change.
Miquel’s new price agility has helped it to change its
prices every week rather than once a month since it
implemented its integrated price optimization system.
Improve margin. Miquel is now better able to
manage its category managers. Their bonuses are tied to
margin improvements, and they now have a system that
helps them fine-tune prices across a wide range of items
to secure the best margins.
NEW PRODUCT
ANNOUNCEMENT:
The Wastage Manager™
Profimetrics offers a
new approach to maximizing the sell-through of perishable
products through the use of a margin enhancing dashboard
designed to target execution efforts and minimize wastage.
"Perishables shrink is effectively the smoking gun. Most
shrink in perishables is caused by product reaching the end
of its shelf life.
Industry
research shows that shrink caused by spoilage can be 10
times greater than shrink in non-perishables. While
perishables make up about 30% of store sales, they can be
responsible for up to 80% of total store shrink.
New
studies by Oliver Wyman show that more than four-fifths of
customers have seen bad produce on display in their grocery
store. Nearly 60% have found goods they bought at the
supermarket unsatisfactory when they got home - and nearly
two-thirds have changed their shopping behaviour as a
result."
The
quality, variety, price and availability of perishables is
the primary reason that consumers choose one supermarket
over another. Efficient and effective management of
perishable sell-through is essential to customer
satisfaction and store profitability.
Profimetrics offers a
new approach to the communication, coordination and control
of any type of event with the Collaboration Workbench™ by
permitting collaboration and data sharing between event
contributors, both inside and outside an organization, in a
simple and secure manner.
We
know how complicated it is to coordinate intricate
initiatives like new product launches, grand openings,
re-grand openings and promotions - the Collaboration
Workbench™
makes it easy to plan and execute all activities - from
budgets to blueprints to planograms to advertising campaigns
to payroll hours - to achieve your objectives on-time and
on-budget.
Utilizing streamlined Gantt
charts and centralized task management, event progression
and execution can be easily monitored and problems can be
identified and resolved quickly over your own, secure web
portal. Data sharing and communication mechanisms provide a
single repository for all forms of collaboratively shared
data and digital media.
Profimetrics and
Churchill are proud to announce IPO+
A Full Lifecycle Price
Optimization Solution
We have crafted a highly
scaleable, scientifically state of the art, workflow-driven,
process oriented solution that is sensitive to both end
users and end use.
ANTONIO MURTA, THE
FOUNDER OF ENABLER, COMMENDS IPO:
"In 2008, it was
urgent for retailers to more effectively optimize and manage
lifecycle pricing - in 2009, it's critical.
No retailer can afford
to ignore the need to price and promote more effectively
than their competition.
IPO does an excellent
job of balancing the need for a practical and comprehensive
approach to lifecycle pricing (and what retailer can afford
to be impractical today?) with an easy to use, well
engineered and scalable solution to one of the most
important activities in retailing."
ERNST & YOUNGS'
RETAIL DIRECTOR, JASON GORDON, RECENTLY REVIEWED IPO:
>"As
a second generation software product, the
Profimetrics pricing solution will resonate with
retailers in many countries. The unique combination
of a rules based framework for price management,
combined with the ability to "plug in" analytical
sophistication allows retailers of all levels of
size and shape to derive commercial benefit from
IPO.
The open
nature of the software means that it really can
evolve with the changing nature of retailing and
pricing in the current challenging economic climate
- a feature many software products claim, but few
deliver. Additionally, having initial price,
promotions and markdown activity all managed in the
same place allows retailers to take a holistic,
joined up approach to their pricing strategy,
policies and operations.
The
Profimetrics' team are well known and respected
members of the retail IT community. The strategy
that they've applied to the entire solution and
their approach to the market makes a great deal of
sense."
RACHEL MACLEAN FROM
TECHNOLOGY FOR RETAIL REVIEWED THE RETAIL SOLUTIONS SHOW AND
SELECTED ONLY TWO VENDORS TO WRITE ABOUT - ONE WAS
PROFIMETRICS
Retail Answers Weblog, Retail
Solutions 2008, July 11, 2008
"Profimetrics
Price Optimisation has been designed by the team behind
ARTHUR planning and has some impressive quantified benefits
based on a recent case study in the US. It is being marketed
as the first, second generation price optimisation system.
Improvements on generation one (systems like DemandTec and
ProfitLogic) include visibility of the formulae and rules
behind the results."
