Does your business turn raw materials into finished goods? Are you in the manufacturing, retail, construction, wholesale, or distribution industries? Then you are most likely dealing with a supply chain. This became a buzzword in 2020, when the global pandemic caused massive interruptions to supply chain networks. When efficiency was no longer possible, companies started developing more robust, more resilient, supply chain strategies to ensure long term profitability even during periods of volatility. Keep reading to find a supply chain strategy you can develop to optimize your network, benefiting both your business and your customers.
What is Supply Chain Strategy?
A network of individuals and companies create a product, ultimately delivering it to a consumer. Optimizing each step of this supply chain will help your company get your products to your customers with as little friction as possible. By developing a resilient supply chain strategy, your company can reduce costs while also staying competitive in the long-term.
Supply Chain Strategies to Consider for Your Business
Before you choose a supply chain strategy, consider your business goals. Make sure you are adopting a strategy that will maintain customer satisfaction and positively impact your business’ bottom line.
Strategically Placed Buffers
Experiencing unexpected delays? Buffers will help you absorb the impact. Here are some common buffers you can put in place in your supply chain strategy:
- Inventory Buffer: Keep extra inventory on hand. Consider whether you’ll need a few days’ worth, or weeks’ worth of inventory. Using inventory management software, like Acumatica ERP, can help you track this in real-time.
- Financial Buffer: Set aside money each month to protect against unexpected costs
- Time Buffer: Have materials arrive before demand hits
Diversification (Single-Sourcing vs. Multi-Sourcing)
Do you rely on a single source to get the products your company needs? Consider diversifying, or multisource, your supply chain network. How do you know there aren’t other suppliers who can make your product faster and at a lower cost?
Demand Forecasting
Do you pack an umbrella when there’s a 95% chance for rain? When it comes to a solid supply chain strategy, using data to forecast demand means you won’t ever come up short (or end up soaked). Ultimately it will help improve lead time, cut costs, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Standardization
Consistency is key. Investing in sales and operations planning will help build standardization with every link in the supply chain. If you’re dealing with suppliers and manufacturers all over the world, or are managing thousands of products, there are platforms that can help streamline your supply chain.
Optimize Your Strategy with Rockton Software
Efficiently Manage Pricing & Revenue with Rockton Pricing Management (RPM)
Pricing and revenue management within a supply chain strategy aims to create a balance between supply and demand while also optimizing profits. Rockton Pricing Management makes it easy to manage pricing for any number of items with ease, and it will deliver real-time, accurate pricing to your customers. RPM allows you to set up price schedules once, and our pricing tool will do all the calculations for you, automatically! Have a range of dates that need specific pricing? No problem! RPM is so flexible, it even offers date-driven pricing, allowing you to assign valid date ranges to price lists. You’ll get the right pricing at the right time, every time.
Working on Your Supply Chain Strategy?
Let us help! Reach out today for a free demo of Rockton Pricing Management!
Did you know that the cost of living is the highest it has been in 40 years? Thank you, inflation! The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS for short) reported the producer price index to have increased 0.4% in September from August, and it doesn’t look like it’s cooling down.
“Price pressures remain elevated and volatile, particularly for food and gas, given the ongoing war in Ukraine and ongoing supply chain disruptions,” Matthew Martin, a U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, told the Wall Street Journal.
What does that mean? A consumer will feel the heat in their bank account or in their wallet. A wholesaler, distributor, manufacturer, or supplier will adjust their prices in their systems. This process could take a bit… unless they have Rockton Price Management.
Back It Up – What Do Wholesale Prices Have to Do with Inflation?
Inflation starts with wholesale prices. A wholesale price is the cost businesses pay producers and manufacturers for goods, setting the stage for if the prices have risen, declined, or are stagnant. Businesses will purchase from producers and manufacturers at a lower price, then turn around and sell the goods at a higher price. So, the wholesale price is the first domino to fall. Wholesalers rely on volume to make their profit, which explains why they are commonly more than happy to provide a small mark up in price if it means they can sell more goods. Whereas businesses sell the items to pay their bills and keep their doors open.
How Do You Know the Prices are Inflated?
The PPI (an acronym for producer price index) tells us. It measures price changes before customers purchase final goods and services. In other words, it measures inflation from the viewpoint of the producers; the average selling price they receive for their output over a period. To make this measurement less complicated, BLS publishes the index every month. No calculator required. They base their findings on approximately 100,000 monthly price quotes reported voluntarily online by more than 25,000 systematically sampled producer establishments.
How to Change Wholesale Prices in Seconds
Since wholesale prices constantly change, and are increasing at rapid speed, wouldn’t it be nice to upload an entire price sheet with the current prices for the certain dates? It’s possible with Rockton Pricing Management. The most flexible, powerful, multi-platform (yes, it works with any ERP system!) pricing solution ever available can make changing wholesale prices simpler and easier. Don’t believe us? See for yourself – book a one-on-one demo. Not ready to commit? No worries, check out Rockton Pricing Management’s features here. Want to see how many pricing strategies you manage in a day? Download our free Pricing Strategies Checklist. Feel free to reach out with any questions. We’re here to help you work simpler and easier®.
Are you spending hours manually entering data? Do you flip through a dozen different platforms constantly? Are you having trouble finding what you’re looking for? If this sounds like you, an ERP system integration may be the solution for you. Don’t worry though, we’ll explain everything you need to know, from the definition to the five benefits of an ERP integration, for you decide if it’s worth the investment. (Hint: it is!)
What is an ERP System Integration?
First, let’s define an ERP (if you already know the term, this will be a quick refresher). An ERP, or enterprise resource planning, is a software used to unify and manage all major departments and daily processes within an organization. Examples of ERPs are Microsoft Dynamics and Acumatica among several others. An ERP system integration is when an ERP solution, such as Dynamics GP and Acumatica, communicates and works with other programs and software systems, like Rockton Pricing Management. Integrating ERP systems bridge all data and functions across every department in order to automate business processes and improve productivity.
Who Should Look for One (or Multiple)?
When productivity issues arise due to increased sales or decreased labor, rather than deploying costly solutions like hiring more staff or developing overly complex workflows, an ERP integration can help relieve the pressure. The key is to have a solution that fits your company’s needs best integrate seamlessly with your ERP system. For example, because Acumatica and Dynamics GP don’t necessarily have robust pricing tools, we developed Rockton Pricing Management to integrate with any ERP system to help automate and calculate complex pricing scenarios. So, if your productivity is hindered, it might be best to start looking for an ERP integration.
5 Benefits of ERP Integration
Centralized and Real-time Data
Did you know that 4% of workers reported spending 30 minutes or more switching between apps each day according to the State of Work? That can add up to more than 130 hours of time lost each year! A software that integrates with your existing ERP can help employees find the information they are looking for easier since it is in one platform. Plus, it can capture real-time data analytics and reporting, giving you the competitive edge to make confident, informed decisions in the moment, which can be really beneficial when it comes to pricing.
Efficiency through Automation
ERP integration plays a crucial part in the automation process by reducing manual and tedious work. It can save you time on simple tasks, thus, giving you more time to complete tasks that require focus. It can also eliminate the paper trail while ensuring document security.
Less Errors
One study found that manual data entry leads to one to four percent error rates. Because the automation process removes manual work, there will be fewer errors being made. Let your computer do the work for you.
Increased Productivity
In essence, your ERP software lessens the workload. With an ERP integration, your business will see a major difference in manual data entry, order process, and even order fulfillment by keeping the data flowing and having minimal touch points.
Improved Customer Experiences
An ERP systems integration allows a company clearer visibility to the needs and pain points of customers so they can improve the customer’s experience. It’s all about clarity across your business to ensure everyone has the information they need to provide a positive customer experience.
Which One?
So, you’ve checked off the boxes and you’re all onboard the integration, but which one? You’ll have to do some digging to find which software will fit your needs, but you can check out a pricing solution right now to make this difficult decision for you a little easier. Here at Rockton Software, we developed a flexible, powerful, multi-platform pricing solution that integrates into any ERP system to automate dynamic pricing, simplify price lists, track special pricing adjustments, and so much more. Take a look at Rockton Pricing Management and book a demo to see it live.
Christmas is the biggest holiday in terms of spending, which explains why retailers rely on the fourth quarter to drive their profits. According to Consumer Decisions, Americans spent over $707 billion in retail sales between November 1st and December 31st in 2021. With that being said, the holiday season is one of the most stressful times for those who have to handle retail pricing. Fear not — we have a retail pricing software that will match with your ERP system and help you get through the holiday season.
Questions to Ask Before Deciding on a Retail Pricing Software
There is countless retail pricing software out in the world, but which one will do what you want? Before you go searching the numerous pages on Google for a perfect fit, start by analyzing your current system and ask yourself these questions:
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- How often do you manually change prices?
- Do you manage hundreds to thousands of products?
- How many pricing scenarios are you matching?
- Do you manage a bunch of price lists?
- Do you set up a “Price Level” for each item or customer?
How to Tell Which is Right for You
Are you manually updating prices? That’s a telltale sign that you need a retail pricing software. So, you answered “yes” to the above questions, now what? Well, take the knowledge you received from those questions and make sure the retail pricing software you’re looking at can handle everything you do. Can it help you automate your pricing updates? Can it calculate and take care of complex and obscure pricing scenarios? How many products can the software really manage?
Manage Sales Hands-Free This Holiday Season with Rockton Pricing Management
If you are a retailer, distributor, manufacturer, wholesaler, or supplier offering holiday sales, take the guesswork out of your calculations and put the right price in front of the right customer at the right time always with Rockton Pricing Management (RPM). Here’s how RPM can help you calculate sales this holiday season:
• Automate Dynamic Pricing: You simply establish any pricing scenario one time and RPM does all the calculations and hard work for you. Automatically!
• Simplify Price Lists: Create, organize, filter and search all your price lists super-fast and in a way that makes sense.
• Date-Driven Pricing: Hello, Black Friday! Assign valid date ranges to your price lists in RPM and you can continue on with your day.
Learn more about the features of RPM here. Oh, we almost forgot, RPM works with GP and Acumatica, too.
Make Your Holiday Season Stress-Free with a Retail Pricing Software, like RPM
You’ve learned a lot about our retail pricing software, but you’re hungry for more? You could book a one-on-one demo with us to see how Rockton Pricing Management works. Another option, we have regular webinars that you can attend that focus on specific problems that Rockton Pricing Management solves. Check the schedule for the next one or watch a video. We hope you’ll take advantage of only the most flexible, powerful, multi-platform retail pricing software this holiday season.
Is it painful to set up new pricing schedules, schedule date-driven pricing, or track rebates and adjustments in Acumatica? Want to learn how to do payroll and have a comprehensive HR solution can save hours per pay period, empower employees to manage their own data, and doesn’t break the bank?
We are sharing the stage with Greenshades to show you there are pricing and payroll options for Acumatica.
Rockton will show you the ways to save money, time, and headaches when it comes to managing your pricing strategies. Greenshades is a cloud-hosted, easy-to-use payroll, payroll tax, and employee service software that can streamline your needs and make working with Acumatica even easier!
Introducing Rockton Pricing Management
Let’s Talk Pricing
When it comes to pricing there are many ways to calculate the price of your products or services. Most standard ERPs, like Acumatica, are limited in what it can offer your business when it comes to pricing. This is why we created Rockton Pricing Management (RPM). It can handle the complex calculations and scenarios that you may encounter in your business.
RPM can easily manage things like multiple price lists, royalties, rebates, customers, anything that can get cumbersome when you’re trying to enter them into your system.
Save Time with Automation
With RPM you do not have to set up automation multiple times. Versatility is built into RPM – Price Filters and Price Calculations can be used more than once. Perform imports to easily add or edit data. You’ll save time with data entry or setting up next year’s prices. Plus, you’ll eliminate human error with automation.
Simplify Complex Scenarios
Complex scenarios have you scratching your head? With RPM you can automate them!
Here’s an example: Say you are a waste management company who has percentages of different chemicals and waste products that make up a gallon. We can create percentages and charge different percentages for liquids versus solids, and the combination of the two.
Don’t be afraid to get granular in your pricing calculations – Rockton Pricing Management (RPM) is up to the challenge!
RPM also a multi-currency pricing platform. So, whether you’re shipping to Canada, The Caribbean, or Europe, it can account for different currencies and apply your unique pricing scenarios in those cases.
A Giant Calculator
RPM is an independent pricing engine that sits outside of your ERP. It is SQL based and lives in its own environment. Think of RPM as a giant calculator.
Example One: Select a customer, their shipping address, and the items that are being purchased. RPM will take this combination, make a calculation, and push the price back to Acumatica. Need to make an adjustment? No problem.
You can pick a customer just like you normally would, your shipping address, and your items. That 
combination is then automatically calculated in Rockton Pricing Management and a price then pushes back over for you in Acumatica. We’re taking the data, doing the calculations, and pushing a price back. In addition to that, we are able to push back adjustments.
Example Two: If you are trying to track an advertising fee, a customer incentive, a rebate to a vendor, or a commission, all of that can be done in a single line item. Your salesperson won’t need to make any extra journal entries – the adjustment is automatically pushed through to Acumatica.
Say Hello to Greenshades
Let’s Talk How to do Payroll Efficiently
Payroll is one of the most critical, yet most overlooked, aspects of running an efficient and effective business. Flawlessly execute payroll week after week, and it goes unnoticed. However, if you make a small error, the response is immediate and vocal. Add increasingly complex regulatory pressures – particularly for multi-state employers – and the job of the payroll professional is more challenging than ever. You need a partner who can simplify the complex and transform an obstacle into an opportunity.
Greenshades empowers you to keep payroll in-house, offering greater control, lower costs, and all the benefits of a cloud-based platform, including constant updates and enhancements.
They can simplify the payroll process for users, help maintain compliance, encourage employee self-service, and really get folks excited about learning how to do payroll and the HR possibilities.
Improve Visibility
- “At-a-Glance” Payroll Dashboard
- Simplified Views of Historical
- Pay Runs with One-Click Access
- Front Page Awareness of Future Pay Runs
Comply with Confidence
- Automated assignment of Federal, State, Local Taxes
- Management of Multiple Jurisdictions and Reciprocity
- Execution of Flawless Returns
- Proactive Notifications of Filing and Payment Deadlines
Empower your Employees
- Powerful Employee Portal Component
- Access Pay Stubs, PTO Balances, Benefits Programs, Notes, Notifications
- Self-Service of Profile Information, Direct Deposit, Benefits
- Advanced Time Entry and Attendance
Move From “To-Do” to “All Done”
- Year-end processing is historically a stressful time
- Simple step-by-step process
- Turnkey year-end form processing services
Greenfire combines the strengths of an in-house payroll solution and a cloud-based platform. So, you can maintain a higher level of control, a higher level of flexibility at a lower cost, and an outsource solution while still benefiting from a platform that can be managed anywhere. This also comes with the automatic updates and enhancements that you expect with a hosted solution.
Payroll is one of the core critical processes. A business needs to be both accurate and efficient. It also must be compliant as well. Unfortunately, it has become more difficult to hit all those targets. This is one of the drivers for a payroll and HR platform as robust as Greenshades.
Your Payroll and Pricing Solution
Companies are increasingly assessing their needs as they consider making that move to a cloud-based platform like Acumatica. Rockton and Greenshades can help support your current pricing and payroll challenges.
We understand that every company is unique in their processes and methods. We look forward to helping solve your unique scenarios in pricing, payroll, or the HR process.
Check out the Pricing & Payroll webinar recording to learn more and see these solutions in action!
To be a successful company, two key metrics must be tracked: revenue and profit. These numbers reveal the financial strength of a company, and what the future might look like. Although many use these two terms interchangeably, they are two vastly different concepts. Let’s take a look at revenue vs. profit to distinguish their differences, and learn how Rockton Pricing Management can help those numbers climb higher.
Revenue
Revenue is commonly referred to as the top line. When you look at an income statement the revenue number sits at the top. Revenue is the income a company generates before subtracting any expenses.
Profit
Profit is commonly referred to as the bottom line, or net income. It is often categorized into two sub-classes to help analyze how a company is performing:
- Gross Profit: Revenue minus cost of goods sold. This amount factors the cost of labor and materials used to create a company’s products.
- Operating Profit: Gross Profit minus fixed and variable expenses like rent, utilities, or payroll.
Revenue vs. Profit: The Key Difference
When someone is inquiring about a company’s profit, they are typically referring to net income. While it is important to know what a company makes during its day to day operations (revenue), a more accurate representation of how a company is doing is to look at its net income as it accounts for all expenses.
*Fun Fact: A company can generate revenue, but have a net loss at the same time.
Increase Profits with Rockton Pricing Management
Do you want to maximize your company’s profits? Rockton Pricing Management is the most flexible, powerful, multi-platform pricing solution available. It makes your work simpler and easier® by streamlining the pricing processes of your company. With sophisticated features like automation of complex and obscure pricing scenarios, date-driven pricing, and simplified price lists, your company’s efficiency will dramatically increase – reducing the cost of resources – and resulting in increased profits!
Want to improve your bottom line?
Schedule a free demo to learn more.
Many things have changed over the years. The cell phone has evolved from a singular calling device to a do pretty much everything but walk your dog device. Coffee has gone from the coffee pot to the elaborate coffee run – non-fat, extra whip, light ice, mocha frappucino anyone?
And just like those everyday essentials, ERP systems and software solutions have also made strategic evolutions as well. When’s the last time you used a CD to install software?
The same holds true for pricing and revenue management. Once upon a time, we acquired a product called Omni Price, which plenty of our customers still use today. You can set up pricing contracts by customer, item, date, or unique criteria, and use filters to simplify lookups, updates, tracking, and exports but it was just for one ERP, Dynamics GP.
It’s such a great tool so why not spread the love to other ERP systems and provide more robust functionality? So, we took on the challenge of pricing and revenue management and that’s when we developed Rockton Pricing Management.
It works with:
- Dynamics GP
- Acumatica
A More Robust Pricing and Revenue Management Solution
One of the main reasons for this new product was customer feedback and feature requests. We’re all about helping the customer and making their work simpler & easier®. That has been our motto for over 20 years.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t create many of the requests we had received within the existing code of the product. We thought, why not design something totally new to meet the needs of our customers? So, we did.
If you haven’t already, you should check out the blogs in our pricing strategies series. You’ll learn about all the advantages and challenges pricing can have on your business.
Research, automation, and testing are important parts of an effective pricing strategy.
What Industries Would Benefit from a Pricing and Revenue Management Solution?
When it comes to pricing, every industry and business is different. However, we have found that there are some key industries that truly do benefit from it:
- Distributors (food is a big one)
- Manufacturers
- Wholesalers
Many ERPs have some type of pricing functionality built-in, and that may be all you need. But if you are in one of the above-mentioned industries, have complex pricing scenarios, many customers and/or items, or offer a wide variety of price adjustments, then you may just need something more robust.
Introducing Rockton Pricing Management
Rockton Pricing Management (RPM) is an all-in-one, flexible, multi-platform, multi-currency pricing solution. It’s the “set it and forget it” pricing solution. You simply establish any pricing scenario one time and RPM does all the calculations and hard work behind the scenes.
Key Benefits:
- Automate dynamic pricing: Set it and forget it! You simply establish any pricing scenario one time and RPM does all the calculations and hard work behind the scenes, automatically!
- Simplify your price lists: Create, organize, filter, and search all your price lists super-fast, and in a way that makes sense.
- Create date-driven pricing: Assign valid date ranges to your price lists and you will automatically get the right one—on your schedule.
- Take control of rebates, commissions, restock fees, offsets and more: Track special pricing adjustments and make sure everyone gets paid. Increase overall revenue by protecting your desired margins.
- Sync with Dynamics GP or Acumatica: Rockton provides our SQL-based and web service APIs for RPM so you can connect it to your ERP system.
- Save time and money: Create more efficient, accurate systems all in one place so you can focus on growing your business instead.
Pricing and revenue management is an ongoing process of developing, executing, and measuring prices for your customers. When you sell things, you need a strategy.
Whatever the pricing scenario is, we will try to help and show you an easier way. We are ready to take on the challenge. Email us anytime to schedule a personalized demo.
Raise your hand if you are in manual mode when it comes to making price adjustments or getting shipments out the door? Supercharge your pricing and shipping in Dynamics GP and Acumatica. When you combine Rockton Pricing Management (RPM) with StarShip, you get the right price for the right customer and the items out the door quickly and accurately.
Domestic or International – together, we have you covered!
With Rockton Pricing Management you can:
- Automate even the most complex and obscure pricing scenarios and calculations
- Enable date-driven pricing with all historical pricing tracked and archived
- Always get the right pricing for the right customer at the right time
- Easily set up and track all pricing changes, even daily
With StarShip from V-Technologies you can:
- Save on shipping costs with best way rules and discounted USPS rates
- Shave time off your small package and LTL shipment processing
- Simplify drop shipping, third party, and international
- Support complex shipping requirements such as hazmat
How Flexible is Rockton Pricing Management?
RPM is super flexible. It can work with multiple companies, multi-currencies, and all your items. It can also automate complex pricing scenarios. Once you’ve entered some criteria into RPM, those prices will automatically pull into Dynamics GP or Acumatica for your sales transactions.
Need Date-Driven Pricing? No Problem.
If you want to offer a Memorial Day Sale, you might need to make sure you’re only giving that special pricing from Friday to Monday. We can manage all of that behind the scenes with RPM’s date-driven options. This scenario will also be archived. So, if you want to know what you charged five years ago for your Memorial Day Sale, you’ll be able to look back at the history.
Make Changes as Often as You Like
Some of our customers working within the commodities markets have pricing that may fluctuate daily. RPM makes it easy for you to be able to change prices or change calculations-based costs, as often as you need to.
Sits Outside of Your ERP system
Rockton Pricing Management sits outside Dynamics GP or Acumatica. This allows you to specify which users can administrate the product. Once RPM is connected to Dynamics GP or Acumatica, it can process calculations based on your rules, and then push that price back over into the sales transaction entry window.
This includes:
- Any price adjustment
- Rebates
- Discounts
- Commissions
Want to price based on location? We can do that too.
Depending on how you are shipping your product, rising gas prices could potentially impact your shipping costs. If you want to recover some of that additional cost, we can adjust the price of an individual line item to increase based on where you are sending it.
Speaking of Shipping… Let’s Dive into StarShip
StarShip offers integrations to over 12 different e-commerce platforms. This includes shopping carts and marketplaces. So, we’re able to combine all your different order points into one seamless integration when you’re shipping for both parcel and LTL carriers.
StarShip also has plugins available for different EDI solutions as well. Regardless of where your orders are coming from, StarShip can bring together different transactions into one integration point and one platform, making it easy to manage various carriers.
Shipping in Dynamics GP and Acumatica Simplified
With StarShip you can quickly and automatically ship small packages and pallets regardless of which mode of transport you’re using. Simplify the process of automating drops shipments, hazardous materials, international shipments, and EDI.
V-Technologies’ niche is integration – providing the link between your ERP, accounting and business applications, and the warehouse resulting in faster, more efficient, shipment processing as well as front office visibility.
Features & Functionality
If you’re fulfilling shipments on behalf of another customer or different business units, you can set up multiple profiles. Each profile will have their own drop ship IDs with a return address and the company logo. All of these attributes will automatically populate on all the paperwork.
Save on Shipping
If you want to do a rate comparison, StarShip can look at all the carriers that are available to ship to your destination. You can also take that decision out of the hands of the shipper and let the system do the thinking for you.
With Both RPM + StarShip You Can:
- Create and maintain customer loyalty
- Access historical data
- Automate pricing and shipping in Dynamics GP and Acumatica
Next Steps:
- Check out the webinar recording and see both solutions in action
- Contact us to learn more about Rockton Pricing Management
- Reach out to V-Technologies to learn more about StarShip
Have you heard the term dynamic pricing being thrown about? Not sure what it means? Or maybe you’ve implemented this strategy, but you’re losing money and customers? Fear not, that’s why we’re here. Dive into what it is, the benefits, the kinks, and a solution to help you manage pricing simpler and easier.
So, What is Dynamic Pricing?
Simply put, dynamic pricing is a pricing strategy that uses real-time data, like supply and demand, to calculate product price adjustments. Think about how gas changes daily depending on if customers are travelling more one weekend than another and where the oil is being supplied from. Commonly used in e-commerce and online stores, dynamic pricing enables anyone, even more specialized fields such as waste management and food distribution, to maximize their profits by making tweaks to their prices as and when it’s necessary.
How to Use It for Your Benefit
The real power of dynamic pricing lies in the fact that the process involves much more than simply looking at prices at face value. It’s a pricing strategy tailored to the bigger picture. Factors such as order cancellations and competitor rates play a crucial part in determining the best strategy for your business, ranging from complex real-time models to straight-forward rules-based pricing. Price adjustments can be based on customer segments, capacity, or even the specific qualities of your product or service. In addition to giving you more control over the profit margin associated with each customer segment and product, dynamic pricing is a great way to grow the overall profits your business makes. You just need to set up an effective pricing strategy that resonates with customers!
The Quirks
Dynamic pricing often requires a lot of time and resources, and it could even cause significant losses if set up incorrectly. If there is no price limit on your products, it is possible to set your prices too low where you could actually lose money. On the other hand, if you set your prices too high because you’re in an all-out price war with your competitor, you could potentially lose customers. Speaking of your competition, getting ahead is a sure-fire way to success, and with the right setup, dynamic pricing can be just the thing you need to stand out. Time is of the essence when it comes to dynamic pricing – the more quickly and efficiently you implement it, the sooner you’ll start seeing the profits roll in, and negate the risks.
Setting Up Dynamic Pricing the Right Way
Dynamic pricing, with the correct set up, can help maximize your profits while keeping your customers loyal. Dealing with changes in the matter minutes is just unheard of. That’s why we recommend combining this innovative pricing strategy with a dynamic pricing automation tool, like Rockton Pricing Management. Together, they will empower you to establish core pricing scenarios and let the system do the rest of the work in the background. To learn more about what Rockton Pricing Management has to offer, schedule a demo to see it action or download our pricing strategies checklist to help you track the strategies you have now, prioritize new strategies, and share with your team for execution.
Find out more about our dynamic price management tool
- Schedule a demo and see it in action, contact sales@rocktonsoftware to get started
- Download our pricing strategies checklist
The main aim of pricing and revenue management in a food distribution supply chain is to create a balance between supply and demand, while simultaneously optimizing profits. Traditionally, businesses would tweak the availability of their assets. However, in this day and age, revenue management has adopted a different approach. One that focuses more on pricing as the main tool for leveling out supply and demand.
As a more universal approach, this type of pricing and revenue management in a supply chain has proven to boost profits more efficiently. It’s a winning strategy for companies across a number of industries, including manufacturing, food distribution, and wholesale. Let’s dive into how and why you would adopt this approach for your own company using food distributors as an example.
Balancing supply and demand
Individually, both supply and demand can be adjusted using several different strategies. For supply, this could include changes to your inventory, while demand is usually generated by marketing efforts.
Pricing management is the process that ties supply and demand together by focusing on strategies designed to strike a balance between the two. Working with limited supply chain assets, both in terms of capacity and inventory, pricing and revenue management in a supply chain use pricing as the key tool for optimizing profits.
For food distributors, margins are extraordinarily tight, making accurate pricing crucial to making any money at all. Food distributors often deal with weekly (sometimes daily) price fluctuations. Rockton Pricing Management combined with Acumatica Cloud ERP makes it easy to manage pricing for any number of items with ease, and it will deliver real-time, accurate pricing to your customers.
Increasing the profit margin
There are several revenue management strategies to choose from, depending on your industry and business model. You can focus on the timing of your pricing, targeting different customer segments or adjust rates based on product or service availability.
Each of these approaches to pricing and revenue management in a supply chain can significantly increase profits. Which one you choose is largely based on the nature of your offering. Perhaps your value proposition is different for different audiences. Or maybe the demand for your products or services spikes during certain seasons. You could even adjust pricing based on individual versus wholesale purchases.
Rockton Pricing Management combined with Acumatica Cloud ERP allows for automated dynamic pricing. Instead of setting up a “price class” for each item or customer, food distributors can set up a price schedules one time and let the pricing tool do all the calculations for them automatically.
Seasonal pricing and revenue management in a food distribution supply chain
Manufacturers and food distribution companies selling season-specific products rely on revenue management tactics to balance out their supply and demand between peak times and the rest of the year. One winning pricing strategy for optimizing profits in this area is fluctuating between higher prices when demand spikes, and reduced prices in off-peak periods. This way you’re encouraging customers to shift their demand, which in turn allows you to maintain the efficiency of your supply chain.
By making this shift as well you are not stuck with excess inventory at certain times of the year and you can maintain consistent cash flow for these items.
Acumatica Cloud ERP with Rockton Pricing Management has a solution when considering food distributors. With date-driven pricing, you can assign valid date ranges to price lists. This way you will always get the right pricing at the right time, any day and every day.
Revenue management of bulk and spot customers
Most products can be offered individually at a higher price (spot sales) or in bulk at a lower rate. Effective pricing and revenue management in a supply chain strikes the right balance between the two, ensuring wholesale companies are bringing in optimal profit from their offering.
One way to achieve this is through in-depth customer segmentation. Acumatica Cloud ERP includes a built-in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which enables a full view of customers and vendors. Critical data can be gathered and analyzed with this tool, creating more defined customer segments. With specific segmented parameters, a business can test pricing options, focus on the most profitable customers, or upsell and cross-sell other products or services.
Strategic inventory management is also an important aspect of revenue management. Food distributors commonly deal with perishable goods, and will appreciate Acumatica Cloud ERP’s real-time inventory management.
Not sure where to start?
It does take an all-hands-on-deck approach. All teams need to be on the same page to be able to execute an effective pricing and revenue management strategy.
- Download our pricing strategies checklist
- Take a closer look at Rockton Pricing Management
- Schedule some time to chat with us to learn more about our pricing solution