Mastering the Complexity of B2B Pricing with Spryker
Spryker’s B2B Pricing Capabilities and how Customers Leverage Them SuccessfullyThe impact and complexity of digital B2B pricing
Global rivalry and emerging new competitors have made B2B pricing a critical success factor. What was formerly negotiated in detail in oneon-one meetings must now be made available in seconds in order not to lose customers. Technologies make it possible for different customer profiles to receive a tailored price and a personalized user experience. Your prices can be influenced by many things, such as the cost of a product, order volume, currencies, logistics and customs, material prices, customer loyalty, relevance of the customer to your portfolio, competitive pressure, inventory and more. Market researches already have proven that a sophisticated pricing strategy is way more than a necessity. A curated study by PWC1 stated that 40% of the companies adjust their prices at least on a weekly basis and 20% are already using automation and system integrations to offer individual pricing in real-time.
Accordingly, it is critical to approach the technologies you need with the right requirements to be adequately prepared for the future. In this document, we’ll briefly share which functionalities you should look for and share a few examples of successful personalized pricing strategies from our own customers.
How technology can help you develop a customized pricing strategy
Technology enables you to incorporate your pricing strategy into your commerce infrastructure effortlessly while saving valuable time. A powerful commerce platform such as Spryker Cloud Commerce OS supports multiple currencies and automatically detects the currency based on a customer’s preference. Prices, as well as payment and shipping costs, are converted accordingly. It will allow you to manage gross and net price per product based on several other attributes and gives you full control of price visibility to new customers. Offering volume discounts to encourage customers to purchase products in larger quantities should be on your list of requirements as well. The same goes for different measurements that are used in various regions like weight or length.
There are a few specifications that you should watch out for once you’re looking for a proper commerce platform to kick-off your digital commerce strategy
Automated Price-Currency Detection
- Detecting the specific currency and associated price might sound obvious, yet it does a pretty good job in providing a relevant user experience to your customers. Any interaction that does not serve your customers should be skipped. So, if your customer never has to worry about their preferred currency in your shop, due to detection, you are in a better position.
Tax-Modalities and Net & Gross Pricing
- Globalization offers you a lot of great opportunities to enter new markets. However, you have to be aligned with local specifications such as taxes and net and gross pricing. Combining Spryker Commerce Cloud OS with your CRM and ERP will grant you the flexibility to welcome any customer in your shop while offering the accurate price.
Scheduled Pricing and Promotions
- Scheduling prices and setting up promotions in advance is a powerful functionality that will improve your sales and marketing strategy. A dedicated shop platform lets you set up campaigns within a specific time period and under predefined specifications with some simple clicks or with a helpful import from your existing planning software.
Volume Pricing
- The order basket might vary depending on product volumes, especially in B2B. Encouraging your customers to purchase larger quantities of the same item to get discounts is a great way of increasing your commerce revenue. Setting up price brackets in Spryker Commerce Cloud OS will help them find the best price based on their current demand.
Custom-Built Pricing
- In B2B business, offering specific prices to customers based on different attributes or contractual agreements has become the norm. Ensuring that the user gets the corresponding price in the front-end of your shop is crucial. That does not apply to the product page as the product search or previous orders are important touchpoints on your customer’s journey.
Real life examples from Spryker customers reaching new heights with dedicated pricing capabilities
Spryker solutions have empowered 150+ companies to manage transactions in more than 200 countries worldwide, giving us access to extremely relevant market insights and trends. We’ve analyzed our customers that strongly rely on our pricing functionalities and determined a close correlation between highly customized pricing and business growth, particularly in the B2B market.
In this section we want to quickly highlight a few examples, as the right solutions for B2B pricing might be more important to your business than you think
METRO is a leading international specialist in the wholesale and food trading industry. METRO primarily serves the following three groups of customers: the so-called HoReCa-customers (hotels, restaurants & catering), the SCOs (small companies and offices), and traders (small, independent retailers, mainly based in Eastern Europe for METRO). In order to optimize its customer experience and promote customer loyalty, its digital services needed to be adaptable for each group of customers, their location, and individual needs. Thanks to dedicated pricing capabilities in the Spryker Cloud Commerce OS, METRO is able to offer mass-customized prices to each of its customers taking into account several factors such as quantity, promotions and customer-lifetime value. Ultimately, Spryker Cloud Commerce OS enabled METRO to automate parts of their processes across 36 countries, saving time and reducing the risk of errors.
Jungheinrich AG, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, is a leading global solution provider for everything related to intralogistics. Jungheinrich designs comprehensive logistics solutions ranging from conventional material-handling equipment to fully automated logistics systems with intelligent integrated software. Jungheinrich shifted their existing sales strategy from an account management driven perspective towards digital touch points. Transforming individual price negotiations into digital sales was a challenge. Yet, their existing ERP integrates into the shop system based on Spryker, which allows individual prices to be displayed for each customer and assigned units. Finally, thanks to Spryker Cloud Commerce OS, Jungheinrich is now able to offer its customers individual prices for more than 800,000 products in over 40 countries.
Certeo is an online supplier for professional and private customers in the field of business equipment and is part of the TAKKT Group. The Certeo product range includes approximately 60,000 products from the business and office equipment sector. Within the scope of an MVP, Certeo migrated their shopsystem to Spryker with a clear focus on internationalization and scalability. That’s why they heavily rely on currency detection, multi-currency pricing, gross and net pricing and multi-store management to drive a seamless user experience across their shops. Along with Spryker, the question about entering new markets with different currencies can be answered with a clear “yes” for Certeo.
Hilti Group develops, produces, and sells products for the construction industry. The product and service range is mainly for professionals and is therefore aimed at the B2B market. Consistent customer orientation, innovation, moving fast, and constant internationalization are the keys to Hilti’s success. Today Hilti Group counts more than 250 thousand customer touchpoints while offering the highest level of customization in terms of individual pricing and product services for each customer. In summary, Hilti closes the gap between digital sales and local sales teams through a consistent pricing strategy
Take-aways for mastering B2B pricing
A new generation of B2B buyers demand to shop for industrial components, construction materials and configured products the same way they shop for groceries on Amazon at home. The pricing implications of this shift are immense. Despite the inherent complexity of B2B pricing, customers expect that prices are fair and accurately reflect market conditions in a way that’s personalized to them, even for large quotes. It’s clear that a dedicated pricing strategy in B2B makes a crucial difference. In B2B, the price illustrates the existing customer relationship. Depending on where the customer is on their buyer’s journey, different prices are relevant. Therefore, you should rely on technology that allows you to link existing customer data with your products in order to roll out a personalized pricing strategy.
Spryker Cloud Commerce OS was built from the ground up to enable sophisticated, transactional business models to achieve their business goals. Based on Composable Commerce, Spryker provides enterprises with a set of predefined Packaged Business Capabilities that support business strategy while not compromising on velocity or scalability. The example of our customers such as Jungheinrich, METRO and others shows that successful companies digitized their existing commerce strategies thanks to Spryker and put a strong focus on personalized digital pricing to stay ahead of the competition.
If you want to learn more about how your business could benefit from Spryker’s pricing capabilities and B2B Suite, don’t wait any longer and request your demo today.
About Spryker
Spryker is the leading global composable commerce platform for enterprises with sophisticated business models to enable growth, innovation, and differentiation. Designed specifically for sophisticated transactional businesses, Spryker’s easy-to-use, headless, API-first model offers a best-of-breed approach that provides businesses the flexibility to adapt, scale, and quickly go to market while facilitating faster time-to-value throughout their digital transformation journey. As a global platform leader for B2B and B2C Enterprise Marketplaces, IoT Commerce, and Unified Commerce, Spryker has empowered 150+ global enterprise customers worldwide and is trusted by brands such as ALDI, Siemens, ZF Friedrichshafen, and Ricoh. Spryker is a privately held technology company headquartered in Berlin and New York backed by world class investors such as TCV, One Peak, Project A, Cherry Ventures, and Maverick Capital. Learn more at spryker.com.