What the Spanish Armada Teaches Us About Pricing Software
Posted by Colin Carroll on Mon, Nov 29, 2010 @ 04:17 PM
If history can teach us anything, it is that it repeats itself. In fact, businesses today can learn the most valuable lessons in the most unexpected places. Recently, I wrote an article for the Professional Pricing Society comparing the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the British with investing in pricing software. At first glance it appears I’m comparing apples and oranges,
but there are very interesting similarities.
Spreadsheet View of Artillery
The Spanish Armada had a spreadsheet view of artillery, while the British had an integrated commercial pricing solution view. Similar to the Spanish appearing formidable
on paper, pricing organizations leveraging Excel spreadsheets as their primary tools appear to have superior flexibility – but just as the British discovered, this does not actually translate into superior execution and ultimately, responsiveness.
Ad-Hoc Approach to Artillery
The Spanish Armada had a very ad-hoc approach to artillery while the British had a more integrated view of it. The British recognized value in standardization and were even willing to make sacrifices to support it, including not utilizing captured or acquired artillery on military vessels. In a similar way, many companies that select commercial pricing solutions see the value of having one integrated source of truth in pricing across pricing analytics, price optimization, and deal execution.
In today’s dynamic business environment, companies that continue to manage pricing via disparate excel spreadsheets will only continue to limp along in terms of pricing capabilities and responsiveness to the marketplace.
Only the visionary leaders who see the value in adopting an integrated approach and solution to pricing will be able to realize the organization’s greatest untapped profit opportunity in pricing.
To read the complete article, please click here. For other valuable B2B pricing related resources, please click here.
Contributed by Adam Corsi, Business Consultant, Vendavo. Adam can be reached at acorsi@vendavo.com.