Custom Pricing Software
Features, Integrations, Success Factors, ROI
ScienceSoft applies 17 years of experience in building financial software and practical knowledge of 30+ industries to help businesses implement effective pricing solutions.
Pricing Software in a Nutshell
Pricing software automates price calculation and updating across selling channels, ensures price performance visibility, streamlines price segmentation and discount management, and enables analytics-based price optimization for maximized profitability.
Custom pricing software can effectively handle complex and unique pricing processes and is especially helpful for manufacturing enterprises with a wide and varied product portfolio, large omnichannel retailers, and companies operating under a dynamic pricing model.
Main use cases
- Calculating prices for new products and optimizing prices of existing products. The solution is used by the pricing team or other employees responsible for pricing management.
- Calculating optimal customer-specific prices under individual agreements. The solution is used by sales reps involved in negotiated selling.
- Calculating optimal prices for different customer segments and optimal discount offerings for promo campaigns. The solution is used by marketing specialists.
Integrations
ERP, CRM, an ecommerce platform, stock control software, and more.
Implementation time
6–10 months for a custom pricing solution.
Development costs
$150,000–$400,000+, depending on the solution complexity. Use our free calculator to estimate the cost for your case.
Annual ROI
Up to 900%+.
Pricing Software: Key Features
Each pricing management system ScienceSoft creates has unique functionality to serve customer-specific needs. Below we share a sample feature set that forms the core of a pricing solution.
Pricing strategy planning
- Customer demand analysis and forecasting.
- Sales margin analysis and forecasting.
- Analysis of competitors’ prices.
- Pricing strategy scenario modeling and profitability analysis of various strategies.
- AI recommendations on an optimal pricing strategy (e.g., cost-plus pricing, value-based pricing, penetration pricing, competitive pricing).
Initial price calculation
- Automated price calculation for new products based on a user-defined pricing strategy.
- AI-powered recommendations on an optimal markup for new products.
- Calculating prices for custom products upon customer requests based on the user-defined parameters.
- Automated multi-department price approval workflow.
Price segmentation
- Support of price segmentation rules based on:
- A product’s functionality scope, specific attributes, additional services offering (e.g., charging lower prices for products with simple packaging or non-refundable purchases).
- Analysis of price elasticity for each customer segment (e.g., offering lower prices for new customers, customers purchasing online or choosing self-pickup, customers from particular regions).
- Support of custom price segmentation rules.
Price optimization
- AI-powered analysis to identify the impact of various pricing scenarios on product profitability and highlight products that require price optimization.
- Calculating optimal product price (by customer segment, region, season, etc.) based on:
- AI-enabled profitability recommendations.
- User-defined price optimization rules (e.g., keeping prices or profit levels within specified thresholds).
- Automated price updating across multiple selling platforms (ecommerce websites, POS systems, customer portals, third-party marketplaces, etc.).
Profitability monitoring
- Configurable profitability targets (by product, customer segment, selling channel, region, promo campaign, deal, etc.).
- Drill-down dashboards for real-time profitability monitoring against the pre-set targets.
Negotiated pricing management
- AI-powered recommendations on optimal customer-specific prices based on the analysis of order volume, payment terms, customer value, impact of various prices on a deal’s profitability, etc.
- Automated multi-department approval workflow for individual prices.
Price list management
- Rule-based price list creation.
- Customizable price list templates for particular product segments, regions, customers, sales channels, etc.
- Automated conversion of the price list currency to the customer’s preferred currency.
- Automated price list updates triggered by price changes or regional price differences.
- Alerts to sales reps on price list changes.
Promotional pricing management
- AI-powered profitability analysis to identify optimal discount amounts (by product or product segment, channel, region, etc.).
- Automated price recalculation based on the applied discounts and price updating across user-defined selling channels.
- Configurable price endings by region or customer segment.
Dynamic pricing management
- Real-time monitoring of competitors’ prices and stock availability across relevant public sources (third-party marketplaces, standalone websites, etc.).
- Interactive dashboards enabling side-by-side price comparison to competitors’ prices.
- AI-enabled real-time calculation of optimal prices based on available inventory, customer demand, current competitors’ prices and inventory availability, geographical priorities, and other factors.
- User-defined triggers for price recalculation, e.g., particular schedules or events, such as user traffic increase (for ecommerce), increase in available capacity (for tourism and hospitality), demand spikes, competitors’ price changes, etc.
- Real-time price updating across multiple selling channels.
Key Integrations for Pricing Software
ScienceSoft recommends that pricing software should integrate with products and services data sources and selling channels to ensure accurate price calculation and timely price updates across relevant systems. Essential integrations include:
Pricing software + ERP
- For data-driven price calculation for new or custom products and services.
- For facilitated price segmentation for products and services.
- For accurate financial planning.
Pricing software + CRM
- For data-driven analysis of customers’ purchasing behavior and accurate price adjustment for different customer segments, customer demand forecasting, profitability analysis.
- To share up-to-date pricing data with sales reps and enable accurate quote creation.
Pricing software + selling channels
(e.g., an ecommerce platform, a customer portal, a third-party marketplace, POS software)
- To provide customers with up-to-date prices.
- For real-time profitability monitoring against the pre-set targets, analysis of price elasticity and preferred buying channels across various customer segments.
Pricing software + stock control system
- For data-driven price optimization, planning of discount offerings based on stock availability.
Alternatively to a stock control system, pricing software can integrate with industry-specific capacity control software, e.g., a hotel management system or an airline reservation system.
Success Factors for Pricing Software
Relying on 17 years of experience in financial software development, ScienceSoft’s consultants have defined important factors that help maximize the value and cost-efficiency of a pricing solution.
A large degree of automation
To release the pricing team from time-consuming manual tasks, such as creating segmented price lists, recalculating and updating prices across multiple selling channels, and more.
Pricing optimization capabilities
To provide AI-powered recommendations on optimal prices and discounts for particular products, customer segments, selling channels, regions based on the comprehensive analysis of sales data, customer purchasing behavior and competitors’ prices.
Configurable pricing rules
To easily adjust price segmentation rules, price optimization rules and triggers for price updating across selling channels to the company’s current pricing strategy.
Pricing data security
To ensure the protection of sensitive pricing data by applying permission-based access control, multi-layer encryption, fraud detection algorithms, etc.
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Expert advice from Vadim Belski, ScienceSoft’s Head of Web Development: Pricing software development should cover the creation of easy-to-use APIs to enable smooth integration of the pricing solution with the company’s existing business-critical systems. |
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Pricing Software Development Costs
The cost of pricing software development varies greatly depending on:
- The number and complexity of a solution’s functional modules (the solution can provide end-to-end pricing optimization capabilities or targeted functionality for promotional pricing optimization only).
- The degree of automation (implementation of AI-enabled features).
- The volume and complexity of data to migrate from spreadsheets and/or existing pricing software.
- The number and complexity of integrations (with ERP, CRM, a stock control system, etc.).
Based on ScienceSoft's experience, developing custom pricing software of average complexity may cost around $150,000–$300,000. The cost to build a complex pricing optimization system for a large enterprise starts from $400,000.
Want to know the cost of your custom pricing solution?
Benefits of Pricing Software
With pricing software, large businesses can reach 900%+ annual ROI.
Off-the-Shelf Pricing Software ScienceSoft Recommends
PROS Smart Price Optimization and Management
Best for: dynamic pricing and omnichannel selling
Key strengths
- Real-time price recalculation based on AI-powered analysis of competitors’ prices, stock availability, customer demand, and more.
- Automated price updates across multiple selling channels.
FEATURES
- Configurable price segmentation rules.
- Scenario modeling to analyze price impact on demand, revenue, sales margin.
- Prioritization of price optimization opportunities based on projected sales profitability.
- User-defined price thresholds and exception handling rules.
- Customizable dashboards for real-time profitability tracking.
- Support for multi-currency price lists.
- Role-based access control.
Pricing
$6,250+/month for a basic plan, $14,000+/month for an advanced version.
Pricefx
Best for: discount management and optimization
Key strengths
- Modeling various types of discounts to forecast their impact on the sales margin.
- AI-powered discount optimization (by customer, product, channel, region, etc.).
- Profitability analysis to assess effectiveness of segment-specific discounts and promo campaigns.
FEATURES
- Rule-based price segmentation for user-defined customer segments.
- User-defined rules to set various types of discounts (e.g., volume discount, advance payment discount).
- Configurable triggers for automated discount price recalculation (cost changes, competitors’ activities, etc.).
- Automated price change approval workflow.
- Automated price list updates based on the applied discounts.
- Analytics-based recommendations on optimal deal-specific prices.
Pricing
Upon request to a vendor
Zilliant Price IQ
Best for: segmented pricing optimization for B2B companies
Key strengths
- Analytics-driven price segmentation.
- Price optimization based on AI-powered analysis of price elasticity for each customer segment, historical demand data, competitors’ pricing strategies, inventory availability, profitability targets, and more.
- Built-in BI tool for advanced visualization of pricing analytics.
FEATURES
- Modeling various pricing strategies for new and custom products.
- Automated calculation of segmented, negotiated, customer-specific prices.
- Profitability analysis and forecasting.
- User-defined price optimization rules (e.g., ensuring minimal profitability or price changing for a limited amount).
- Robust API enabling easy app connection to business-critical systems (ERP, CRM, ecommerce platform, etc.) for real-time pricing data sync.
Pricing
Upon request to a vendor
When to Opt for Custom Pricing Software
ScienceSoft recommends building custom pricing management software in the following cases:
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You need pricing software providing specific features, for example:
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You need flexible price optimization software, which is easy to evolve with new functional modules, for example, AI-powered pricing analytics. |
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You want to avoid costly, effort-consuming integration of pricing software with your existing solutions, including legacy tools. |
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Implementation of Pricing Software with ScienceSoft
In financial software development since 2007, ScienceSoft helps companies build reliable pricing software.
Pricing software consulting
- Analysis of your pricing needs.
- Assessment of the existing pricing processes, tools and their integration points.
- Suggesting optimal pricing software features, solution architecture and tech stack.
- Preparing an integration plan with ERP, CRM, stock control software, selling platforms, etc.
- Implementation cost & time estimates, expected ROI calculation.
Pricing software implementation
- Pricing needs analysis.
- Pricing solution conceptualization.
- Architecture design of a pricing solution.
- Development of pricing software.
- Integrating the solution with the required systems.
- Quality assurance.
- User training.
- Continuous support and evolution (if required).
About ScienceSoft
ScienceSoft is a global IT consulting and software development company headquartered in McKinney, Texas. Since 2007, we help businesses design and build effective pricing software. Being ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified, we apply a mature quality management system and guarantee that cooperation with us does not pose any risks to your data security. If you are interested in getting a reliable pricing solution, feel free to turn to ScienceSoft’s team.