Why Do You Need a Competitive Pricing Tool?

Pricing managers need powerful competitive pricing tools in both B2B and B2C businesses. But why? Besides, their sheer pace and automation power, they use advanced algorithms for pricing.

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The best competitive pricing tools can analyse real-time market and economic changes. They consider the micro as well as the macro factors. Such tools also consider the nature of your product and recommend an optimal price point. You can develop a sustainable pricing strategy that becomes 10 times more efficient.

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The data quality score must be high to determine accurate prices. This is something that other old-school pricing methods remain inconsistent about.

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Smart pricing tools allow you agility with your pricing process. Regardless of sudden market changes, you can manage your pricing process without pressure. There are many advantages of competitive pricing for both B2B and B2C companies.

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This blog will discuss the top 10 competitive pricing tools explaining their features. If you'd like, you can check out the three pricing factors of competitive pricing first.

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Let's start with the various types of niche tools that businesses use for pricing tasks.

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What are the Types of Pricing Tools and their Niches?

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‍‍There are different types of pricing tools that businesses use. Price quoting tools for B2B, price scraping systems, price analytics tools, and so on. The explosion of data advancements in AI led to the emergence of such niche tools. They are niche tools catering to specific tasks in price management.

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But, you cannot use one tool for all your complex pricing tasks. It could be that you are already using one of them, and you’d prefer to switch to a more sustainable deal. What if we could put them all in one integrated AI-powered pricing system?‍

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Hence, let’s look at the pricing tools from a higher level. This way, you can choose the type that suits your organisation’s goals and budget.

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• Pricing Analytics and Optimisation Tools:

Such tools analyse large amounts of pricing data. It helps understand pricing trends, customer behaviours, and market dynamics. Optimisation features can then suggest the optimal price points based on this analysis. Often, these features use advanced machine-learning techniques to suggest new prices. Also, they usually have predictive capabilities, forecasting future price changes based on historical data.

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• ‍CPQ or Configure, Price, Quote Tools:

CPQ software streamlines the quote-to-cash process, especially for B2B businesses. It's a systematic way to configure product offerings, price them, and generate a quote. This is especially useful for companies with complex products. These tools can add rules, discounts, and promotional pricing to make quotes accurate and profitable.

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• Integrated Price Management:

Integrated Price Management tools allow centralised price management across channels and regions. This ensures efficient price changes, adjustments for currency fluctuations, and rapid response to market changes. With these tools, you can ensure consistent pricing strategies.

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• Revenue Management:

These tools forecast demand, optimise inventory, and price products to maximise revenue. Industries like airlines, hotels, and restaurants use revenue management tools. They also use predictive analytics to predict demand and adjust pricing.

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• Trade Promotion Management:

These niche tools manage promotional pricing activities, often in the consumer goods industry. They track promotional events, analyse their effectiveness, and suggest optimal promotion strategies. You can also integrate it with supply chain systems to ensure product availability during promotions.

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• Pricing Research Tools:

These tools support market research related to pricing. For example, surveys and conjoint analysis determine how product features and their prices influence customer choice. They can help businesses understand customers' price sensitivity and their willingness to pay. Using them, you will also understand the potential impact of different pricing strategies.

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• Repricing Platforms:

Industries with heavy competition use repricing platforms. Such companies change prices due to changing market trends and competition. Such systems automate the process of changing costs in response to market fluctuations. It helps you track competitor prices, demand trends, and even weather patterns to recommend price adjustments.

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• Retail/eCommerce Specific Pricing Management Tools:

Designed specifically for the retail or eCommerce sector, these tools help manage pricing across various platforms (such as an online store, Amazon, eBay, etc.). They can centralise pricing decisions, coordinate promotional activities, and respond to competitor pricing changes.

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• Price Scraping Tools:

These tools collect pricing data from competitor websites or other online sources. This data helps track competitive pricing trends and inform pricing decisions. Price scraping tools can be part of a larger pricing toolset or be a standalone solution.

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Now that we are clear about the types of pricing systems, let's talk about the best ones.

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What are the Top 10 Pricing Tools that Help You Grow Profitability?

In this list, we will show the top 10 pricing tools and their exclusivity. We'll also the types of companies each pricing tool suits best. Read on to make your choice. Make sure to check the last point!

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1. PriceFX

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PriceFX is a b2b cloud-based pricing platform. It includes many competitive pricing tools and functionalities. It's also a CPQ platform that provides transparent and responsive pricing solutions. Pricing Managers can use its price comparison tools and features to analyse other players' prices and data. Designed for B2B and B2C companies, PriceFX allows dynamic pricing to replace Excel and in-house tools. See detailed comparison between price fx and SYMSON here.

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Pros:

• It's easy to learn and implement
• Automates pricing, erasing the workload of Excel files
• Able to process large assortment
• Able to bring the whole pricing team together in one place
• Able to handle specific needs and easy to share with colleagues

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Cons:

• Lack of a suitable mechanism to handle global organisations with many business/pricing model needs.
• Customers cannot program the system alone. You would need the support of Pricefx or a certified local partner to make any change or enhancement in the algorithm logic after the project period.
• Many algorithm procedures and functionalities need designing from scratch. This is due to a relative lack of pre-defined functionalities.

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2. PriSync

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PriSync is a versatile price comparison tool. It offers dynamic pricing solutions and C-level analysis for B2B and B2C companies. Like other competitive pricing tools, it allows you to track competitors' prices. You can analyse their stock availability, optimise prices, and adjust your strategies. PriSync's b2b pricing tool also helps identify gaps in the market before recommendations.Prisync also checks historical trends to expect when competitors change their prices. The online customer support team is available to answer any requests. Prisync offers a free onboarding service to plan a long-lasting relationship with all its customers. See the comparison between PriSync and SYMSON here.

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Pros:

• ‍‍Historical Pricing Trends & Stock Availability Tracking
• Bulk Importing & Exporting
• Dynamic Pricing

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Cons:

• ‍‍Labour-intensive set-up depending on how many unique SKUs or products you offer
• The onboarding of the items is time-consuming
• Does not offer an AI or ML price optimisation feature

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3. Competera

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Competera is an all-in-one competitor pricing tool and price optimisation platform. It offers a suite of competitive pricing tools for B2B and B2C businesses. Competera uses AI and ML technologies to maintain optimal pricing decisions.It is a ready-to-use tool that helps to manage pricing at the category level for any number of SKUs. Competera combines competitive data, rule-based and demand-based engines to help you achieve goals. It helps either with margin growth or an increase in operational efficiency. Its advanced analytics lets you check market trends and make data-driven pricing decisions.

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Pros:

• ‍‍Competera offers lightweight integration, actual and reliable data and information updates.
• Great customer support and very user-friendly.
• Information-rich yet very intuitive interface.

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Cons:

• ‍‍No possibility of tracking the quality of data.
• Not enough functionality when it comes to using the forecasting tool.
• Custom prices may be inaccessible for small and mid-range businesses.

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4. Omnia Retail

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Omnia Retail offers dynamic pricing and competitive price monitoring. It's suited for enterprise retailers and brands. It provides businesses with the insights needed to optimise pricing strategies. Its advanced analytics and user-friendly interface make Omnia popular among pricing managers.As an all-in-one solution that handles data collection, price calculations, and price updates, Omnia makes it easier for you to take control of your entire assortment and track your products from one easy-to-use portal. See the detailed comparison between Omnia Retail and SYMSON here.

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Pros:

• Omnia gives you a good overview of market prices and strategies
• Omnia's dynamic pricing unloads users with a vast amount of workload
• Omnia enables the user to track the prices of competitors.

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Cons:

• The processes within their algorithm can be challenging to understand.
• If you rely on Google Shopping alone as a data source, the pricing data that you get is not limited to your country. This may affect the scope of your target market.
• Lack of visualisations affects comprehensibility.
• Does not include an AI or ML price optimisation solution.

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5. PROS

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PROS is an AI pricing platform that offers competitive pricing tools for B2B and B2C companies. PROS focuses on a price optimisation strategy that delivers optimised prices. It cultivates a simple, customer-empowered buying experience.

Its advanced analytics and price optimisation capabilities let you make data-driven pricing decisions. You can track competitor prices, compare them and adjust your pricing.

PROS is another popular choice for pricing managers due to its easy integration and UX. It has applied three decades of deep data-science experience to hone this strategy. It is best suited to manufacturing, automotive, tech, and others. See the detailed comparison between PROS and SYMSON here.

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Pros:

• ‍‍Quick delivery of the optimised prices to sales teams and partners
• Ability to centralise price governance while enabling price discipline and visibility
• There is no black box around the AI algorithm

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Cons:

• ‍‍The character limit for product names can cause minor inconveniences
• The software could be too expensive for small to medium businesses
• The process of adapting from a non-flexible legacy system to the PROS tool can be rather difficult.

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6. Vendavo

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Vendavo is a leading b2b pricing tool that helps optimise profitability. Its pricing optimisation solutions include price management, deal management, and advanced analytics. Vendavo empowers Pricing Managers to make informed decisions in both B2B and B2C sectors. Companies develop dynamic customer insight using Vendavo. Its optimal pricing strategies maximise margin, boost sales effectiveness and improve customer experience.

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Pros:

• ‍‍Easy access and sharing of information
• The platform is very intuitive and user-friendly

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Cons:

• ‍‍The system is more rigid than in-house tools; modification requires cooperation between Vendavo, ETL and corporate IT.
• The setup is not very straightforward and can be pretty time-consuming.
• The starting price can be too high for small to medium corporations.

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7. Price2Spy

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Price2Spy is another powerful competitive pricing tool. As the name suggests, it provides real-time price monitoring and alerts. Its integrated competitor pricing tool capabilities make it a popular choice among businesses. It allows for accurate price comparison and effective pricing strategies.Price2Spy caters to both B2B and B2C companies. It offers a range of features that help businesses stay ahead of the competition. Users get pricing acquisition tools and many reporting options for data analysis. Price2Spy's API enables seamless integration and automatic competitor price matching. For utmost clarity, you can find a clear comparison between Price2Spy, OptiPrice and SYMSON.

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Pros:

• The Repricing module lets you identify which products can go up / down in price. It can also get these prices changed in your online store.
• Price2Spy is capable of monitoring websites that shield off monitoring applications. You can see the pricing of your competition even if their websites don’t allow monitoring.

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Cons:

• ‍‍Navigating through the user interface can be confusing.
• The report generation tool is not flexible enough. It hinders generating accurate customer reports.
• The input of products can be time-consuming, depending on the number of products.

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8. BlackCurve

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BlackCurve is an innovative B2B pricing optimisation platform. It helps to decrease marketing spending and improve Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). Like other competitive pricing tools, it lets you scrape, track and analyse competitor prices.BlackCurve includes price comparison features. Its 'Marketing Plugin' shows how price influences digital marketing performance. BlackCurve has a special Dynamic Pricing Technology. This allows you to beat the competition and improve Google Ads performance.

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Pros:

• ‍‍Ability to track the market value for a wide array of SKUs (25000+ SKUs).
• Ability to build rules around pricing to allow different price strategies for different brands, categories, and product lines.

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Cons:

• ‍‍The reports are not thorough enough and may lack relevant information.
• The software is relatively expensive to focus only on competitor pricing.
• Black Curve is not an out-of-the-box solution.

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9. Price Edge

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Price Edge is another cloud-based solution for B2B and B2C pricing managers. The tool helps to find price improvement opportunities to measure price effectiveness. It also allows an overview of the pricing impact over time through its built-in or custom reports.With a thorough competitive pricing analysis and price recommendations, Price Edge helps businesses stay competitive. It has an easy-to-use interface and flexible pricing plans. This makes Price Edge a top choice for pricing managers.

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Pros:

• You set up in less than a day.
• Fully documented.
• Allow stand-alone use as well as integration with your ERP or PDM.

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Cons:

• ‍‍Massive updates sometimes cause the system to lag.
• Integration issues sometimes occur.

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10. SYMSON: Explainable AI Pricing Tool

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SYMSON is a B2B and B2C Artificial Intelligence-powered competitive pricing tool. It helps pricing managers find optimal price recommendations. Its advanced price comparison tools and features keep you ahead in pricing.

Its mature data analysis ability only recommends accurate prices. It is an integrated price management tool that allows you to manage the pricing process from end to end. Symson's ease of use lets anyone in the team use it without data-analysis expertise.

Pricing is a sensitive asset. Economic situations and market trends have a direct impact on prices. Symson analyses such factors- from macro to micro to find the optimal price.

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Also Read: How to implement a competitive pricing strategy

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In SYMSON, you could also create scenarios and run simulations to stay prepared for any market changes in the future. You can read more about it at SYMSON’s demand forecasting compared to the other players.

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Better yet, SYMSON suggests prices with explainable AI, unlike any other pricing tools. That is, Pricing Managers can understand the logic behind each price recommendation. Likewise, with each improvement or recommendation, teams continue to learn with the machine. This is where SYMSON's concept of Hyperlearningᵀᴹ comes in. We encourage combining human judgment and AI automation to become such Hyperlearningᵀᴹ organisations.

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Let’s have quick look at the other functionalities of SYMSON:

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Pros:

• Access to an extensive partner network that can help with the integration.
• Great Price-Quality Ratio.
• All-in-one Pricing Management System; ability to execute multiple strategies.
• Rapid Implementation.
• Focus on Hyperlearning.
• Enable users to leverage the advanced Price Elasticity feature.
• Set simulations to run future predictions.
• Consider seasonality and regional aspects for pricing.

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Cons:

• Massive updates can sometimes cause system lag.
• Not always suitable for all markets.

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Conclusion

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The top 10 competitive pricing tools mentioned offer a comprehensive suite of features. To find a detailed comparison between all the 10 pricing tools, you can download our Whitepaper: Top 10 Pricing Software Solutions.

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Now that you know about the capabilities of a competitor pricing tool, you can get started with a reliable choice. Simple price comparison tools are for mid-sized businesses that don't have many products.Businesses with a growing product portfolio need extra AI help to lift the pressure. For such businesses, we recommend a complete pricing platform that uses Artificial Intelligence. Likewise, you can conduct intelligent price settings in any circumstance. SYMSON's warm partnership could help you make the right move at the right time.

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