The Client
The client is a large international discount department retailer that needed a new competitor price monitor. They are in the top 25 of the Internet Retailer’s top online companies, the top 40 in the Fortune 500 list, and are a component of Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
The Business Need
The client needed a comprehensive, accurate retail competitor price monitor that could provide the following:
Integration
They have an in-house strategic pricing tool and needed a competitor price monitor that could be customized to have the data feed directly into it.
Online vs. Instore Products
The client is traditionally store-based but has a strong and growing online business. Not all of their store products are currently sold online and they wanted to be able to see which of their store-only products were being sold online and at what price.
Accuracy
The client had a current competitor price monitor but was not satisfied with the low rate of accuracy provided by the data. It was critical that the data they received could be relied upon to make stronger pricing and assortment decisions.
Competitor Price Monitor Challenges
The client had several challenges in finding a competitor price monitor, including:
Massive Quantities
The client carries a huge variety of products and needed to be able to have all desired items monitored accurately and to quickly add large quantities of items.
Monitoring Store Based Products
Many items that the client wanted monitored were not on their website and so did not fit well into a standard web crawling tool.
Integration
It was imperative that the new competitor price monitor could integrate seamlessly into their own in-house business intelligence tool.
Fast Setup
The client was looking for a fast set up for the new competitor price monitor as the holiday season was approaching. It was essential that the solution could quickly set up, with customization, a massive number of products to be accurately compared.
The Solution
Ugam Interactive was able to provide the client with the PriceTrac competitor price monitor that uses mapping technology. The PriceTrac solution was able to meet all their needs including:
- Accurate pricing and assortment data
- Fast set up with customization in time for the holiday shopping season
- Quick mapping set up and turnaround on large numbers of new products
- Consistent and reliable data provided on targeted online items that they only sell in stores
- Customized integration into their existing pricing tool.
The Results
“I wanted to thank everyone for their hard work on the project and Ugam Integration Releases and the Post-Implementation Release that followed! Through these project releases, we’ve delivered key functionality to our Strategic Pricing team including the removal of restrictions on which items can be competitively priced, updates and revisions to the logic used to calculate the most profitable and most competitive prices on our assortment, message exchange and integration with Ugam – our new competitive pricing data vendor, changes to our clearance program reporting, and more.Together, these changes help enable our long-term pricing strategy to drive sales and to improve our competitive position. This wouldn’t have been possible without your efforts and they are sincerely appreciated!” Client to Ugam Interactive following successful competitor price monitor implementation
The PriceTrac competitor price monitor provided by the Ugam Interactive team has been able to help the customer better compete on key items, including during the critical initial holiday season, helping the client to grow their strength in the online market. The client has been able to react faster and more accurately to competitor pricing. They are able to price competitively while protecting their margins.
With the instore versus online competitive intelligence the client is now able to make solid decisions regarding which products they should consider adding to their online offering.