Does your business have a need to change the prices of products or services online and / or in store on a regular basis?
Does your current process take too much time, involve too many people, create too many mistakes and leave no room for accountability and transparency?
Do you wish you could easily go back and review price changes that were made and why to help spot key market or competitor trends that maybe appearing?
At Cheetah Transformation we have worked in and with many retail organisations where a simple yet vital task like a price change can involve numerous people, emails, spreadsheets and communications and every single part of the process is open to mistakes or results in key actions not happening at all with no clear accountability trail.
Every single time the process doesn’t operate smoothly your business is losing customers and profit and if your organisation requires multiple price changes per day this quickly adds up to A LOT of frustration, confusion and costly mistakes.
Having the ability to review price changes historically will allow you review data to spot trends and patterns which in turn could help improves business efficiencies going forward.
How can we help?
Using Smartsheet we have created a simple yet highly effective solution for managing the price change process at every step and allowing a historical review of actions that have taken place and why.
The solution process consists of the following steps
- All price change requests are submitted by the relevant buyer/category manager using a web based data capture form
- The data enters Smartsheet in a consistent and automated format
- Automations alert the appropriate colleague to approve or decline of the price change
- If approved, further automations alert necessary functions across the business to complete their action and update the sheet when completed. These functions typically are:
- IT / systems – to update the price on the system on the right date
- Marketing / POS – updating the Point of Sale (POS) / artwork for store
- Store communications – informing the stores of upcoming price changes, so they can print the price tags and implement in-store
- Document / artwork proofing (such as POS/price ticket/store communications sign off) can be actioned within the sheet, with the ability to add comments / requests for change, with the ability to upload new versions, ready for approval. For more info on content proofing, read this article
- If actions are not completed ahead of the price change, alerts will allow timely follow up with the relevant parties
- Once price changes are actioned, the data moves to another sheet which can be used for historical analysis via reports and dashboards.
- Declined price changes are moved to separate sheet and kept with notes, so the history and rationale are saved.
- Dashboards created for the various teams involved, to help them prioritise the changes, and show what’s coming up.
- Dashboards for management provide the overarching view, helping them see where they need to intervene
This solution brings visibility, transparency and accountability, ensuring you make the price changes at the right time, saving your business time and money FAST!
For a demonstration of the price change process in Smartsheet, get in touch.
