Back in the early 2000s, DemandTec Price Optimization was an industry-leading solution. Multi-billion-dollar retailers relied on our solution to drive their pricing strategies. Products flooded the market with competitors claiming to do the same, if not better. It was a competition of whose science was the best and who’s UX looked fresher, more modern.
Having had experience across multiple competitors, I was brought in to supercharge a product that wasn’t getting the level of attention it deserved. Knowing the landscape of competitors and retailers, we set off on a mission to reimagine how we can evolve not only our solution, but price optimization to the next level and iteration of market solutions.
Automation and eventually autonomy was at the core of our design and go-forward direction. We kept hearing the term “faster” from the market. Faster reaction, faster processing, faster time to execution. Coming off the “dynamic pricing” fad, we needed a single solution to rule them all that was flexible enough to meet the retailer where they are in their journey and handle where they want to be in the future. No more price management, price optimization, dynamic pricing solutions. We had a single solution where all these became our capabilities. Customers were free to use them how they pleased. This enabled us to simplify our go-to-market models.
I started understanding our immense set of capabilities from the application side but also from a data science perspective – what was being used and what had started to collect dust on the shelf. Speaking with internal SMEs and current customers, we started to learn what they liked and where there were significant opportunities to help retailers become more efficient and valuable for their customers – shoppers. In the meantime, we had somewhat of an epiphany. We were not so much creating a new system. We were more in the business of remastering a classical business framework for the modern era leveraging AI and other advanced cloud technologies.
The build
Our team of product managers, engineers, and UX designers started on our journey visualizing and prioritizing what would become the next generation of our pricing solution. We set up our goals of getting to an MVP so that we could begin showcasing to our customers and prospects. We set an aggressive timeline of one release (12 weeks) to get to a version 1.0. The goal was to have a solution where a user could set some constraints, receive an optimized price recommendation, and export to down-stream systems. Did it have all the bells and whistles? Not yet, but it was fully operational for someone to take price changes.
Next was to get to GA over the course of the following few quarters. It had a core set of features and market differentiators to help balance some of the future roadmap plans with more valuable features available today that never existed before. Then the task was to find a set of key partners to validate our thoughts and provide progress updates on a regular basis. We had monthly calls (about once a sprint, give or take). Having regular demos and roadmap sessions keeps everyone in the loop of your progress and provides credibility that you are executing what you said you would. More importantly you can get fast feedback to incorporate as you go.
Just because there are no pain points in a certain use case or capability you do today, doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.
Lastly, finding early adopters in our customer base is key. Until a solution is used in real life scenarios, you can’t flush out gaps or exceptions. This included a well-thought-out migration plan for our entire customer base which we could also only get right the more times your practice. This required not a rip-and-replace approach, but one where you run in parallel for a defined set of time, getting your users comfortable and accustomed to the new solution.
While this news may not be anything new to your customers who have been with you on the journey, launch timing and messaging was critical. It’s important that the rest of the market and prospects are aware of the great accomplishment you spent the past year building. Make sure that you are touting the game-changing aspects and additional value your remastered solution brings to the market, while still demonstrating the value you bring to your current customers.
About Craig Marion, DemandTec Chief Product Officer
As global head of product strategy for DemandTec lifecycle pricing solutions, Craig brings 20 years’ experience developing, architecting, implementing, selling and managing enterprise software with the goal of delivering customer value to a full range of retailers worldwide. Prior to joining DemandTec, Craig served in executive roles at organizations including TJX, where he was Senior Solutions Architect, Revionics, Siemens, Oracle Retail and Exeter Group.
About DemandTec:
A pioneering leader in retail pricing, promotion, and markdown technology for decades, DemandTec is ushering in the new era of unified autonomous merchandising. With Unify by DemandTec — the industry’s first — retailers can unite their data, systems, internal teams, and collaborate with suppliers to generate profitable revenue growth with the power of AI.
From food to fashion, DemandTec partners with more than 700 customers around the globe. To learn more, please visit us at www.demandtec.com.
