Rapt Updates Price Optimization Solution

Adds competitive response, build-to-value and other analytic tools to flagship Price Director app

Adds competitive response, build-to-value and other analytic tools to flagship Price Director app

San Francisco — November 22, 2005 — Pricing management specialist Rapt Inc. has debuted an upgrade to its flagship price optimization software, adding competitive response, build-to-value and other analytic tools to its existing capabilities.

Rapt said that its Price Director solution captures the effects of macroeconomic conditions, product lifecycles, competitive effects and solution configurations and enables the pricer to create strategies to improve revenue, margin and market share performance across the entire product portfolio.

New Features

Among the new features in version 4.6 of the solution, "competitive response" enables users to plan and react to competitive market conditions in optimizing their own prices and establishing pricing strategies by bringing in new data-driven analysis of competitive, market, seasonality and lifecycle dynamics, Rapt said.

"Build-to-price" allows users to determine optimized combinations of features, products, price points and product introduction dates. This development leverages insights to product planning decisions, including how to provide the highest value to customers without eroding margin or cannibalizing the next price point.

"Advanced demand modeling" accounts for erosion in sales of older generations of products and the associated "pent-up" demand for their anticipated replacement. Through extension of Rapt's product lifecycle functionality, planners can better manage individual and entire generations of products, the solution provider said.

Customers Sign Up

Price Director 4.6 also extends reporting capabilities and provides users with an improved user interface, Rapt said. Companies launching or upgrading to the new version 4.6 of Rapt's Price Director solution include Apple, iVillage, MSN, Seagate and Yahoo!, according to the solution provider.

Price Director works by analyzing existing order, inventory and market data and isolating non-pricing effects, such as lifecycle and seasonality, to calculate price response and drive optimized pricing.


Additional Articles of Interest

— For more information on price optimization solutions from both the buy- and sell-side perspectives, see the two-part series "Finding the 'Right' Price" in the July 2001 (sell-side) and August 2001 (buy-side) issues of iSource Business (now Supply & Demand Chain Executive) magazine.

— For insights into how the top procurement organizations align with their company's broader business to make themselves invaluable, read "Getting to World-class by Getting a Seat at the Table," the Executive Memo column the October/November 2005 issue of Supply and Demand Chain Executive.

— When propane company Blue Rhino says it's serious about automating inventory procurement and ordering processes, that's not just a lot of hot air. Read "Taking Business Process Automation by the Horns," a Best Practices article in the October/November 2005 issue of Supply and Demand Chain Executive.


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