Editorial
When it comes to pricing, it’s more than just slapping a number on a product and calling it a day. In today’s inflationary times, consumers and brands alike are feeling the pinch. Do you prioritize profitability over growth? Or is it all about scaling up, hoping the numbers work themselves out? Pricing Power might be your golden ticket to profitability, but price wars? That’s a slippery slope to losing long-term growth.
In this edition of This Week in Consulting, we break down strategies like cost-plus, value-based, and the ever-popular freemium, to help you navigate this pricing jungle. We also dive into building strong pricing teams that can lead to a 14-30% EBITDA boost.
Plus, we explore the urgent need for a global carbon pricing framework—because, yes, even the planet is part of this equation.
Curious? Take a deeper dive and join the conversation. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Laurent THOMAS
Chairman Consulting Quest
This week’s must read
In this edition of This Week in Consulting, we explore key pricing strategies, challenges, and how to stay competitive by examining various pricing models, highlighting their pros and cons.
This article by EY highlights the critical need for a global carbon pricing framework to mitigate climate change. Despite numerous carbon pricing schemes, progress is fragmented. A fair, global system aligning carbon as a commodity is essential for equitable decarbonization.
This week’s media
In this BCG video, pricing expert Matthew Kropp explores the Strategic Pricing Hexagon within “The Choice Game: Personalized Pricing.” Kropp discusses key strategies, challenges, and how players can maintain a competitive edge in pricing.
Thought Leadership
This article by Kantar discusses the current inflationary trend, its impact on consumers and brands, and highlights the importance of focusing on profitability before growth. It emphasizes Pricing Power as crucial to maintaining profitability and warns against price wars and discounting.
This Simon-Kutcher article explores how B2B companies can build effective pricing teams, focusing on three pillars: Purpose, Place, and People. By developing a strong pricing function, businesses can combat pricing fatigue, align strategies, and achieve a 14-30% EBITDA improvement.
A pricing strategy determines a product’s price based on factors like costs, competition, and customer perception. Spur Reply explores key strategies, including cost-plus, value-based, competitor-based, penetration, price skimming, and freemium, outlining their pros and cons to guide decision-making.
This article by LEK Consulting highlights how SaaS companies are increasingly adopting usage-based pricing (UBP) to drive growth and customer satisfaction. UBP aligns cost with usage, but it poses challenges for enterprises, especially in balancing flexibility with predictable expenses.
This week’s consulting news selection
IBM has announced its intent to acquire Accelalpha, a global Oracle services provider with deep expertise helping clients digitize core business operations and accelerate adoption of Oracle Cloud Applications. This acquisition expands IBM’s Oracle consulting expertise in supply chain and logistics, finance, enterprise performance management (EPM) and customer transformation.|
Globant, a digitally native technology services company, announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Blankfactor, a U.S. based IT services consulting firm specialized in Payments, Banking, and Capital Markets with a successful track record across the Financial Services industry and extensive experience in card issuing, merchant acquiring, and securities finance.|
Accountancy and business advisory firm BDO LLP has named Robert Noye-Allen as its new National Head of Public Sector. The risk advisory services partner, who has almost 30 years’ experience in the sector, takes over the role from Greg Rubins who retired in July after 12 years with the firm in the South East.|
Argon & Co, the global management consultancy specialising in operations strategy and transformation, has announced that it is being joined by PrexPartners. For Argon & Co, the merger will help to add greater expertise and capacity to its existing procurement transformation capability while PrexPartners will benefit from supporting clients across more countries and industries with a wider pool of business operations experts.|
Laurent is the Chairman and Co-founder of Consulting Quest. Focused on greater value creation, and being thoroughly familiar with Consulting, Laurent has sourced and sold millions of dollars worth of Consulting over the course of his career. Prior to joining Consulting Quest, Laurent was Executive Vice President Oil and Gas at Solvay and Senior Partner Transformation at Oliver Wyman.