5 Key Pricing Trends Every CEO Should Pay Attention To
When in 2020 Covid-19 hit the world, CEOs across all industries were already faced with many disruptive trends specifically related to globalization, accelerated digitalization and business transformation. However, since the pandemic unfolded and organizations slowly started to recover new challenges emerged, such as raw material shortages and dysfunctional supply chains, and all of that in a world swiftly moving to eCommerce and omnichannel experiences. But what strategic capabilities, actions and mindset must leaders adopt to manage a business successfully in a post-covid world? Join Kevin Mitchell, President of The Professional Pricing Society (PPS), and Stephan M. Liozu, Ph.D., Founder of Value Innoruption Advisors and Author of “Pricing--The New CEO Imperative: A Book from the Pricing Profession to the C-Suite”, to learn how CEOs can effectively navigate a market full of uncertainties, to continue to serve customers.
About the Speakers
Kevin Mitchell is the President of The Professional Pricing Society (PPS), the worldwide professional organization dedicated to pricing training, education, and networking. He is also the Publisher of The Pricing Advisor monthly newsletter and the quarterly Journal of Professional Pricing. Mitchell is a frequent speaker at pricing conferences and events in North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific, and South America where he often discusses trends and demographic changes within the pricing discipline. Before joining PPS in 2007, he worked for 11 years in various Financial Management fields with Colgate-Palmolive and General Electric. He has a B.A. Economics and English from Duke University and an MBA in Marketing from The William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester.
Stephan M. Liozu (www.stephanliozu.com) is the Founder of Value Innoruption Advisors (www.valueinnoruption.com), a consulting boutique specialized in value-based pricing, industrial pricing, digital and subscription-based pricing. He is also an Adjunct Professor & Research Fellow at the Case Western Research University Weatherhead School of Management. Liozu holds a Ph.D. in Management from Case Western Reserve University (2013), an MS in Innovation Management from Toulouse School of Management (2005), and an MBA in Marketing from Cleveland States University (1991). He is a Certified Pricing Professional (CPP), a Prosci® certified Change Manager, a certified Price-to-Win instructor, and a Strategyzer Business Model Innovation Coach. Liozu authored six books: B2G Pricing (2020), Monetizing Data (2018), Value Mindset (2017), Dollarizing Differentiation Value (2016), The Pricing Journey (2015) and Pricing and Human Capital (2015). He also co-edited five books: Pricing: The New CEO Imperative (2021), Pricing Implementation (2019), Pricing and the Salesforce (2015), The ROI of Pricing (2014), and Innovation in Pricing – Contemporary Theories and Best Practices (2012 &2017). Stephan sits on the Advisory Board of LeveragePoint Innovation and of the Professional Pricing Society.
Full Transcript
Kevin Mitchell: Hello, everyone, my name is Kevin Mitchell. I'm from Professional Pricing Society, and I'm here with Stephan Liozu, who we’re very, always, very happy to see. And a special thanks to the PROS team for allowing us the opportunity to talk with you about some trends that CEOs need to know about coming up here. But it's for me personally. I've been a longtime partner with the PROS organization. My company, Professional Pricing Society is basically the nexus at the center of pricing and Revenue Management and sales enablement where you go for training, for networking, for conferences, events, publications, webinars and white papers. And very happy to be with you today. Stephan, how about yourself? What's going on with you?...
Stephan Liozu: Oh, great, great. My name is Stephan Liozu and I’m the founder of Value Interruption Advisors and a pricing thought leader have been in the space for 15 years now, where I've given them a seat on the board, the advisory board of pricing society and what I did day in, day out. What I do day in, day out is to promote the pricing function, the pricing profession and the pricing discipline through books, publication, consulting, training, et cetera, et cetera. So very close partnership with PPS over the years, and I'm very pleased to be here today to share our common knowledge on how to convince the c-suite to pay attention to pricing and to invest in pricing. And what are the trends we need to pay attention to?
Kevin Mitchell: Absolutely, and Stephan is a very, very strong person to talk about these things because he was at the forefront in developing a new book called, “Pricing the CEO: The New CEO Imperative” and so basically today we're going to talk about the intersection of what senior management needs to do and what pricing professionals need to do, how we can help each other and how your team can survive and thrive and exceed expectations. All right, Stephan, are we ready to get into it? All right, so today, Stephan and I are going to talk about five trends that CEOs should pay attention to. And we've got lots of information basically about what has happened. What's going on with our disruption through COVID through our global pandemic and basically some great next steps as well. And really, there are a lot of trends that we have noted that have been happening for a while here, and some of these will be very familiar to you and to your organization. Also, just think about all of the ways and all of the methods that we use to buy things now, how easy it is to compare prices and if you're interested, head straight to the bottom there. So really, what we're seeing is a lot of commoditization because unless you have a really, really strong brand identity, the easiest, the most human nature thing that there is to do is basically assume everything is about the same. And replaceable. Get all the information, get all the prices and head straight for the bottom. So that's one thing that we have seen pre-covid that certainly is going to continue to be a trend there. And of course, we all are facing a lot of increased competition from Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and other major major players in that area and other areas that are affecting our business to a great, great degree. Just think of all the instant information that we have on products, on standardized products and offerings, on all of our screens that are available there. So really, there is a lot more competitive pressure on you and on your company. Globalization and regionalization, of course, have a big part to play in this as well. That puts a lot of pricing pressure on your acumen and on your senior leadership. For example, you might be facing low cost competition from overseas or even the next region or district over to your North, South, East or West. And really, you have to maintain your pricing consistency, your strong adherence to maintaining pricing pressure, or else you could really be giving your customers an opportunity to look elsewhere, to look for low cost or other providers inside or outside, within your marketplace or elsewhere there.
Kevin Mitchell: And of course, one other very, very big trend that we're seeing a lot of is around digital transformation. And I think digital transformation. I think of four major things here. One is that your business processes have changed. You know, new technologies are streamlining production. They are improving flows throughout your organization. Likely you're more focused on data, more focused on programming interfaces and maybe even apps instead of the old way, which was whoever was the loudest voice in the room or the most senior title in the room would say what he or she or they think. And basically, that's what happened there. Another part of this is that business models have changed usership and ownership. We're seeing a switch there. And even though it's been 50 years or so since rolls-royce and GE engines did power by the hour. But think of how the way that we buy things now, think of usership being primary over ownership in a lot of ways as far as Airbnb versus hotels versus streaming services, versus buying media versus rideshare services, leases versus buying automobiles and so on and so forth there. And of course, domains have transformed. We've got new technologies that are redefining our products and services. Industries are kind of getting blurry, and you might have non-traditional competition everywhere from all sides coming in to basically become a competitor to you and to your established companies in a lot of different ways. And of course, another facet of digital transformation is around cultural and organizational transformation, which is a big part of it. So now organizations need new mindsets. You need new processes, new skills, new capabilities. You might have more collaboration up and down the org chart. You might have more agile development, but basically there are a lot of ways where digital transformation really is transforming in a few different ways there. And, of course, around data, we always hear the statistics that every 18 months or every two years, more data is created than existed in all of human history up until that point. And basically, your company might be in a stance where you've got the data there, but it's kind of like if a tornado hit the Library of Congress where the data is there, it might be strewn all over the floor. It might be different places. You don't know what's good information, what's great information, what's very good information, what's not so useful information. And it's your job and your company's job to sort all that out to take all the data that you do have without letting the perfect be the enemy of the darn good enough for now and figuring out your next steps there.
Kevin Mitchell: So other issues, other trends that we are seeing pre-pandemic mass customization and personalization. Of course, this is how many companies are battling against commoditization of their offerings and their goods and services by simply working with their customers and letting them know. Tell us what you want. We'll work with. We’ll develop it. We'll make it per your specs. And the end result of a lot of these things is we're seeing in some markets a two humped camel where you've got the low end, where everything is more commoditized, you've got the super high end where everything is customized and your company may be towards the middle there. In a lot of cases where sometimes you're getting squeezed, so you've got to take all of these things into account, take platforms and utilization into account as well, where companies are making their marketplace to become their digital environment, and that becomes a part of their value proposition. So you've got your user experience, your integration taking into account with all of this and with some companies, the goal is just to provide as many on demand services for as many needs as possible. And with all of these things, we've got a lot of changes going on through all of this here.
Stephan Liozu: And what's interesting, Kevin, what's interesting here is that started before COVID.
Kevin Mitchell: Absolutely
Stephan Liozu: Yeah. And it accelerated during COVID. But you know, know, we should all know about this, frankly. Now, obviously, COVID came in and gave us these short term, you know, issues here, which is an additional layer of disruption, right?
Kevin Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely. One thing, Stephan, that I've heard a lot of members talk about and a lot of contacts that I've heard say, is that really what the pandemic has done is some things that were already in motion. It basically has just become a catalyst and it's accelerated a lot of changes that we've seen there. So a lot of this, a lot of these disruptions were already happening and then COVID just blew them up per your diagram here. It put in some new things and it really quickened the pace that we've seen on a lot of these things. You know, a lot of people were facing cost pressures before raw materials are going crazy, even more so now post-covid. We're seeing things with supply chains that are out of touch and we're losing links in those supply chains. Basically, if we think back to the olden times, pre 2019 you were probably pretty good at developing some forecasts. But now your competition is changing more rapidly. Your supply chain is changing more rapidly. Your demand is changing more rapidly. So really, you're forecasting back in the old times really may not even apply to what's going on with the current business. With raw materials being out with people changing their business models. Obviously, we've had a switch from brick and mortar retailers to e-commerce to e-tailers and things like that. Sales processes are changing with the great migration or the great disruption or
Stephan Liozu: Resignation.
Kevin Mitchell: The great resignation. Exactly people who have had a lot of the old information within your company, they may have found a greener pasture there. They may realize that they don't have to commute to Silicon Valley or Midtown Manhattan or Dallas, or Houston or Chicago in order to do their job. So we're seeing people basically having opportunities out there. And so with all of these changes, basically this has blown a lot of our plans completely out of the water there. But you're absolutely correct. A lot of these things were happening before COVID accelerated some and through new challenges into others there. So basically, we've got a new situation going on.
Stephan Liozu: And it's very explosive, like you said. We call that the mother of all storm, right, Kevin?
Kevin Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of people have just had their whole business life completely blown up, and now they're facing new challenges. And doesn't it seem like 2019 was ages ago? I mean, we're talking a couple of years ago, but things are changing so rapidly now.
Stephan Liozu: And the key is what's going to happen in the future. So obviously, we know the past. We know the last two years of pandemic. Now we're discovering the post-pandemic, which is a roller coaster ride. Where do we go from here? And you know, I posit that there is a sense of urgency for what I called commercial excelligence. Have you heard that term before, Kevin?
Kevin Mitchell: I've heard it from you. But other than that, I don't believe I've heard that one. Why don't you tell us a little bit about it?
Stephan Liozu: Yeah, I like to create new words, you know? So it's a combination of intelligence and excellence. So obviously, you're not. You have to have great commercial intelligences these days, you know, and and like Kevin was saying, a lot of the past is not relevant anymore. So you have to recreate data set, customer insights, qualitative quantitative information to be able to project. And right now, you know, a lot of companies are building budgets for 2022. And how do you do this when your prices are all over the map, your customer demand are all over the map, so you need to have a new intelligence regarding products, customer competitors and all that stuff. And then you have to make sure that you use this for excellence to improve commercial efficiency in light of what Kevin just said, you know this disruption in supply chain raw material shortages now you lost 20% of your sales force, you can replace them short term and the two combined is excelligence. And then you need pricing as the engine, I believe, to power that new commercial excelligence. So I own the right to that term. And I like it because it's really a new dimension in the future. But really the key question, Kevin, and it'll be an easy answer for you is, can you manage a business post pandemic with all the stuff that was happening before without strategic pricing capabilities and robust pricing engines? What's your answer, Kevin?
Kevin Mitchell: I honestly could not recommend doing that. I think that we are in a situation in a world now where definitely you've got to optimize your capabilities and you need all of the tools available to you. And if that includes a robust pricing engine, if that includes new training for your people, if that includes basically new job titles and new skill sets and things like that, I think right now you've got to take advantage of all the tools that are available out there in order to manage your business right now.
Stephan Liozu: And if you don't know what the tools are, this is where you go to Pricing Society and the website. Become a member and they have awesome resources, not only the suppliers, but also they can do training on demand. They can. You can ask what your training to them. It's phenomenal. The bottom line is my answer is also you cannot. And that's what I tell to CEOs, you know, in light of what we just discussed with so much unpredictability and uncertainty, with so much need for such a great need for automation and acceleration and recovery, if you do it manually in excel, it will take you a long time and you're going to lose a lot of, you know, you're going to leave a lot of money on the table and miss opportunities. So this is why with Kevin and I are making so much noise trying to get the c-suite to pay attention because now is prime time for pricing. And in light of this, let's look at the five key trends.
Stephan Liozu: So first of all, you know, we're not fully recovered and as we were recovering, then, you know, supply chains started to dry up. Cost are exploding and obviously you need to have a tremendous level of commercial excelligence. And for that, I cite a Deloitte paper on why you know, how pricing can help the revenue recovery engine by, you know, embedded the practice into what I call a commercial command center. And right now, you add on top of the cost pressure, and you need to pay attention to dynamic pricing and to which customer are you going to deliver first? How are you going to pass your freight cost as maybe you airship some pallets to customers you cannot contractually or by choice, you cannot interrupt their production, for example. So it is about being productive, virtually. Being extremely customer centric and using data. Now you cannot use the data from the past. You have to look at new data and new data you have to rebuild your data set for the last two or three years. And really, 2019 was a superb year for many companies. But then after that, 2021 and next year will be a whole different trend. So the priority is regarding that paper is really focused on the right priorities, focus on where you can really deliver and create growth, but also leverage pricing intelligently and use it in a fair manner, but in an intelligent manner to really enable your commercial activities. And I like that, you know, right now the need for a command center, a commercial command center and the business cockpit to be able to kind of accelerate your recovery as well as manage the unpredictability. And you do need for that strong pricing capabilities. Right, Kevin?
Kevin Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely. Also, I think it's interesting and I like how you have it laid out here. But the uncertainty around a lot of these issues really can be opportunities in some cases where again, you can focus on the right products, you can focus on your higher margin, key products, your key strategies, your key customers. And in cases like this, where you definitely have to make choices, you definitely want all of the tools available to you. You're going to need to take advantage of the good data that you have. You're going to need your systems and your processes and your people in place, and you have to do that while still keeping your company culture moving forward. So again, a lot of things there and really a great opportunity, but really, it is a case where with all of this uncertainty, there's a lot more decision making. So I would definitely encourage everyone to take advantage of all the tools that are available.
Stephan Liozu: Good, good, so that was the first trend. Second trend is really right now is short term impact, and, you know, lots of companies are struggling right now. You know, lots of companies are not hesitating to pass price increases, frankly. They are fast and furious, but there is much more than price increases. How do you prioritize your commercial and pricing activities and leveraging your systems, your pricing engines to deliver short term impact, which is not leave money on the table, which is what Kevin was saying. Finding the right pockets of pricing power with the existing inventory that you have, creating the right bundle to, you know, maybe move the inventory that you have and stay away from what you don't have. Removing products where you're losing money historically or customers where you have very high cost to serve as well as on the right, and I'm siting here to market. The paper is the ability to extract price increases that you deserve because right now lots of suppliers are placing price increases to you and forcing force measure in, you know, out of the contracts and raising prices every two three months by double digit. So, you know, yes, you could do that manually, but it will take you a long time to be able to calculate everything manually to make sure you go through all through all your SKUs and to load that up in the system. And this is where, you know, the productivity gains are tremendous and the ability to capture every single dollar that you can on a daily basis is essential. And the ROI of having the right technology right now is phenomenal. And this is where now today we see the difference with companies that have the right pricing systems and companies that don't. And I can guarantee you that they're recovering faster than those who don't.
Kevin Mitchell: Yeah, no doubt, Stephan definitely agreed, and I like McKinsey's diagram here, and there's also in addition to pricing, there's also another key word there I like in there. Blue to the top right hand corner, and that's promotions. And I've heard of a lot of people who are using and capitalizing on our situation now, basically to take another look at their promotions. And I know that a lot of companies have been using discounts and rebates and promotions. And really, what they're doing with them is continuing what they've been doing on forever. It's a case now where you can improve your pricing. You can look at your data, you can make sure that you've got your sales processes right and everything like that. But also on the other side of that, if you are giving away discounts and rebates and giving away promotions, but they are not driving the actions that lead to your KPIs, this is also a great time to stop doing dumb things and giving away money for nothing. It's make sure if you are going to rebate, if you are going to discount, if you're going to offer promotions, special deals there, make sure that it drives something that you want and also use that as an opportunity to have good impact. And also, it's a change that you can make right now very quickly. So I think it's a great graph. I think it's got a lot of good information there.
Stephan Liozu: And by the way, now you look at trend number one and two, they are commercial trends, you know, supporting commercial excellence that we talked about, you know, and one focus on revenue recovery. One focuses on short term impact a bit. So it's not like we're discussing pricing. So a CEO and the c-suite, a CFO should look at this and say, whoa, I'm all over this, right? What is the ROI? And that's an easy calculation. Let's look at trend number three, and this one is a big one. And for that, I love that paper from McKinsey from 2018, which is the need for sales efficiency and sales automation. And if you look at where we are today in the sales value chain and how much is automated and it's about 30 percent, there is a huge amount of potential for sales automation. And now obviously you could tell me where it's not pricing, but you know, you look at dimension number three here in the value chain, we talk about CPQ and CPQ is a process and a system that includes pricing and you could push the envelope and say, well, even get into value based CPQ, which is value based pricing of the offers, you know, and the CPQ is around 43% automated. That means a lot of companies still do the coding process and the configuration manually in excel, which opens up all kinds of different issues on control and speed and a lack of responsiveness and all that good stuff. So, you know, I've been pushing this quite a bit, and Kevin can confirm that the CPQ space is growing nicely, right? There is obviously lots of offers out there, but the question is if you're a CEO or if you're a CTO, chief commercial officer or VP of sales, you don't want your sellers today to do things manually. You don't want your Deal Desk to do things manually. You have to respond to customer requests very fast because your competitors and some of the games we talked about are doing this in an automated fashion. And for that, you need the right pricing system.
Kevin Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely Stephan your right. Just think about the deals that have been lost because people weren't reactive enough or weren't fast enough and someone came in, you know, maybe even with a substandard product or an offering. But because speed is imperative and because we all need to move quickly now given the disruptions that we're all facing. Definitely if you can use CPQ to be more reactive to automate your sales value chain, there is a definite improvement there that everyone has to take a look at.
Stephan Liozu: Yeah, I think it's surprising that 30% now it may have increased since then, but I doubt it because I mean, we have a little bit of a rocky couple of years and but right now, you know, everybody is expecting fast responses and the right pricing for the right offer. And I would say as a pricing is an integral part of the sales process, you know, you could apply that to all the six dimensions of the sales value chain. So if you're a CEO or a c-suite executive or VP gm, ask yourself to, you know, am I automated enough because you could go hire two or three more people for your sales team, or you could invest in CPQ and really automate/ professionalize your selling and making your current sales team much more productive and your sales office, obviously your sales operations.
Stephan Liozu: OK number four, and Kevin mentioned that in the very first slide we've seen through the crisis the realization for many, many companies that they need to diversify with new revenue models. And you know, the transactional model is great, but when companies don't buy tractors, we don't buy fridges, they don't buy. Well, you could sell services, you could sell software. So you need to move away from 100% business model based on product and equipment and hardware and one time transactions to having a blend, including what typically, companies will look at 20% to 30% of annual sales in recurring format. And that is connected services, regular services, maintenance contracts, software subscriptions, you name it. And I mentioned all these, you know, in the bucket, in the middle, the size that that's to pass all these fancy terms. But at the end of the day, it's a transition to move from one business model to a portfolio business model and each of them requiring, you know, obviously advanced monetization strategies and pricing strategies. And again, having the right pricing engine because with your traditional ERP, you know, you will not be able to do these bundles, these subscription and it will take you a lot of manual interactions and your accounting team is going to really chase you down. So we're not going to be happy. And you're going to create a cost situation that your CFO and your business leaders are not going to like. But in essence, we're seeing that trend. We see many Fortune 500 companies today announcing very large target numbers in terms of how much sales will be in recurring format in five years or more.
Kevin Mitchell: Right, really, we're at a position now, and you've got it there, we're headed toward XaaS. You know, anything and everything as a service. And also since we talked about commoditization and Uberization and the games before that, this is a great way that you can set your company apart by providing extra services, perhaps that your competitors can't and looking at New revenue models that they may not be looking at. And we all like bundles. We all like to buy one thing instead of buy 27 different things over and over again, so it's a great way to set yourself apart.
Stephan Liozu: Yeah, and it's just a beginning, it's just the beginning. More and more companies have switched to subscription and usage based pricing. You look in the SaaS space moving away from traditional subscription to a usage based pricing, and there is a lot of innovation, you know, pay as you go, pay for what you want. I mean, there's so it's a beginning. But for us, you know, as a pricing experts with, you know, a passion for pricing, it's an important step for companies to look at their engine, their capabilities in the back office. And how is this going to connect to my traditional CRM and ERP? And how am I going to do if I have a bunch of products that I sell through ERP and then a bunch of product that I sell through the engine out of the blue, the customer wants to buy and bundle with software and product included, so you can’t just do that manually. So again, if you're in the c-suite, you're a CMO or chief innovation officer or CD or chief digital officer, put pricing on the map and ask the right question do I have the right licensing software? Do I have the right billing engine for and CPQ for subscription? Maybe not today, but you put that on your roadmap for the next three to five years. And it's exciting, I don't know about you, Kevin, but this is fascinating, I know you have courses on the SaaS pricing and subscription in your CPQ packages, in your CPP courses, right?
Kevin Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely. We have online pricing courses on those and a lot of some other issues there, but definitely on software as a service and looking at products and things like that. So there's a lot of great information out there that you can access. It can help you along this path as well.
Stephan Liozu: Great last but not least, and already we talked about this. We've seen through the covid, you know, earthquake, lots of companies struggling with selling and just the restaurant business, for example, we had to set up very quickly e-commerce pick up, you know, just as an example. But lots of companies got caught by surprise, and they had to develop e-commerce capabilities very, very quickly to be able to respond to customer demand because they had no choice. But generally speaking, omnichannel strategies have been around for a few years or decade, and there is a huge component to pricing here. If you look at item number four here, the pricing implications because now it's fully automated and it's online. So there's no more manual someone with a calculator. And in Excel and then sending an email, there is no more call for pricing on the website. There is like automated. And by the way, if you're selling through agent distributors, the website e-commerce platform Amazon, like I said, you can have 16 different price levels, so you have to harmonize and structure your pricing. So the engines that I mentioned here on the right are just the beginning. You know, the data platform, the offer optimization engine, price optimization engine, CPQ. I mean, this is a tremendous area, but this is the future because no company wants to be caught by surprise in a few years again with another disruption, and then they have to struggle.
Kevin Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely, and we're not going back to pre 2019 I know a lot of us think that, hey, as soon as this is over, we'll go back to old ways of doing business. But generally we only go one direction and once things get easier and more automated like that, they're just going to continue to do so. So as far as the e-commerce and omnichannel and the challenges and approaches therein, that's just one where you have to adjust and move forward and meet what the market is demanding on that one.
Stephan Liozu: Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is why we created that book, that book is an industry book with lots of contribution from Mr. Kevin Mitchell, but also pricing software vendors, pricing consulting companies, practitioners and thought leaders on why the CEO needs to pay attention now, why it is pricing prime time. And some of these trends are discussed. But also there's one chapter on all the nuggets of impact that were published on pricing, so you could use that to convince the c-suite. But focusing on these trends and why this is a business issue, it's not a pricing issue. Pricing is here to support the business transformation and why this is important. And you know, we need armies of evangelists. We need to create the great stories. But right now, this is our time, right, Kevin?
Kevin Mitchell: Yeah, absolutely. And Stephan did a great job editing and putting this book together, and I've talked to a handful of PPS members that basically have bought it and just slapped it on their CEO's desk if they'll let them. And I think it's a great call to action. It's got a lot of great information about some next steps. And this is one, you know, hey, we're in November now. So with the holidays coming up, a great holiday gift for you and yours, but especially for your CEO.6
Stephan Liozu: Yeah and your CFO and your CMO.
Kevin Mitchell: No doubt.
Stephan Liozu: But anyway, it was a pleasure. You know, these trends are reality. You know, this is the new way of doing business in the next 5 to 10 years. So now is the time for us to make some noise to reach the c-suite and show them the trends and how we can help. PPS is here to help with great capabilities as well. Kevin, I'll let you conclude and and thank you.
Kevin Mitchell: Stefan. Thanks so much. Always have the always a great opportunity and a great pleasure to talk with you. Thanks very much to the PROS team, everyone. Please check out their offerings as well.