As shifting trade policies reshape the global landscape, EMEA businesses must navigate an era of volatility with agility and foresight. This insightful discussion uncovers the complexities of US market interactions, addressing key concerns around trade barriers while spotlighting how modern pricing platforms empower companies to adapt, thrive, and seize new opportunities. Don’t just react, strategize for sustained success in changing economic climate.
Key Takeaways:
- Understand the complexities from trade turbulence and their impact on EMEA businesses.
- Identify practical strategies to overcome trade barriers and market volatility.
- Learn how digital pricing platforms drive adaptability and growth.
- Gain actionable insights for ensuring business resilience.
Speakers:
Nick Boyer – Senior Director, Strategic Consulting, PROS
Randy Jagt – Partner at Deloitte Consulting
Full Transcript
Okay. Hi. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this webinar where we’re gonna talk about navigating trade turbulence for resilience and growth. But first of all, some, some housekeeping. So the webinar is being recorded, and the recording is going to be available after the after the webinar. At the end of the webinar, there’ll be time for some questions and answers at the end. So if you have a question, please enter it using the little question icon at the top right hand corner of, of your screen, and then we’ll get to those, towards the end of of the webinar. Okay.
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So first of all, some introductions. So so my name is Nick Boyer, and I lead the strategic consulting team for for pros in EMEA, which is which is basically our presales team. I’ve been with PROS for for fourteen years now and been involved in lots of different kind of pricing implementations with lots of different types of companies.
And I’m delighted to have an expert on the webinar with me from a kind of valued partner of ours, Deloitte, we’ve worked with, over a number of years now, an excellent partner, and a great partner from Deloitte in Randy. Randy, would you like to, introduce yourself, please?
I have to, Nick, and thanks for having me on this, yeah, very interesting webinar.
I’m Randy Jagt. I’m a strategy partner with, Deloitte. I’m a Deloitte baby. This is my twenty third year with, Deloitte.
I’ve always been focused on commercial excellence and pricing. And as such, we’re happy with partnership that we’ve got together with, PROS. How do we really help our clients both in the B2B and the b to b to c, space to boost their pricing capability by not only selling the right prices, but also boosting technology enablement. So quite happy to now also share how we how we leverage this in these very turbulent times.
So that’s, looking forward to the rest of this webinar.
Okay. Great. Thanks, Randy. And I’ve checked with Randy just before the webinar started, and he’s convinced me he’s not on a boat and he’s not on a spaceship. That is truly his home office background that was it we’re seeing there. So so there we go. So we’re having, a fire I think we call them a fireside chat today.
It’s actually summer now, so I’d call it a fire pit side chat maybe. It is it’s kind of to be more in tune with the season. We’re delighted to have you with us, as we discuss one of the key challenges facing many companies today. And that’s the kind of the turbulence or or volatility, if you like, that seems to be kind of almost a constant in our business lives these days. You know, whether it’s shifting global trade policies and whatever Trump has tweeted, overnight, whether it’s geopolitical tensions, climate change, even lots of things like that causing supply chain disruptions, it’s like volatility has become the the new normal. And so this this webinar, aims to understand the current landscape, talk about the current landscape in a little bit more detail, and then explore how companies can become become more resilient to to face the future, and kind of ride the waves of turbulence, in a more efficient way going forward.
So, with that, let’s get into the detail. And, Randy, you deal with a lot of different companies, and it’s been a turbulent start to the year. I think we can all agree. What’s been the the impact out there? Kind of what what are you seeing with the companies that you’re working with?
Yeah. Very happy to share, Nick. And I think stating it’s a turbulent year, I think it’s almost an understatement. I, did a count yesterday of all the, yeah, announcements on tariffs, but also the the poll setting, the legal intervention, the responses, etcetera.
We’ve had over fifteen, major issues and announcements taking place in just a period of four months. It’s this is unreal. This is this amount of change and, yeah, diversity almost of, yeah, which course are we taking, which direction is it heading, what’s the impact, etcetera. It’s just almost uncanny.
And in a way, what I hear back from a lot of client executives, you know what? I give up. I have no clue where to navigate. That’s in a way of being in my own personal cockpit, here.
Yeah. Is north? Is it east? Is south? Is west? You know what? Let’s just keep doing what I’m doing, and let’s see what’s the true impact.
And in a way that’s ignoring what’s happening, which is a strategy on its own, but it’s not a great strategy because what we also see as part of, Deloitte and I’ve seen that we support our clients with, this is real. It is having real impact. We’re already noticing price inflation taking place in the US with higher price for especially goods coming out of, China. We are already seeing supply chain disruptions taking, place.
We’re seeing, expected, yeah, declines and, yeah, export levels, especially in the, yeah, categories that are now, yeah, getting impacted including steel, aluminum, but also the automotive sector.
This impact is very real, and it’s not going away. And by the way, a big part of this is tariffs.
It’s not only tariffs. We also see the same impact as other supply chain disruptions are taking effect. We see the Red Sea disruption that is severely being impacted, causing ship delays because, of course, the Houthi rebel attacks that keep on going. We see the Panama Canal, getting constraints because of the heavy droughts that took place.
Also, Chinese harbors are, yeah, causing massive, delays because of productivity and capacity, yeah, declines, which are impacting all goods, transfer. So I would say, and you already mentioned it, Nick, this is very much a new normal. It’s a new normal of just massive disruption, but also massive uncertainty in how to navigate this.
And that’s in a way, how to deal with it. Well, what we see a lot of companies doing are two things.
One, how do I get fit for growth? How do I acknowledge that the only way to, yeah, positively be ready is to actually take a very close look at my own my individual company and how do I get fit. And that’s why we see a lot of companies embracing restructuring, optimization, realignment of their capabilities to be ready to navigate this very turbulent time.
And that’s, in a way, that’s an absolutely right strategy to take because it’s in your control.
Never waste so so good crisis. Take that momentum and opportunity, and, yeah, make sure that you’re ready for the future. So absolutely one critical strategy to undertake.
The other strategy is embrace your heart of the business.
Get very close on how to make money in these turbulent times. Who are your most important customers?
How can we optimize our service levels? But also take a very close look into the operation, the supply chain, etcetera.
Am I performing in the best and optimal way, or do I need to get smarter, more in control, etcetera?
And then the final part, yeah, let’s get real.
Is the strategy that I developed two, three years ago a bit too optimistic?
Is it resilient enough for these very turbulent times? Do we still see the growth opportunities the right that we identified, or do we need to become more real with there’s going to be increased cost, there’s going to be even more disruption.
How can I make the right strategic choices to secure my future? And should I maybe do a strategy refresh to make sure I’m resilient for the future? So those would typically be the kind of three tactics that a lot of, yeah, our clients are, embracing.
And so it’s yeah. This is it is truly a new reality. It’s very dynamic, and it’s forcing companies to reflect, rethink, and react in a way. But maybe on that, point, Nick, also keen to hear your point of view on what are those most common challenges to now overcome? What’s kind of front and center for companies to, yeah, to face off in responding to all this turbulence?
Yeah. So I think, so first of all, like you’ve already mentioned, the the first big issue is the the uncertainty out there. So, uncertainty over where things are gonna end up, first of all, which makes it difficult for companies to be kind of, strategic and the the kind of the taco effect. I like kind of that term of, you know, Trump always chickens out.
So how will it actually end up is is kind of an interesting thing that that companies are considering. But but for European companies, especially, I think we’re seeing, that they’ve got two things to consider. Any imports, and how they’re impacted, and exports into the US and how they’re gonna be impacted. And so, the key challenges that the the the companies face are understanding, how big is the impact, and therefore, how how do I need to to react to it.
And so if we look at imports, first of all, the key question is, well, what proportion of my total costs, are impacted, and which products are materially affected as a result. And so are there alternative suppliers? Because, that’s not just for tariffs, for just but just for fundamentally unstable times, it’s important to have alternative suppliers for all of your core products. So so these are the kind of the challenges that the company’s facing, at the moment and almost ongoing questions around, should they absorb costs or should they pass them on to their end customers?
And from an export’s perspective, a similar thing. So how you know, obviously, how much are they impacted? What what percentage of revenue of margin is potentially going to be impacted?
And and then considering different alternative strategies. So so maybe they’re in a position like the steel industry have been to replace that margin by by seeking alternative markets.
Maybe they’re in a position where, for example, US is so important to them that they want to localize more production in the US, which, you know, some car manufacturers have been declaring they’re doing like BMW and Volkswagen.
And it’s also an opportunity, for sub companies to to consider their their customs value strategy because, obviously, tariffs are calculated based on the customer’s to get the customer’s value to to get to the landed cost in in the country. And so if tariffs increase significantly, maybe more investment in an optimal strategy for lowering the customer’s value is is is a realistic approach, and a good investment.
And then finally, challenges is being able to keep on top of these real time tariff adjustments as they’re going through and kinda changing on a weekly basis and and having the the processes and systems in place to, to be able to put those into effect, in almost real time.
So so, Randy yeah. So that’s that’s basically, I think, that some of the key challenges that we see kind of customers customers, are kind of facing out there at the moment.
Yeah. Maybe, Nick, I love it. And, again, it’s reflective of these times. You need to be active on almost all fronts. Be conscious of, yeah, what alternatives do you have, which should you activate and, yeah, and mobilize.
Maybe if you deep dive a bit more on specifically pricing, strategy, and customer relationships, any additional focus point there or, quick wins to to engage on?
Yeah. Well, I think, so it, when when this when this turbulence volatility like this, it it does it does impact pricing strategies quite considerably or can do. Right? So first of all, I mean, we’ve obviously talked about the impact on cost, which is a core component in most pricing strategies. I mean, even value based strategies.
So it’s the ability to calculate the impact on the, on the total cost by product is the first important step.
And then the the impact on the competition. So because that can change your competitive positioning. So, you know, the competition may, you know, positioning. So, you know, the competition may, for example, input, goods from from different countries and therefore not be impacted by by tariffs as much, different supply chains.
They may manufacture locally, etcetera. So so the competitive positioning is kinda changing all the time.
So it’s important to to to stay on top of that and adjust competitive based pricing strategies accordingly if necessary.
And it affects affects value based pricing strategies as well, I think, as well because if the competition situate if a competitive situation is changing, you know, my customers are looking at the value of my products in relation to what they can buy from my competitors. So we even need to consider value based pricing strategies as well.
And so having the ability to to do what if scenarios and play out different strategies and be able to understand the impact of this is is kind of really important.
And then customer relationships and how how we communicate the resulting price changes to customers, I think, is is really important.
So price transparency, I think, is really important in terms of, you know, whether we whether we pass on the cost or we absorb them to to keep our customers informed, in terms of how we’re approaching these challenges, and reassure them that any actions we take are not kind of arbitrary. They’re they’re they’re kind of as a result of, some well thought through strategies where we’ve tried to, do everything possible to avoid price increases. And so, therefore, we need to build trust by communicating proactively, talk about any hedging initiatives that we’ve taken, cost control strategies, etcetera, to make sure that we maintain that that that that customer trust, I think is is important. And I think from from a customer relationship point of view, even if there’s no impact, that may be also an opportunity to promote the European origin, for example, of our products and use that as as as kind of part of our as as part of our value messaging.
So, Randy go ahead.
May maybe before, go to next topic, I love what you mentioned. It resonates really well. It it makes me think of the time when we were in, COVID, which feels like ages ago, but we had this very similar situation with, again, supply chain shocks, closing down of, borders, how to get into control again, which you need to have full transparency on what indexation you can actually pass through. But you also need to become more strategic on which customers are your most valuable.
Which one do you start to embrace and work together to deal with this end to end value chain shock side. It’s also great opportunities to, well, get even stronger customer relationships in place by really teaming up and, yeah, form this stronger bond by, one, providing that level of transparency, but also, two, working together. How do we innovate and navigate ourselves out of this and best handle this? So absolutely.
Yeah. And consider you’re loyal customers. Right? I think that was important in things like, you know, the supply chain issues that that that arose when the Ukraine war broke out. So it’s not just about maximizing revenue. It’s about thinking carefully about loyalty and about long term strategic goals as well in terms of how we react to this this volatility and these changes that are happening out there.
Okay.
So on that topic, Randy, how how are you helping companies to cope and kind of build more resilience against this type of volatility?
It’s, it’s a daily, twenty four hour job, in a way, Nick. It’s I think resilience is the, I would say, the magic or the number one word of twenty twenty five. We need to become resilient. Not only because of the trade turbulence, but also more of the, yeah, longer significant impact that we see coming from climate change, geopolitical tension, etcetera. How do you become resilient?
I would say three things really critical where we help a lot of companies, with. One, how do you get in control? As already mentioned, you need to be transparent, which is not only your pricing, your cost to serve, your supply chain. It’s also impacting what’s your transfer price or your tax position on this.
How do you work with this in terms of hedging? What is the regulatory landscape where you can or cannot, do around that is? So almost taking all those variables into account to, yeah, make the right decision and actions to take and to further optimize. And this is where at Soloid, we’re a multi service provider.
We’ve got a massive tax team. We’ve got legal team. We’ve got advisory team, etcetera. We can really help a lot of companies on that bring all that knowledge and perspective together and to ultimately make the right, yeah, decisions on how to navigate to this.
So so that’s one. Really getting control and with the right level of insight.
Two, it is about decision making.
And that decision making is now translating into core capabilities like inventory, optimization, cost to serve, but also the commercial, space. Who do you serve? To what extent? What are safety, stocks?
How do you get almost real time decision making and more controlled power set up to, yeah, make sure you’re on the ball when things change.
And so this is where we’re actually now getting a lot of, yeah, projects and opportunities to you know what? Yeah.
We were good when, yeah, before, yeah, twenty twenty five.
It’s not enough from twenty twenty five moving onwards. We need to boost this capability. We need to get smarter. We need to get more holistic in our decision making, and we need to need to get faster with it. And so that’s the second topic on how do you boost this decision making capability.
Three is that that is basically dynamic.
Some core capabilities like dynamic fulfillment or planning and sales and operation side, those level capabilities need an upgrade. We need to get better in how we plan things, how we run down scenarios, how do we optimize fulfillment, etcetera.
We basically need to have the first two that I mentioned on getting into control on the decision making.
We need to automate that Because at this moment, no human being can comprehend all of these variables. We need the right technology and enablement to help us with that. And so also there, we’re seeing a lot of requests and, support needed to you know what? We need to get better systems in place to help us, again, navigate this very dynamic at times. So that will be the third, yeah, topic where we’re helping a lot of companies to become resilient.
And maybe on on that, side and maybe specifically on the technology and, of course, WebPros is famous, for our pricing management solution. Nick, are you seeing the same? Are you getting the same demand and requests coming out of the the industry?
Or Yeah.
So first of all, it’s great news to hear that people are thinking about, technology and as part of this, ability to to, to be ready. And I must say if it’s keeping you awake twenty four hours, Randy, you’re looking surprisingly fresh this morning. So, congratulations on you. But, but, yeah.
So we, we see, more and more companies and it really started with COVID. Because like you mentioned earlier, COVID was the first really big disruptor in terms of volatility. And then coming out of that, you know, we had a lot of companies come to us who used to just change their main customer negotiated prices once a year, and suddenly they were doing it six or seven times a year.
And and therefore, the old kind of manual processes in Excel didn’t really cut it anymore, and they needed to be far more dynamic and and far more resilient. And that’s that’s kind of what what pricing platforms, enable companies. Companies. They enable them to have agility at scale, if you like, to to quickly run through different scenarios and then execute their chosen strategies.
And there’s a number of capabilities that enable them to do that. And first of all, the first the first one is is analytics because you talked about the importance of of decision making. So having that transparency is really important into your your own, customer profitability and product profitability and understanding at the true net net level what your margins are with different products, with different customers, to have a solid basis, a a solid foundation, if you like, for your decision making. That’s something that the pricing platforms can can help with.
And then, and then configuring all this logic we talked about earlier so that we can quickly, do cost adjustment calculations because we’ve configured the logic for how we calculate our costs in in the platform. Having cost analysis at our fingertips so we understand how costs have been developing, And even being able to do things like calculating landed costs as well so we can quickly execute when when when, when tariffs change, when freight costs change, when any of those components that that make up our landed costs change is important.
And then, obviously, the bread and butter of of pricing platforms is is being able to execute pricing strategies in almost real time when things change so that you can realign your competitive positioning.
You can realign your value based strategies. You can recalculate all of your pricing strategies.
And things like currency, which we haven’t mentioned, but currencies have been moving quite a lot as well as a result of, of all this volatility.
And so having the ability to to build that into the platform, and very quickly do the appropriate currency conversions is is is an important part of pricing platforms as well.
And then AI, because AI is obviously very, good at detecting new patterns.
And when there is volatility, we’ve already talked about the fact that the new patterns happen. You know, relationships change, patterns change in in markets. And so AI is is is very good at, at detecting that, and we can maybe deep dive into that later.
And then scenario analysis. So so by product to market, having a pricing platform that enables, companies to explore different different strategies for reacting, different landed cost strategies, different assumptions around future costs and tariffs is something that can be played out in in pricing platforms.
And even better customer communication, so effect effectively executing mass price changes.
I mentioned that was really important coming out, of COVID, but it it can also potentially be important as we react to tariffs and and being able to put those out there in the market, very quickly and maybe change to more dynamic pricing formula as well, which we’ve seen some customers do. So instead of instead of negotiating fixed prices, they need to go negotiate more of a formula and then being able to execute on that formula on an ongoing basis when fundamental parameters of that formula change outside of of certain tolerances.
Yeah. So having the right plat pricing platform enables organizations, I think, to to kind of be ahead of the curve, enabling them to kind of respond in in in almost kind of real time to, to, to, to this kind of volatility.
So, they say that there’s kind of no cloud without a silver lining, Randy. So, are you seeing kind of opportunities for companies despite the current current trade environment at the moment?
I was actually looking outside, and it is cloudy, Nick. So, but there’s still a little bit of sun rays in between. So, absolutely. I think there are still silver linings and availability.
I would say the two potential, well, opportunity or upsides that I definitely noticed, I think one you already mentioned, it is Gen AI. And then I’m happy it’s kind of you can’t have any webinar or a session nowadays not talk about Gen AI, so here it goes. I would say Gen AI is absolutely an opportunity to unlock because it helps you to accelerate. It’s we’re now helping a lot of companies.
You know what? I want to boost my pricing capability, and I’m really keen to get smart on this. You know what? Instead of trying to do this myself and my people, let’s embrace, Adjantic dot ai, which basically is, yeah, develop agents, yeah, AI agents that will actually do a lot of the work for you and which will massively accelerate the decision making done by pricing and promotion managers based on real and, yeah, times when it’s up.
And so these agents will actually do the market research or the customer research. They’ll develop a negotiation strategy. They’ll look at what’s happening on the real time side. They look at inventory levels.
They analyze the cost to serve. Basically, you’ve got an agent for each individual research topic. And then with a supervisor that brings it all together and report back to the pricing or promotion manager, this will be my recommendation.
And this is unbelievable that this is almost jumping ahead in terms of maturity, yeah, curve, which I know a lot of companies, yeah, are eager to embrace. And so I think that would really help also in these turbulent times. There’s no such thing as a single truth or a single dimension, how we take all of these multidimensional insights into account when making, yeah, the right decisions. So I think that’s truly a enabler of these times, which will help a lot of companies.
I think the second is, yeah, also recognizing, yeah, is my product portfolio future proof?
And in a way, Nick, you already mentioned it.
This these times are forcing us to look into alternatives.
Are we having the right, yeah, supply, the right materials, the right ingredients for successful recipes and products and formulas, or should we start to optimize? And those are typically areas like product life cycle management or product innovation management, etcetera.
Those topics are becoming front and center because, again, it’s a hard truth.
Yeah. It’s going to be a very turbulent time in the next decade with not only the trade turbulence, also climate change, geopolitical, shifts, etcetera.
How do we become future proof? And so your product portfolio, your range, your assortment are become critical levers to optimize.
And that again creates also new opportunities.
Hey. With this alternative mix or alternative ingredients, I can actually become more efficient, or I can add much more value to my product. And that creates commercial opportunities to work together with the clients to actually jointly make a step forward.
Pricing is a key aspect of it because these innovations, they need to be positioned in the right way. Do you position them at a very high price or at a low price to boost adoption and and scale?
Or do you actually, yeah, leverage other product portfolio to incentivize, yeah, counter shifts, etcetera? So the kind of pricing tactics and strategies that they are a critical enabler of making these innovations successful.
So those two I would see as front and center for a lot of companies to, well, to embrace again in these dynamic times. But, yeah, maybe touching on the massive and beautiful area of data and AI, Nick, any additions, to this?
Yes. So, so and we we’ve discussed the the type of volatility, or the type of volatility we’ve discussed can impact our competitors in lots of different ways, and what was once a competitive price may no longer be a competitive price. What you just talked about there, Andy, as well as in terms of bringing new products to market, or changing the content of existing products, the value proposition. So there’s lots of kind of changes happening there that I think can be very difficult for pricing teams to get on top of, especially if they’ve got a a fairly significant product portfolio.
So this is resulting in a lot of kind of different patterns emerging in markets.
So for example, for a list price, it can impact price elasticity as customers assess the price changes that I’m making in relation to to what my competition is doing.
And for a negotiated price, it can change my win rate probability for the same reasons. And it’s so it’s impossible for pricing teams to really stay on top of of all these nuances, if you like, and detect some of these changes. But that’s where AI, especially neural networks, is perfect at detecting these patterns and providing kind of real time feedback loops loops to to to to generate price recommendations in real time. And so that so that our price right our prices can be influenced not just by how the underlying costs have changed, but on kind of real time feedback from the market in terms of how our prices are stacking up against the competition. So I think that’s the first key thing, an area where we can where we can leverage AI. And then the second one you mentioned is is agents. So so pros, we’ve just had our, Outperform conference in Las Vegas, and we launched a number of agents in that conference.
And agents and I consider them really as, kind of, electronic assistance, if you like, that can help us with specific things. And so one thing they can help with is is identifying, looking for key things in the underlying data and notifying us, when those things happen. So for example, if margins drop below a certain point or, if I’m suddenly losing volume with certain products in certain markets, Having an agent that’s looking, out for me on a proactive basis and and notifying me of these things, especially in volatile times, I think, is is is really, really important, not to mention then using agents to understand how I can react to to things and help with me with my pricing strategies, help me with my rebate strategies, etcetera. So, yeah, I think I think we’re gonna see a lot more of agents in twenty twenty five and beyond just because it really, it helps ensure that we can rapidly respond to volatile environments as well, I think.
Okay. Okay. We’re getting to the end of our, allotted time, Randy. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you very much.
Before we before we go to questions, do you have any kind of practical takeaways that we can leave our audience with?
Yeah. A couple actually. And it’s what I definitely sense for a lot of companies, it’s almost it’s almost too much. How do you, yeah, keep your head above water and not drown in all the dimensions, the things to do, the, yeah, the the turbulence that’s impacting, you.
And so, yeah, how do you navigate this successfully and embrace how it’s like attempting AI or the technology name and or decision making, etcetera? And I would I would almost say, well, two things to take into account. I think, one, keep focus on where’s the most value. And that’s in the past, it was really almost, yeah, grab your your your biggest accounts and re embrace with that and see how to grow together.
I would say nowadays, let’s also take a take a strong look at the the large middle space. The space where, you know what, this is still the biggest part of your revenue, side. It’s also a big part of where the revenue is coming up from and also ensures stability and diversity in a way of your customer, set.
How do you, yeah, develop the right strategies to make sure you stay close to them, serve them in the best way, but also in the most efficient and optimized area? Because that volume will also give you that level of stability and success that you desperately need in these times. So I would say take a really close look on where you’re playing and how you can be successful in that, site. That will be my number one.
Number two would be, be open for change. I think it’s thinking you can keep doing what you’re doing for last five or ten years or fifteen years, it’s not gonna cut it. Any company at this moment, any industry is getting disrupted.
And it’s getting disrupted because of freight, turbulence and and changing environment. It’s also getting disrupted by capability development, etcetera. And so you need to embrace, different strategies on moving from product to serve to solution side or boosting digital capabilities or embracing areas like Adjunctic AI, etcetera.
If you think you can wither the storm by staying well, your head down, only focus on what you’ve done in the last fifty years, it’s not gonna cut it, and you’re going to be this dinosaur in this massively changing environment. And so I think it’s be ready for change, embrace change, and, yeah, if you need to brainstorm and talk about it, well, contact Nick or contact myself. We’re have to, yeah, have a talk about it. Those would be my two key things.
Nick, can you have a question from your time?
I think just emphasize something you mentioned, where we talked a lot about decision making, making sure that you you can, you can execute data driven decision making. So having the processes and systems in place to dynamically generate different scenarios, whether it’s different cost scenarios, different sourcing scenarios, looking at your competitive analysis, and then being able to look at what if scenarios around different pricing scenarios, I think is really important. Understanding that that that having the transparency in terms of, how I’m currently performing in different markets with different products, I think, is really important. So having that data driven decision making platform and ability to execute on those decisions. And then also, as you’ve already mentioned, leveraging AI, to detect changing patterns, and kind of optimize my prices even if everything’s kinda changing around me on an ongoing basis.
Okay. Okay. Well, let’s let’s see if there are any questions.
We’ve we’ve got two questions. First one, how quickly can AI detect and react to market changes?
So so the speed of of which AI can adjust to market changes really depends on on on several factors.
But it can generally respond far faster than traditional systems or human driven analysis. That that’s the key thing.
Type of the type of AI I’ve kind of referred to in our chat here gets gets daily feeds of transactions, and so changes can potentially filter through within days. So so very quickly being able to respond to to kind of volatility, that’s that’s out there.
Did you want to add something to that, Randy? Sorry.
Yeah. Please. I would also say with AI, what a lot of people are underestimating is just the sheer, yeah, applicability of scale that AI can provide.
Analyzing the impact on a product is the same effort as analyzing impact on a thousand or a million products. It’s basically, you know, once you’ve got, yeah, the right setup, it can easily do so much bigger scale than any human being can cover. I think that’s one. The only one considering, it’s almost not, yeah, the discussion about availability or how real time it can be. It’s almost more what is your, yeah, in house capability to ask the right questions and train the AI with the right prompts and developments, etcetera.
It does take effort, yeah, for companies to make sure, well, are we getting the right, yeah, output? Because we’re actually well developing AI in the right way. So I would say that as a key consideration to take into account.
Okay. Thanks, Randy.
And one more question, which, is for you. I’m not sure if you already touched on it. What what do you see, as key success factors to navigate and become more resilient?
Yeah. So on that point and adding, yeah, besides the the points that I already mentioned, I think the key success factor is, yeah, also how do you make it real? At the end of the day, this is a capability development. You need to get the right, yeah, teams in place, work together, and this is where it has such a massive impact. How do you get all the stakeholders to sign up for that? And so for that, you’ll you do need to, well, ensure it’s also human change that we need to take into account, which includes mindset, way of working, responsibility, levels, etcetera. So definitely also take a very close look at, for example, target operating model or way of working, elements to ensure that this really gets adopted and, yeah, solidified into internal organizations.
So that will be my perspective. I’m not sure. Nick, any additions to that?
Well, it actually reminds me of something we talked about a lot about at events, coming out of of COVID. I think it’s kind of useful, on a ongoing basis to create multifunctional teams to constantly think about how to deal with what’s happening. So because we talked about, you know, potentially sourcing products from different places, going into different markets, developing new products, saving costs, etcetera. It’s it’s decisions that impact and require input from most functions in an organization. So having a multifunctional kind of task force, if you like, to really address some of these things, I think, is is potentially something that we could could the company could do on an ongoing basis to be as as resilient and as responsive as possible.
Okay. I think that’s that’s all we’ve got time for. Thank you very much, Randy. Thank you very much to your audience.
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Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Take care.