Using Web Data to Fuel Dynamic Pricing

Presenter: Barry Graubart, Vice President Product Strategy, Connotate

Moderator: Gina Cerami, Vice President of Marketing, Connotate

Date: October 2, 2013

Presenters

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Barry GraubartVice President of Product

Strategy

Gina CeramiVice President of

Marketing

About Connotate

• Headquartered in New Brunswick, NJ, with offices in Irvine, CA and London, UK

• Developed by world-class scientists at Rutgers University and the University of Southern California

• Portfolio of patents for applying machine intelligence to Web data extraction and monitoring

• Strong financial backing: .406 Ventures, Castile, Prism Ventures

• Current Connotate formed through acquisition of Fetch Technologies in 2012

Marquee Clients

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What Connotate Does in Other Industries: Transform Web Data into High-Value Assets

• Online ad stats reporting• Competitive intelligence• News aggregation• Background check• Price optimization• Investment research• Market research• Regulatory updates

• Sales intelligence• Business risk assessment• Data directories• Aggregate construction bids• Supply chain monitoring• Brand monitoring• Voice of the Customer• Social media monitoring

Some of Our Many Use Cases:

Where Connotate “Fits”

• Connotate is an expert in automating Web data monitoring and extraction• Our solution is the “automation engine” for some of the world’s leading innovators in related industries• News and publishing – the Associated Press, Thomson Reuters, Edmunds

• Finance – Nasdaq, Lipper, Dow Jones, Alacra

• Retail – Shopzilla, O’Reilly

• Connotate is enabling technology for gathering pricing intelligence from the Web• We are not a pricing platform or a consultancy

• We extract precise data to inform your in-house pricing team and/or pricing and analytics applications

• Our customers include manufacturers, retailers and distributors

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Topics for Today’s Discussion

• The challenge:• Extract pricing intelligence accurately and at scale

• As often as YOU need to

• Our value proposition

• How Connotate does this

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The Challenge

The Pricing Intelligence Challenge

• Customers use the Web and smart phones to get up-to-the-minute pricing intelligence• Empowered customers dictate the prices they are willing to pay

• They see the prices of your competitors/manufacturers/distributors

• The Web has pushed customers to think about price first

• The data volume is enormous and constantly changing• You need to know when competitors raise or lower their prices

• You may also need local pricing – this creates a scale problem

• How can you capture all of this data accurately, quickly, affordably?

• The old “agency” model doesn’t work today• You can’t afford to wait hours or days for pricing intelligence

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What Can You Do?

• Adopt your customers’ same “pricing intelligence” tactics – extract prices from the Web, in near real time• Perform product-by-product comparisons• Compare prices in specific geographies• Make better decisions about which prices need to move up or down

• Use automated Web data extraction technology to gain control over the pricing intelligence-collection function• Collect the price data you need, when you need it• Inform sales, marketing, pricing and product management on an ongoing basis

• Use a resilient solution capable of handling the complexity of accessing websites today 10

Polling Question: How Do You Obtain Pricing Intelligence Today?

How are you currently obtaining pricing intelligence?

We contract with outside agencies for pricing strategy/intelligence

We use scripts or scrapers to automate collection in-house

We are manually collecting pricing data from the Web

We are not collecting pricing from the Web but we plan to in the future

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The Connotate Value Proposition

The Connotate Value Proposition

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What Connotate Does for Pricing IntelligenceConnotate automates pricing intelligence gathering:• Highly scalable data retrieval system• Grab “just the changes” or full extract• Filter by zip code, product category, SKU, etc.• Delivered in XML, CSV or any format

More timely, scalable and customizablethan agency services

Informed decision-making to maximize profits!

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Optimize prices – grow profits

Polling Question: For what purpose do you use pricing intelligence?

Benchmarking

Price matching

Distribution chain intelligence

Other

Workflow Options

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Option 1: Traditional pricing workflow

Pay 3rd party to collect/analyze data You wait for reports

Option 2: Connotate workflow – you specify what you want to collect and how often you want data.

Access Web page Transform Data Feed BI Apps

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The Connotate Workflow

Example: Pricing Flow Diagram

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Step 1: Data Inputs and Configuration

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Extract:• Product• Item #• Availability• Price• Category

Ignore:• Ads, etc.

Step 2. Web Data Transformed

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Clean, clear, consumable data

The Power of Automated Change Detection

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Connotate can detect new items and price changes and deliver “just the changes” or highlight the changes within the data set.

Case Study #1: National Hardlines Retailer• Challenge/Opportunity

• Obtain more timely visibility into competitors’ pricing – at the national and local levels – to support dynamic pricing

• Reduce dependency on expensive pricing reports (updated weekly)

• Solution• Monitor competitors’ websites daily to obtain timely pricing intelligence at both the national and local levels

• Business Benefit• Increased market share, moving up in national rankings – optimizing pricing by making decisions based on timely data

• Reduce cash outlay for pricing report subscriptions22

Case Study #2: Appliance Manufacturer (Supplier to Big Box Retailer)• Challenge/Opportunity

• Obtain a “360 view” of products through the entire distribution chain to optimize product positioning, pricing and branding strategy

• Solution• Use automation to extract data from competitors websites daily to gain visibility

• Business Benefit• Retaining channels, ensuring repeat orders with well-informed pricing and product enhancement strategies based on continual access to pricing and product reviews at the retail level

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Appliance Manufacturer: Extract Data and Reviews from Web Pages

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Extract:• Product ID• Specs• Price• Ratings• Comments

Ignore:• Ads, etc.

Appliance Manufacturer: Web Data Transformed

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• Product• Product ID• Price• Specs

• Product• Product ID• Rating• Comments

Polling Question: The Value of Automated Web Data Collection

Would an automated Web data extraction process help enhance your pricing intelligence function?

Yes – we are automating this now but we could improve our processes

Yes – we are planning to automate the collection of pricing data soon

No – our plans to automate price data collection are not immediate

I need more information before deciding

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Scope Your Project: 5 Steps

Scoping Your Project: Steps to Success1. Decide which Web sources will provide

the best pricing data to support your decision-making

2. Select the product categories and/or specific products you would like to price-match

3. Determine the frequency of collecting price changes and how often you’ll need a full data refresh

4. Carefully consider the types of data formats you’ll need (CSV, XML, etc.)

5. Contact the experts at Connotate to help you walk through the details of each step

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Q & A

Connotate will email a link to this presentation as well as a copy of the slides to you within 2 business days. If you have an immediate need, please email us at info@connotate.com or call (+1) 732-296-8844.

We invite you to attend our upcoming webinars on competitive intelligence:

“Aggregating Product Reviews to Optimize Product Positioning”Wednesday October 9, 2013 – Noon ET

“Capturing News and Competitive Intelligence from Niche Sites”Wednesday October 23, 2013 – Noon ET

For more information, visit www.connotate.com or www.connotate.co.uk

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