All right, well. Hello and thank you all so much again for tuning into yet another episode of the Professional Pricing Society podcast. My name is Terrence and today we have a great guest with us who is going to be spearheading the conversation centered around turning pricing complexities into opportunities. And that guest is John Moss. He is the CEO of Flint Fox International, the intelligent pricing software provider with world class IP and pricing and revenue management.
An engineering graduate from Oxford University, John went on to become an economist in the energy industry before moving into the tech space where he has held a series of senior leadership roles. And fun fact about John, he is also trained to use explosive and radioactive devices, which is pretty cool if you ask. Me, John, do you mind telling me a bit about the business? What does Flint Fox actually do and how essentially does it all work?
Yeah, sure. So Flint Fox helps businesses that have got complex pricing and rebates to protect their margin increased profits. But the core of our offering is our pricing and rebate software solution that's we believe the fastest and most comprehensive pricing management solution on the market and that's supported by our experienced professional services team that will help install, configure customizer software to deliver immediate value to our customers.
We've been around for just under 40 years and our R&D team is based here with me in New Zealand and we have professional services and sales teams in each of North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. And essentially we're a rules based solution that delivers accurate pricing in real time. And it doesn't really matter how that price is requested and by
whom. When I look at that customer base, there are really three reasons why a business would use Flynn Fox. The first of those is to do what I call the foundations of pricing. And there's typically some issue with one of those things in our in our customers. And so it might be they've got complexity in the pricing that the ERP simply can't manage. We know that for many customers, complex pricing is a competitive advantage and we enable that strategy. The 2nd is around channels to market.
And so many customers are looking at different ways of getting product to market and their current pricing solution simply can't handle all of those channels. So whether that's through e-commerce, retail, point of sale, distributors, trade portals, other retailers, etcetera, we sort of solve that Omni channel complexity. That third reason is that their pricing solution is too slow. This is a pretty common one for us. They simply can't get pricing done quickly enough.
We know of customers that in the past when they run a daily price catalogue, it takes them over 40 hours. And so effectively that's that's pretty redundant. They can't get them done quickly enough. And so we have a high speed pricing engine, we calculate everything in real time. You know, our customers have all of those channels to market when when you scan a barcode at a point of sale, it's a real time calculation, a real time pricing. And so we solved that problem.
And then the following one that we do see quite a bit too, is that the customer has lots of ERP solutions and they want a single pricing solution that talks to all of those ER PS Often see that in companies with lots of acquisitions in the past where they've got multiple ER PS. And so that's, that's the last of what I call the foundations. The second reason that a customer uses is to streamline
their pricing operations. And, and that typically is where the customer's got lots of manual processes. This is where you see spreadsheets in use, which has a whole series of issues relating to cost and loss revenue. Second around streamlining is if they, if they offer rebates or commissions or receive rebates and commissions and they have concerns about the right amount of claims, then then we can help
with that administration. And then the last time we've seen a fair bit in the last couple of years as well is if the customer wants to use price optimization or CPQ, those solutions need lots of really accurate, robust data and we provide that. So we don't offer price optimization ourselves, but we work with, with partners that do. And, and we often see our, our solution used to, to give them really rich, accurate data to enable them to optimize prices for the customer.
And then the final reason that I see customers using US is simply visibility, visibility of margins. And we all know what's gone on the last few years in terms of input price increases, input cost increases. And so at both macro and granular levels, we can provide real time margin visibility. Our solution has both buy side and sell side pricing, so things you're buying and things you're selling. And so we can see true, true
margin. And so that those are those are the real reasons that that I see our customers using US. And so, yeah, we're pricing and rebase engine, we're very fast and we solve the whole raft of problems that customers are are experiencing. And as I say, we've been around for 40 odd years. People might not know that because we're down here in New Zealand, but we're we're well established with a really experienced team.
OK, good. Wow. You guys are kind of cover it all essentially which is which is amazing. You guys also our big in what's called intelligent pricing. Yeah. Yeah, kind of go in depth about intelligent pricing. Yeah. I mean, for us, we talk about intelligent pricing it it's really beneficial both in terms of saving cost and creating revenue.
And so if you think about the last few years, as I say with the, with the macroeconomic environment, rising inflation, input costs, what's really critical is to have that margin visibility. And that's where the intelligence comes in. If you're a, a distributor or a wholesaler that you're buying and you're, you're, you're collecting rebates or you're, you're selling to a retailer and paying out rebates, you have to understand all of that chain to
understand your margins. And so the fact that we've got a buy side, sell side solution, that's the intelligence. And then almost this reporting that we have within the solution means you can look at a macro level and a granular level. So if you want to see one of my margins by region, like products, by customer group, even at a product level, you can see that. But if you want to say, OK, for this particular product, customer, region, even store combination, what are my margins?
And you can do that with our solution. It's a very simple thing to do and you know, lots of attention on pricing in the current environment. And if you, if you don't have good data, you can't make intelligent pricing decisions. We, we know that traditionally RP systems can't cope. They don't provide that rich data. When you start using manual workarounds and spreadsheets, then you have data in different places. It's hard to title together to
get a true picture. And if you don't have that intelligence in your pricing solution, then we know that you're going to have errors. You know you're going to lose revenue, you're going to increase your costs. We've just some route done some research with PPS and and we know that 86% of businesses believe that they have missed out on profit as a result of the inability to quickly adjust prices. And that's that's a testament to to the need for intelligent pricing in this environment.
And we know from other research with Forrester, on average businesses spend about 71 hours a day managing pricing, which is sort of eight and nine people that are deep in spreadsheets. And all that means is you're increasing your cost and introducing the chance of error. And so intelligent pricing to us is a robust solution that's rules based, that doesn't have errors, is highly accurate and informs really good pricing decisions. Good.
That's awesome. I'm glad you kind of laid it out like that and kind of broke it down just for listeners to be able to understand it, you know, a little bit better. How, how, how can intelligent pricing, you know, kind of help recover, say, lost revenue a business may, may, may have? Yeah. And, and so I would contrast intelligent pricing with manual pricing. That's sort of the the the two ends of the spectrum. And so intelligent pricing effectively removes and replaces
manual pricing. If you have manual pricing, there's two things happen. It it means you've got people involved. So it's time consuming, it's costly, you're busy with those spreadsheets. And secondly, it's error prone. And we've seen this often and we see it in our own business as well, when we, when we have to use spreadsheets that you make errors, you make mistakes, and customers are very quick to tell you if you're charging them too
much. And you then have to go back and process the credit notes, resume invoices, and that that again, incurs a bunch of cost, but they rarely tell you if you're under charge. And so you lose revenue. And that goes back to that. That's a stat that I said where, you know, businesses believe that they're losing money or losing profit because they have manual processes. And so intelligent pricing really stops both of those
situations. It introduces accuracy, it introduces a standard process and it removes the need to have people in spreadsheets. You can redeploy those resources to do something that's more value added. And so effectively you get operating cost reduction and increase revenues through accuracy or invoicing. The other side of that is if you're a business that offers or receives rebates, there are similar challenges.
If you have a process that's manually driven, what happens is you have all of this time to try and get rebate approval or Commission approval. You risk paying too much on commissions or not claiming enough on rebates. And so the automation of that process does two things, increases accuracy and the sharing of data through through systems means you get much quicker claim acceptance. So you get your rebates much more quickly and your cash flow
improves. And so intelligent pricing is is the complete opposite of manual pricing, reduces operating costs because you can redeploy resources. And secondly, you have much more accurate pricing, a much smaller claims department and much faster rebate collection. You know, when you think about businesses, you know, lost revenue, let me ask you this as well.
What what implications does the current business landscape have on pricing And you know, what are some of the biggest challenges you kind of alluded to a little bit, but what are some of the biggest challenges in pricing that you have may have come across or may be experiencing at the moment? Yeah, it's really topical. I mean, I think anybody in the pricing industry the last 3-4 years has seen a much heightened
focus on price and pricing. For many years in the year of low inflation, pricing was a fairly straightforward situation, whether you have a an annual price increase or a quarterly price increase, it wasn't that hard to to process those because there wasn't much going on in terms of inflation. But the last four years sort of from COVID onwards, all of those supply chain shocks, year of high inflation, input cost changes meant that pricing becomes much more important.
And what it means is you've got to focus much more on price to maintain margins. And now we're going through this phase where inflation is slowing. We're getting a little bit closer to to normality as we know it, but there's still the odd shot coming through. So the Red Sheep Sea shipping attacks have an immediate effect on supply chain and prices. We see, we see freight prices increasing. We see disturbances, of course,
but they are diminishing. And so we're now in a period having been through those four years where there were lots of price increases across the board. People are more aware of those now. So every single price increase is scrutinized. You see it in the press all the time. And not only that, but demand is, is reducing in some areas.
And so if you're in pricing, you've got this real challenge about how do I set prices that will maintain margins and maintain or grow profits, but also maintain that the sales numbers and, and the overall numbers. And so it's, it's a, it's a really hard gig right now being in pricing because there's so much going on and there's so much scrutiny that you hear it all the time.
The words of greed, flation, stagflation, shrink flation as, as, as packet sizes diminish, but price remains the same. And so as a pricing person, you just got to be more aware of technology and more aware of solutions and, and be more aware of the, the customer sentiment. You can't, you can't increase prices by double digits now that you could do maybe 1-2 years
ago. You still have to increase prices to main margins, but they're going to be much more thoughtful and you need to support them in solid data. So again, the intelligent pricing solution that gives you robust data to make good decisions. And, and then of course, you have to factor in what's going on in your particular industry and market in the region. And so, yeah, the the challenge is very definitely price setting in an environment where there's intense interest on the prices
that you set. That's good to know. When you mention you have to kind of be in the know as far as technology is concerned and just kind of be in the loop and just aware of what the current market may be showing or what the, you know, trends are at the moment to help you adjust. Like you said before, you know you can probably make a make a price adjustment by double digits, but now compared to before where you that might not have been that feasible.
But you know what, when it comes to trends, what trends have you kind of seen in response to, you know, the growing demand for precision pricing? Yeah, Yeah. I think, I think continuing that that last answer. And so for pricing professionals, for people in finance and marketing and sales, so knowing the environment, they're taking a much closer look at their own pricing systems and processes and trying to work out how they fit for per
person. So you know, when you look inside your own business and you, you look at how much is manual, how much is through our ERP or through our pricing solution, what can we see in terms of margin visibility And partly it's about the speed. So how quickly can you make a change? And so if, if your suppliers are changing their prices every week or every month, how quickly can you change your price and your strategy to make sure you
maintain the, the, the margins? And so you know, to, to maintain and grow profits, you've got to have both margin visibility and execution speed. Without both, it's, it's really hard to do that. And then, you know, beyond the systems, businesses are looking at the pain points. So, so where do they lose efficiency? Where do they have to resort to manual prices?
What's going on? What's, what's the failure in our system that means we've got to have a spreadsheet or a, some sort of document that, that that does that in, in manually. And what are the results of those on the bottom line? So I think there's over the last 3-4 years, there's been increased focus on the impact of pricing process on the bottom line. And then once they know that, and then it comes down to, OK, So what can we do to, to solve
those? And so I think there's been a lot more awareness within organizations of potential pricing technology to help solve those pain points, whether it's a solution like ours that's very much around pricing execution and rebate management, whether it's price optimization, whether it's CPQ, lots of businesses are looking at solutions from technology that can automate and deliver both intelligent and
precise pricing. Again, from that that PPS survey, we know that 50% of businesses use spreadsheets outside their ERP to manage pricing, which which we know introduces errors. We know that 46% of businesses say their pricing solution can't manage their rebate and pricing needs and 36% say they've got inaccuracy in pricing. And so we know that systems today aren't quite meeting the
needs. And I think we're seeing that generally across the industry that more businesses are looking for a bespoke pricing solution and not simply relying on their ERP pricing, which as is often the case, ER, PS are fantastic. They are necessary for, for running a business, but they're, they're, they have lots of different horizontal solutions that don't go very deep in functionality. And I think businesses and customers are realizing now they have to go a little bit deeper on pricing.
And then I guess the other thing is what, what it all means is businesses are very aware of the macroeconomic environment. They're looking for ways to improve, which is fantastic, and they're looking for greater control. Like in this environment, it's often hard to to retain control. And I think having a intelligent, precise pricing solution allows you to get more control over your business and to make better decisions going forward that will hopefully
maintain and grow your profits. All good to know. I do want to ask you one last question for for listeners, for those who are interested in learning more about Flint Fox and what you all stand for or maybe learning more about you in particular, where can they go to, you know, retrieve some of your resources or just to learn more about you guys? Yeah, so definitely go to our website flintfox.com. There you'll find a number of blogs and white papers and lots
of case studies. That's the best way to to find out about our business. As I said, we we're clear in our solution and what can offer. We know that we meet the needs of certain types of businesses are having both buy side and sell side means that we're fantastic the wholesale and distributors, but we're also used by a range of industries.
And so, yeah, we've got particular spaces where we've got lots of IP beverage distribution, food service, Med device manufacturing and our team has hundreds of years of experience between them. As I said, we've been around for 37 years. Our team are passionate about pricing and pricing technology and we worked across many different industries. And just as quick examples, MAPI, which is a global building products manufacturer. So we help them deliver on their complex pricing strategy.
Site one in the US is as a large landscape supply business, you know they had a real challenge when Omni channel pricing, getting all their stores, trade bars, e-commerce working together. And so we solve their problems for them. And then Coca-Cola in Africa have some pretty complex sort of local and cross-border taxes
they have to deal with them. And again, our pricing solution has lots of functionality that that's creates audit trails around pricing and that's been really useful with government agencies. And so if you go to our website, you'll see those case studies and you'll see a whole bunch of information through white papers and blogs that will help you understand what we do. OK, sounds good. Thank you so much. John Moss with Flintfox. For those who are interested, you can visit flintfox.com.
You can also learn more about PPS as well by visiting Pricing society.com and just to learn more about the different pricing opportunities and pricing trends and topics that are happening in today's market and in today's world. Until next time you all have a good one. Bye bye.