Pricing Data Analytics: The Hows and Whys with Armin Kakas

Armin Kakas is an expert in analytics, having lots of education in statistics, machine learning and A.I. He has an MBA, and he was a former VP of analytics at American Tire Distributors. He is also the founder of Revology Analytics, a revenue growth analytics consulting company.  In this episode, Armin talks about data analytics and its crucial role in pricing and in businesses as a whole.   Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Learn the importance of gathering and understanding data both in B2B and B2C setups Find out why pricing and price adjustments must be base on data and customer feedback and should never be done internally in a company Learn how to communicate and unite insights from both the points of view of business people and statistics people   “There needs to be a much smarter, much surgical way to manage discounts and really reward those customers that have the highest lifetime value or highest volume versus other things.”  – Armin Kakas   Topics Covered: 01:55 – How Armin got into pricing 03:35 – B2B vs B2C: Armin’s experience in applying pricing data analytics, and which one he prefers 05:57 – Armin’s insights on B2C based on data 06:46 – What is promotional effectiveness 07:34 – Products Armin used to promote on Black Fridays when he worked at BestBuy 09:09 – Why CPGs must have a strong understanding of the relationship between price and value 10:19 – Why companies should asses price and value based on customers’ response and not internally 13:08 – How businesspeople and statistics people shall communicate their insights with each other 18:41 – The most common problems Armin find when solving data problems for companies 20:06 – Why companies should have an “algorithm” that tells them how much to buy when a manufacturer offers big discounts 23:18 – Armin’s pricing advice 25:28 – Connect with Armin Kakas   Key Takeaways: “One of the easiest, quickest insights you can get is by figuring out which are the lowest ROI promotions that are not delivering any value for you or your customers or any of your channel partners, cut them, and reinvest it elsewhere in other growth areas of the company.” – Armin Kakas “I think that price-value curve tends to change, especially in CPG quite often. And so, doing that more often is really, really beneficial for companies. And doing it in the right way.” – Armin Kakas “All this unproductive inventory gathering dust in warehouses, clearance price optimization is a huge opportunity. Just really creating some automation and some dynamic methods to clear out the product that is tying up your capital and is actually lowering your productivity as well as your operating profit.” – Armin Kakas “When you ask the question, “What are some of the other areas that make a huge impact for companies?”, it is really things related to customer analytics, and that has two sides; One is providing insights… and then, the other side is providing actionable insights to the customers themselves.” – Armin Kakas   People / Resources Mentioned: Win Keep Grow: How to Price and Package to Accelerate Your Subscription Business – https://www.amazon.com/Win-Keep-Grow-Accelerate-Subscription/dp/1631954784 Impact Pricing: Your Blueprint for Driving Profits – https://www.amazon.com/Impact-Pricing-Blueprint-Driving-Profits/dp/1599184311   Connect with Armin Kakas: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arminkakas/ Email: [email protected] Website: https://www.revologyanalytics.com/   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mailto:[email protected]