Daniel Antolin: You need to combine these, the strong part of the brain of pricing and the muscles of pricing, and that this needs to become one thing. It's not a sequential thing. First think of it and then actionate it, but then it becomes something which works together like a body. So it's not brain and muscles. It's like “bruscles.” It's something together. It looks maybe complex and it looks like a big mountain, but there is no point in the future where it's going to be more easy. It's the opposite. Nah, it's going to be more complex. Waiting for tomorrow or the day after is probably not the best strategy.
Barrett Thompson: Hello everyone. My name is Barrett Thompson. I'm the General Manager of Commercial Excellence at Zilliant, and I'll be your host for our podcast. I'm joined today by two guests from our strategic partner, Accenture. Daniel Linder, strategy principal director, pricing and commercial excellence, and Daniel Antolin, managing director, pricing and commercial strategy.
Daniel and Daniel, welcome to B2B Reimagined.
Daniel Antolin: Hi. Thank you for having us.
Barrett Thompson: To break the ice a little bit and help our audience get to know you. Can each of you share something about yourself that someone might not know if they took a look at your LinkedIn profile? Daniel L. How about you go first?
Daniel Lindner: Yeah, sure. So what I really like in my spare time is to renovate old houses. So I just finished a project on a medieval house that was built in 1420 [00:02:00] with four different apartments, and it was really a lot of work. So I did tiling, I did paving walls, and to me that's always very relaxing. It's just like a little bit like meditation, some very good ideas come up, when doing that kind of work.
Barrett Thompson: That's fascinating. Do you have a YouTube channel that shows the start to finish? I would love to see it.
Daniel Lindner: That would be a different story but maybe on the next podcast. We can talk about that.
Barrett Thompson: I look forward to it. Daniel.
Daniel Antolin: So in my case, I mean, one thing that you probably can tell about with my LinkedIn profile is that I live in, or I grew up in two worlds, the Spanish and the German, which has been always two sides of my heart.
So in my Spanish part makes me a very, although it's very family person, which probably is not so strong on my LinkedIn profile, but being a family person and spending time with my family is one of the main things. I have two little adorable daughters. My wife and I try to bring them into these two worlds of Spain and Germany.
Not easy to do, but this is one of the things that you probably can't see. And the other one is related to being [00:03:00] growing up in two cultures and I've been always super curious about other cultures which leads me to travel as much as I can. And I think I've been visiting almost at least 50 countries already.
Where I could spend time and it relates to my job because that's something I've been looking in my job too. So I think I had the chance to work already in like 30 different countries, I put on the ground working with the people on site throughout my career as consultant. So that's one of the things I really love doing, and I still do have to this day.
Barrett Thompson: Yeah, that's a rich experience and a family's a treasure, so thank you for reminding us of this. Well, I'd like to learn a little bit about your work at Accenture. Daniel A, why don't you share for a moment and then we'll come back to Daniel L.
Daniel Antolin: Well, so my role is actually, I'm basically the pricing and commercial strategy. I'm leading that team in Europe, but what I really do is, and what I try to help and support our clients with, like shaping the direction of their future pricing, which means it is a big part of [00:04:00] optimization and pricing as it has always been, but it's more like laying the foundations for future pricing.
And it has changed and we'll talk about this during the podcast, it's changed so strong that this is very, the very core of what I do with the team and I do it also with our family of pricing at Accenture. But it's not only strategies, all beyond that with a lot of data and AI, which is the foundation, and then a deep embedding in technology and process of the future.
So, that's basically my role and my job in Accenture.
Barrett Thompson: That’s very relevant, Daniel L.?
Daniel Lindner: So for the past 11 years, I'm following a passion for pricing and for the last two years, I'm with Accenture. I'm part of the European pricing team, and my specific focus is B2B pricing. So what I really love is developing pricing strategies and helping our customers on the pricing transformation journeys.
And what's for me also particularly important is that it's so easy to generate measurable impact with pricing by just pushing the right button. And I think we’re living in very interesting times because pricing [00:05:00] really has changed a lot with an incredible pace in the past months. You know, there's a lot of pressure from the market coming on that we see across industries.
We see strong cost fluctuations; we see distorted supply chains. We see eroding margin, posing a lot of new challenges to companies. But also on the other side, we see a strong evolution in new technologies like CPQ, like pricing engines. We see better availability of data and better ways to process the data based on AI-based tools.
And that's opening up totally new ways in pricing. And that's why I think it's really interesting to do pricing in current times.
Barrett Thompson: Well, we're so excited to have both of you on the podcast today. As you mentioned, pricing is always important, yes, but critically so right now in B2B with the economic times in which we're living, and so I'm looking forward to hitting on these themes that we've teed up, representing the known challenges that the companies face, and then spending perhaps the greatest part of our time focused on what they can do about it.
Because I'm sure among the three of us, we can [00:06:00] illustrate the amazing opportunities and breakthroughs that B2B companies have and must make to reach the pricing resilience that they really need for these future times. So let's kick it off with a first challenge. We mentioned the volatility, the changing times.
I hear from many businesses and many leaders to whom I'm speaking, they're seeking a price agility. They've already sort of figured out the world is changing around them. They must change in response to the world. Their price needs to track with that and align with that. So I want to ask the two of you.
Why is it so difficult for B2B companies to be agile in their pricing and what are the ramifications when they're not agile?
Daniel Lindner: I think we are talking about two totally different words in B2C and B2B. When we are looking about B2C first and take the example of a gas station, for example. So what they have really very dynamic, hyperdynamic pricing even.
That's differentiated, however, but we also see electronic price tags in retail stores coming up. So companies are able to change [00:07:00] prices several times per day. When we look to B2B, as you have mentioned Barrett, it's a totally different story. So by the B2C, prices are very dynamic, but not differentiated, so everyone pays the same price.
In B2B, we exactly have the opposite situation. So prices are very individual with very differentiated terms and condition schemes, and everyone pays a different price, but not dynamic at all. So what we see is that often many companies still do one price per year, often with kind of a scatter gun approach, adding 5%, 8% on the portfolio, but that's not very dynamic.
Also, price lists are sometimes even not even digitized. You still find some paper. They are not put into one consistent system, but are managed in, let's say, excel files. We also have contracts that are fixed terms over several years, and of course that's also very critical in current times. In current volatile times. So, many conditions are historically grown. Many discounts. And just this week I've talked to one customer and he has told me that the last time they have systematically reviewed their [00:08:00] customer conditions was in 2014. So this is really amazing and I think one key is also that even if you know what the target price should be, then you have to be able to process that into the systems very fast.
And this is something that does not happen. So the price needs to get into the web shop, to get into the ERP, needs to get into this CPQ system. The conditions need to get into the CRM and that often still takes months. And when you are able basically to implement the price, then it's outdated. And in times when costs are increasing and prices are increasing, that will definitely have a negative effect on your margin.
So margins will erode. And what we also see is that in times of falling cost and falling prices, you will of course lack level of competitiveness and will have to risk to lose business.
Barrett Thompson: Daniel A. as you reflect back on some of those key themes that we just talked about?
Daniel Antolin: I couldn't agree more. It's all touching all the important things where we have seen the B2B companies [00:09:00] struggling. It's not that I would add something, but I would put it in the perspective that put it in pictures where companies have been struggling a lot is on also, general agility is, first of all, understand what they need to do.
As Daniel said, if you had to do a price round every six months or every year, that process could be very hands-on, very manual. But now, since 2020, when you need to do that 5, 6, 7, 8 times a year, that becomes a pain point. But there is this pain. Because there's a decoupling from my point of view, between finding out what we need to do and then actually doing.
So the brain part of it has been. First of all, very simple in the past. It can be more sophisticated today with data and AI, we need to learn, or companies need to learn that this is the first challenge, so we need to be more precise and more careful in what we do. But then even then, we figure that out actually through the organization in there.
You said that through the systems to technology. That's the second challenge. And we have the feeling that sometimes brain and body in a company do not work [00:10:00] as a system, but they're decoupled, and this is one of the key challenges to become more agile. Be better founded in the decisions of better pricing and then in one block being able to actionate it throughout the company.
Barrett Thompson: If we go a little deeper on that, what are some of the obstacles or areas where obstacles occur to having that brain and muscle connected? Are there process issues? Are there resource issues? Are there systems and data issues? What have you seen?
Daniel Antolin: A little bit of both. The most obvious one would be of course, the lack of a consistent process and system or software and all the system embedding is not consistent and is not talking to each other. It's not embedded into overall architecture. So that's one, but it's not enough with that. So you need a governance model.
Who is going to decide about what? In pricing? You need a guidance, very clear guidance and governance in the pricing. What is a good price and what is not a good price? Where [00:11:00] do we want to go or do not want to go? And then, and over this, I was saying at the beginning, being able to admit that different ERP systems with different integration of things with different factors influencing the way we do pricing.
That has been in the past for sure, a barrier and a fear of companies. But if you think of it today, I mean, technology gives us definitely the option to connect this pretty easily. It's not that you need to have one system over everything, but you can connect different systems together and orchestrate the way they work.
And that's the beauty of it. And that is what will allow you to be more agile. So actually there's no reason why we should not tackle that at a company.
Daniel Lindner: I think that's exactly right. So what you'll see is many B2B companies have more than 100 pricing schemes in place for different products, for different countries, for different brands that has been grown over many years.
It's really a jungle of conditions that no one can really oversee anymore. And also they’re often not speaking the same language in one company. So if you're talking about a volume discount, then [00:12:00] sometimes it's granted on a gross level, sometimes it's granted on a net. You have different components that are used, and it's very difficult for also the headquarters, or let's say for central price management to really manage and to steer that jungle of different conditions.
So for many years, that was not so critical to have different systems in place, but for the last years, especially when everything becomes more volatile and also when customers becoming active internationally, more and more prices are more transparent with digitization and web shops. Customers are basically more and more connected.
They talk to each other. You can just not afford to have totally different prices between different countries and between different product lines that do not make sense and are not consistent. So there are even some customers that are irritated and other customers or dealers are trying to generate arbitrage by actively doing cross border business.
And what you really want to do is you want to find and close those loopholes and really stop gray market activities. That means it falls short to just optimize price for one country, but you always have to keep in mind that there is a bigger picture and you have to see the international [00:13:00] connections.
Barrett Thompson: Yeah I think this is a really interesting point. Sometimes when I run into B2B who are looking to take the next step, honestly. They're thinking about technology and systems, if you will, but only to automate the process and the mindset they already have, that mindset might be 100 different pricing conditions or different types.
And what I hear you suggesting, Daniel, is there's a big opportunity to simplify those, to rationalize those, not just say, how do I enable myself to continue having all of these different ways? But to be very thoughtful and intentional and to bring to market those things that will achieve what you want in the business to prevent the gray market arbitrage, to prevent the price inconsistency when one customer is talking to another, or one customer acquires another one of your customers, and then they discovered that you've been giving a sweetheart price to the other party and not to them, and they're saying, why don't you go back three years and make me whole on all of my invoices? Oh, [00:14:00] what a nightmare to have to deal with that.
You mentioned the word consistency in there, and I think I'd like to explore that theme for a moment as well, because I too hear this from the marketplace that the pain of being inconsistent in price. Pain in customer relationships, pain in internally managing the way products are positioned, or how they go about invoicing.
Everything from the relationship to the execution seems to be more complicated when price is not consistent. And I want to hear your point of view on consistent pricing. Is that problem getting easier, simpler? What are the opportunities ahead of people?
Daniel Antolin: Well, you mentioned Barrett. One thing, we still have a lot of clients that have been actually almost making a living out of inconsistency.
These are the ones we really have this start like, you would have the base of client getting very big volumes for very low prices, which is one could be even consistent, but then a lot of where you would just try to exploit whatever you can as long as they do. So, and we see [00:15:00] those are definitely challenged by this because bringing a system into consistency is not easy.
The one thing that many of our clients are still struggling with is that being consistent doesn't mean that everybody gets the same. Consistent means being able to explain why you are getting this price and someone else is getting the other price. So you don't even have to hide it anymore. You have an explanation and you are open to everyone so you can get a better price.
But this is the conditions, this is the thing that you need to do for me, so I do something for you. So this is really the part where we are building a foundation for future performance and pricing when we're able to explain very clearly why you as a client will get a better or not better price. And going through that.
The experience is a painful thing for many clients because, well, you've discovered a lot of things that you've been doing in the past, which have, don't follow that rationale, but you don't want to be blaming everybody for what we've done because that's the way we did business and it was perfectly okay. So this is something that [00:16:00] companies need to put off: an exercise of pricing optimization is not an exercise of blaming for what we did wrong in the past, but an exercise of looking forward in what we can do better and a system and consistency is absolutely necessary.
Barrett Thompson: Daniel L., what would you add to that?
Daniel Lindner: Yeah, I think consistency is also important for me. So you need that single source of truth.
That means in the idea about having one common data lake in place, which you can then use in order to recognize patterns and recognize inconsistencies and what really, let's say innovative approaches can do is, they do not let you have to search for the needle in the haystack, but they will tell you where you have inconsistencies in your pricing.
That means there are certain customers that are getting way too high discounts that do not reflect your performance or your potential. Or also in product level, you have certain products, small ceiling rings that are much more expensive than large ones that no one can understand.
Inflated other specific discounts also for very small years where you basically give away margin. [00:17:00] What those innovative systems can do is to automatically recognize where you have a much potential, looking at the full gross net price waterfall and generating transparency, and you can only generate all transparency if you have consistency in place.
So, and also if we ask our customer in general, how would they assist the own price controlling, then many of them are quite happy with what they do. But if you dig deeper, then you realize that what they mainly do is tracking revenues and margins. What they are missing is really a detailed picture of the reasons why margins develop in a certain way.
Or is it driven by cost? Is driven by volume. Is it driven by a different product mix? Is it a gross price topic? And also a lot of relevant price metrics are currently missing. So when they're talking, for example, about price enforcement, so how much of a gross price is actually enforced as a net price in the market?
Is it that the basically 8% target price increased are made down to 0% because more discounts are given by the sales team? Or another metric on top of price enforcement would be price consistency. So [00:18:00] what are the price gaps between different products, between neighboring countries? Another metric would be perceived price fairness.
So how big is the data of your price towards a certain market price? So you're seeing there are a lot of different metrics that currently are often not considered, but they bear a lot of potential in order to optimize your pricing.
Daniel Antolin: And then there's one good message for clients there is that you have to add tools like doing that analytic work will give you two things. It will give you homework as I was saying before, you need to bring consistency into the way you do things, like your rules your way, and then it's your strategy of how you want to deal with customers. But you also have a lot of optimization to do on what you just detected. So basically put it into the things you're going to do will pay for your longer transformation.
The things that you find you have immediate things to act on that will really bring you a return immediate while you really work on getting safe. Your pricing for the future in terms of your differentiation strategy, your consistency, but also their technology.
Barrett Thompson: This [00:19:00] is so powerful and I just want to highlight here as we're talking about this topic between consistency and even transparency, two great words that I heard in there.
I think sometimes if B2B is honest, a big part of their profit model is banking on buyer ignorance and lack of transparency of fair market pricing. But it shouldn't be that way. It can't be that way if the information is becoming available and the transparency is increasing, and this idea of saying to the customer, your price is connected to your buying behavior, and I can explain to you where the price came from and maybe even push it further and say to the customer, I can give you almost any price you want if you can give me any buying behavior I want, bring me these extra product lines that you're not buying from me today, right? The wallet share that I know could be mine. Change your order pattern. Order less frequently or more frequently because you're hitting me very hard on cost to serve. And how do I know this?
Because I have the [00:20:00] visibility and the transparency all the way through my waterfall, right? So this is why I have to charge you, because servicing you is expensive, but if you buy differently, I can afford to service you differently, and then I can pass that on as a savings to you in price. So, I think it's a new day, very much a new day in being more transparent about where price comes from.
And then if you're using that kind of reason, logic, then it gets back to the consistency that you were mentioning. Where, no, I'm not giving the same price to every customer, but I'm giving the same price to every selling circumstance. When the conditions are similar, I give a similar price. When the conditions are different, I give a different price.
And I think that is the embodiment of consistency. Consistency isn't same. It's explainable, it's rational, and it's same price under the same circumstances.
Daniel Antolin: And I guess many clients that would be hesitant of doing that, on also raising pricing or moving prices because it's a sensitive thing towards their clients, would be [00:21:00] surprised how clients react.
How positively they react to consistency. And an example is we have this wholesalers working for one of our clients where we actually raised the prices during Corona for many things. There was a special market where we needed to do things are on that and one of the feedbacks we got was from one of the better performing clients says, I'm okay with a strong rise in the price as long as you guarantee me that consistency, that system, that new system you're telling me is going to be for everyone.
But then I know that I will be competing against each other. I don't have to be frightened that somebody has a better deal because he had a better negotiation with someone who knows better at the company. That I can rely on, if I perform. I will get the price, so I will be competing against my peers on equal terms and I can believe in my own strength.
That was a very popular, good message we got back from the clients from when we had our customer to get that new consistent pricing up.
Daniel Lindner: I think actually that project is quite an interesting [00:22:00] showcase because when Daniel and I started working on the project, the customer really had some significant challenges, so we were suffering from a margin erosion over many years.
What we found out when we looked at the data was that for 80% of the sales volume, the sales team was granting special discounts. So that means actually the gross price system that they had in place and the standard discounts didn't play a role anymore and the whole system wasn't working at all. And you can imagine that this caused a lot of manual burden.
And also, of course there were a lot of orders where they had very low margins. So what was the idea of the price manager? The price management team said, now let's introduce rock bottom prices. I mean, the idea's not bad with the intention to stop margin erosion, but actually that made things even worse because what we saw was that prices were actually gravitated to the minimum threshold that was really thought as the lowest threshold.
And the thing was that the sales team was as, it's typically not incentivized by price quality or by margins, but much more by sales. And what would you do is you would just lower the [00:23:00] prices. So the first thing was that margin decreased even more. And also in some cases, not even that rock bottom prices were realized.
And also the price management, the central price management did not have the tools to detect it and to monitor it on a daily basis. What we did on the project was to help our customers to go through an intense price transformation and also to introduce a powerful pricing engine. And today they have many instruments in place to handle that in a much more professional way.
For example, just-in-time critical alert management. So if there's a margin threshold that's not met, then the price management would immediately get a message and could fall out on it.
Barrett Thompson: Yeah, that's so pragmatic and what I hear in that story, be mindful of unintended consequences. Well, let me ask you two, you've got rich work with many customers.
You know, you've presented these ideas, you've seen them where they stand in their current situation, their current challenge. I wonder if there are some ideas that they have in their mind, which they strongly believe, but [00:24:00] from your point of view, those ideas really aren't valid. It's maybe like a myth that they have in their mind about what they must do or what they cannot do when you present the better way.
What kind of objections do you hear, and I wonder what your point of view is on those objections.
Daniel Lindner: I think that's a great question, Barrett. So what we often see is that margins are basically top down. So the top management says we need more margin in this situation, but the team does not have the right systems and the right tools in place to basically implement a new pricing approach that's generating much more margin.
So what they will do is just to use the scatter gun approach. X percent over the whole portfolio. And also, even if they do that, it's very hard for them to follow up on what actually happens in the market. So what you see is that often those price increases are not going to become effective, but you will see that additional instruments are used on customer level, additional bonuses around that.
You will have special discounts being used and so on just to [00:25:00] find loopholes and in the end, management is going to be frustrated because they do not see that the price increase actually has an impact on the gross margins, and that might really lead to a detrimental spiral because next time management plans in a certain buffer and is now you do not need to increase by 5%, but by 8%.
And again, the company is going to be creative in trying to avoid those price increases. This is a typical pattern that we have seen so many times.
Daniel Antolin: This is where us, the pricing practitioners on consultancy side, on technology side and software side, need to claim that place on the table of being the ones who have a valid voice to guide the C-level in terms of, hey, listen, this is what we can actually do and this is the way we will actually do it.
And you'd mentioned Daniel, not the scatter gun principle, but say, hey, we have a plan for how we will do it. It doesn't have to be maximized, but it's a very good way forward and we have the knowledge, the process and the technology in place and how to execute that. Being heard as you say that, that's the thing.[00:26:00]
That this is too complex. This is not possible, and basically our pricing organization are not empowered to do that. I think the basis is out there and we pricing professionals need to play that.
Daniel Lindner: I think empowerment is exactly the right word because what the pricing team should be able to do is to generate insights first by collecting the necessary data.
You have given some examples, Barrett, of what data is that becomes more, more relevant. Then also really to understand the dynamics that happen in the markets. So what is the development of your cost and more important, what's the dynamic of market prices? What are competitors doing? What is the USP and what is the premium that we can charge against competition?
How do our win rates develop over the last month? A lot of this can be done in a very automated and quantitative way. And this will help you and enable the team to really come up with a strategic, with a profile, strategic recommendation in which direction pricing should go to. And with that, you can then call the top management and they can make a decision, but not the other way around.
Daniel Antolin: And let me maybe bust a second myth [00:27:00] around that, which is the one that, since every business is local, we don't need to have a common approach, so we need to have differentiated approaches. Yeah, I hear that one. Yeah, like, okay, we guarantee, minimum, you were talking about minimal pricing and minimum profitability from our headquarters on, and then you, their subsidiary or whoever sales team, you'll try to maximize on that and you'll have a business empowerment, but that means that please do not tell me how I should do my job from this point on.
So, having a common language in pricing, having a common system and process of doing things doesn't mean that we do the same pricing. It just means that we can act in a coordinated way. And the myth is that if we touch that, we'll take off responsibility from the front end national truth, we will enable front end to do better decisions.
And that's one of the myths that we're seeing and this willingness to understand that, to invest in that case is the one thing that we also need to more aware in C-level that [00:28:00] this is a very strong value case for companies.
Barrett Thompson: I think that's a great prescription for the right approach and it properly separates two things.
You know, having common language, common approach, common system, but still allowing local control, local influence, local intelligence and wisdom about the market to the degree that's needed. And you're right, I see sometimes people conflate those two, and so separating them and recognizing you can have both, you can have a common set of tools, common set of process, common language.
But that doesn't mean that you've lost local insight and local control of pricing. Those are not really in opposition, although some think they are. So if we bring all of that together, all that we've talked about today, agility, consistency, transparency, and taking this approach of common tools while still allowing the sort of localized influence and price knowledge where it makes sense.
What happens? What have you seen happen? How would you characterize [00:29:00] operational, financial, customer, relational impacts to pull that strategy and intelligence together, even if you will, to pull it together with a partnership of Accenture and Zilliant working together to make that vision come true?
What have you seen happen in real customer examples when this has been done?
Daniel Antolin: Many things, but really put it into three, three key things. The one thing is obviously, a boost in profitability or it could be also a boosting growth if that's the strategy we define. We need that piece of strategy, what I'm aiming for.
But definitely you will have a measurable, significant impact on your target KPIs. That's for sure. But the second thing, and then that's not the only thing. The other one is you will have a better way of working together and less, spending less time in negotiating within the company than trying to do the right thing on the market, which is what the, because the process [00:30:00] are set up because we have agreed on the terms and where we work.
And because we actually have the places and the system where we work, that's where we come in, with Zilliant like, okay, this is our commitment to do it this way, and then we'll calibrate it to the local needs. So that just takes a lot of frustration out. And actually a lot of mistake that we do, which come back to the point of generating more financial impact.
And the last one, and I think this is the most critical and overseen, is we've seen a lot of change in the last two, three years. But this is not the end of the change. This will go beyond that, and exponential. And you make no mistake, you will need these foundations to be flexible and adaptive for the future.
So it's not only it's going to bring you money today, it's not only it's going to make your corporation life easier as a group, as a company. It just is creating the foundations for the future because you will need to adapt your business models, your prices, the speed on how you're doing things [00:31:00] way more often and way faster and way more accurate in the future.
And you need to build that foundation.
Barrett Thompson: I see it. Daniel L your point of view?
Daniel Lindner: I mean, what I would say is that our customers should not be afraid to going through such a pricing transformation journey. I mean, of course it's going to be a certain investment. It's also going to require time. It's going to require resources.
It's going to require a lot of patience. I have to say is that definitely there will be a lot of truths that you can harvest along the journey and along the way. So as Daniel has described, there will be a lot of benefits that you will have in the organization and there's really a lot of short term measures that will bring direct impact.
So a lot of levers that will become transparent and a lot of potential surprising that you can directly harvest. That's of course also going to help you to fund your long-term pricing transformation from the very start. I mean, if you're doing it smart, then you can really find some quick wins, basically realizing the potential, and then funding the whole journey towards real pricing resilience.
Barrett Thompson: Daniel Linder and Daniel Antolin, [00:32:00] this has been a great conversation today, and I know it's delivered to our listeners a view of the potential, and the pragmatic steps to reach the pricing resiliency, to gain the agility, the consistency and transparency that they need to manage through the tough economic times.
Is there anything else you'd like to leave with our audience before we say goodbye?
Daniel Antolin: Let me respond. One thing we'll be talking about there that you need to combine these, this strong part of the brain of pricing, as we said at the beginning, the intelligence and the muscles of pricing and that this needs to become one thing.
It's not like, it's not a sequential thing. It's like first think of it and then actionate it, but then it becomes something which works together like a body. So it's not brain and muscle, it's like “bruscles.” It's something together. And the point that I would like to make is, it looks maybe complex and it looks like a big mountain, but there is no point in the future where it's going to be more easy.
It's the opposite. Nah, it's going to be more complex maybe in the time and, but especially if you have taken that path already, you'll have a [00:33:00] competitive advantage in the future. Because this, the systems learn. It's like riding a bike. You learn to do it better and until the body's trained, so the earlier you start to train it, the better it gets.
So waiting for tomorrow or the day after. Is probably not the best strategy.
Barrett Thompson: I couldn't agree more. As the old adage says, no time like the present, and so let's be present. Let's make that positive impact in our businesses. The solutions are here and the partners are here. Let's get the will and go forward.
Thank you both for joining us. Really appreciate it. Look forward to working with you again soon.
Daniel Antolin: Thank you very much Barrett for you and the whole Zilliant team for having us, and we're very much looking for that common future.
Daniel Lindner: Thank you, Barrett. It was a very inspiring conversation. All the best and see you soon.
Barrett Thompson: I want to thank each of our podcast listeners for being with us today. We are committed to your success. If you need any assistance, please reach out to us at zilliant.com. Would you do me one favor and rate and review the show in your podcast [00:34:00] app as it helps us to continue to put out great free content?
Until next time, have a great day.
