AS/400 Gets Its Own Priceline.com
While there has been considerable attention paid to the impact of Web-based auctions and electronic marketplaces on price negotiations, there's still a lot of information and positions that companies need to hold close to the vest. New technology, however, offers a way to address internal pricing data as well.
A new package on the market enables purchasing managers to store and reference this information on the AS/400. Price Point Inc. (Plano, Texas) is shipping price negotiation software that automates the process of determining the most profitable sale price during price negotiations. This information has historically been dispersed over a company's entire computer system, making the process time consuming and inefficient, says Clayce Rodamer, VP of sales and marketing at Price Point. "Because companies typically negotiate prices manually, not all of the necessary information has been considered for each pricing decision and customers have had to wait a long time to get a quote."
The AS/400 version of Price Point, developed with Visual LANSA, centralizes all the competitive, strategic and historic information a company needs to be able to negotiate the most profitable price possible. "Price negotiations can now be done quickly and all from one easy-to-read screen," says Rodamer. "Companies that have sales reps making daily pricing decisions have a lot of profits locked up in these decisions."