Once a price tracking system is in place for a business, they can begin to regulate their prices and remain competitive. While price tracking software is most helpful, the business behind the software is crucial, as well. In order to successfully compare competitor prices a powerful tool needs to be set in place that can crawl websites and gather vital information. A comparison shopping engine is not the same as pricing software and does not utilize web crawlers that are designed to collect specific data. They also do not cleanse and load this data into a Central Data Warehouse.
How Is All the Data Stored?
Once all of the data is collected by pricing software, it is stored in a sophisticated data warehouse. Businesses need to be able to rely upon software with data storage that does not fail. Thus a caching system should be in place to create reports that are ensured to be accurate and give real-time pricing quotes. This data also needs to be archived so historical changes are documented over a certain period of time. Doing this helps document pricing trends and how they change over time.
Secure Data Is Integral
Pricing software needs to be able to provide information that is secure and cannot be tampered with by outside sources. Data integrity is paramount when a business is using pricing figures to change their current prices. This type of software must be protected from hackers and viruses with advanced firewalls concerning hardware and software. Information on the internet always carries a risk of being hijacked; therefore it is also important that any threats are detected and intervened.
Tools that Generate Pricing Reports
Along with graphs, reports help businesses with pricing their products in a competitive manner. With the use of a report a range of prices can be created to show pricing efforts for a particular product and where a company stands compared to their competition. Timing with these types of reports is imperative considering how fast prices can change. Specific requirements are also important when trying to price products in a certain field. All of this information can ascertain the difference between lagging behind in pricing efforts and successfully pricing products to increase sales.
PriceManager can help you compare competitor prices with the use of pricing software. Make sure your products are priced competitively by contacting them for more information.
