Recent PricePoint Enhancements

We are continually seeking ways to improve the experience for our PricePoint users.  With this in mind, we’d like to announce recent enhancements we have made to PricePoint:

Rate Analyst Position

As an international moving company, consider the situation you may occasionally find yourself in, needing to fill a "Rate Analyst" position (i.e. the person whose role is to respond to email rate requests from other movers). Imagine a CV/resume comes across your desk with the following highlights:

Why Gross?

One of the key decisions we had to make when designing PricePoint was how to handle net vs gross basis for pricing, an area where our industry has historically lacked uniformity. The overriding consideration for PricePoint was to focus on simplicity, with the conclusion to therefore treat all sizes as gross.

New Privacy Controls

It has long been a top priority to provide PricePoint users with confidentiality protections that far exceed the traditional unsecured pricing practices of email quotes and spreadsheet/document tariffs. Furthering that objective, we have now added a couple more dimensions to your privacy controls.

Agents who file tariffs in PricePoint are now able to choose between three levels of automated privacy control: Moderate (recommended), Strict, or Open.

Corporate RFP Responder

I have recently approved development of an ambitious new tool to add to PricePoint's growing list of features. The working title of this project is "Corporate Proposal Responder" (CPR for short), and we are aiming to unveil it at the upcoming IAM Annual Meeting in Orlando.

Why Save Quotes?

PricePoint's core purpose is to offer instant price quotes from agents, as opposed to the norm of waiting for overnight email quote reply. Although you could simply record the price quote into your file management system, it is highly recommended that you take the simple step of formally saving your quotes within PricePoint, even for non-booked competitive moves. This provides a variety of benefits as follows:

- Tariff Lock: The agent's current tariff is locked in place for that specific quote/customer. Even if the agent later raises their tariff pricing, you can come back and update the quote at a later date with new weight/volume, and PricePoint will still apply the prior locked tariff which has been archived.

- Courtesy email notifications: Your assigned agent will receive a courtesy email notification of the quote. This helps support your various agent relationships, including reciprocal trading interests, as more fully explained here.

- Prevent invoice disputes: Only you and your assigned agent can view the saved quote, which displays full detail on how the quote was calculated. This helps prevent invoice disputes by showing both parties the expected invoice amount, rather than manual calculations which are prone to human error.

- Easy retrieval via Quotes Dashboard: All saved quotes are accessible via your company's private Quotes Dashboard. This is particularly useful when covering for employee illness/holiday absences.

Competitive Agent Pricing

How competitive are OA/DA rates in PricePoint?

This is a fairly complex topic to be considered from a few different angles.

First, price levels and strategies are of course at the sole discretion of each agent user. PricePoint is simply a tool which provides a more efficient, effective, and confidential approach to manage pricing.

Second, regarding confidentiality, those who understand PricePoint's privacy protections should be comfortable offering competitive rates. That said, "competitive" does not necessarily mean absolute lowest price. A competitive price can be regarded as a reasonable "retail" price, possibly with a gray area of discretionary margin which may allow for some discounting on a case-by-case basis.

So if an agent is not offering their absolute rock-bottom rates in PricePoint, does that mean it's a waste of time? Of course not. Let's think it through, say you are trying to book a private transferee shipment, with a total door-to-door cost around $10,000, of which the destination cost in PricePoint is $2000. Even if the agent may potentially be willing to grant a 5% discount if requested, that comes to $100, which represents only a 1% discount on the total move cost of $10,000.

It's fair to say that a 1% price differential is not going to be a deal breaker for the transferee. A booker can be confident using the agent's "standard" PricePoint rate for initial quote, then on the limited instances in which the transferee seeks further negotiation, the booker can seek a possible concession from the agent. Tip: use the PricePoint Message Board for such instances, which is privately accessible to only the agent and booker, and keeps a convenient record of dialogue for both parties.

PricePoint password-secured Message Board

This is a rational and efficient approach in which PricePoint enables the booker to produce competitive initial quotes as quickly as the same day of survey, without wasting time on composing agent quote request emails and waiting for overnight reply. It is then only a minority of cases that may require further negotiation, at which point the booker has better qualified the quality of the lead, warranting more direct negotiation if necessary.

In sum, a booker of course only wins a fraction of the opportunities quoted on. Therefore a key to success is to minimize time spent on the bids which are not won (aka "losing quickly"), allowing for more time and focus on potential winning bids, and secured customers. PricePoint perfectly supports this winning approach.