Zilliant has announced that it has received a "Positive" rating in Gartner's (News - Alert) "MarketScope for Price Optimization and Management, 2008." Gartner evaluated the price optimization and management vendors in a number of areas, including overall viability, customer experience, products and services, and offering strategy.

 

The company's Precision Pricing Suite comprises seven applications built on what company officials call "pricing science, business intelligence tools, and flexible process automation capabilities."

 

Gartner's MarketScope notes that "the market for price optimization and management software is rapidly gaining visibility and growing by more than 30 percent per year, as enterprises increasingly look to capitalize on the business value such applications offer in improving margins, revenue and efficiencies with pricing processes."

 

The report went on to say that "through 2010, price optimization technology will have a more-direct impact on increasing revenue or margins than any other CRM technology."

 

"Pricing may be the last bastion of guesswork in B2B companies," said Greg Peters, Zilliant CEO.

 

A copy of the Gartner MarketScope report can be requested on Zilliant's Web site -- www.zilliant.com.

 

Last July Zilliant announced "record results" for the first half of 2007. Year-over-year sales for the period increased by more than 150 percent, reflecting overall market growth as well as Zilliant's success in the manufacturing, distribution and industrial service verticals, company officials say.

 

Industry analysts expect the rapid adoption of pricing technology to continue because of its bottom-line benefits. "Pricing management and optimization software is emerging as a key technology to help companies increase their revenue and margins," said Robert DeSisto, vice president of CRM for Gartner, Inc., in its June 2007 "Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, 2007" report.

 

In addition to strong financial performance, Zilliant first-half highlights include two major product releases -- two releases of their pricing suite, and two new pricing applications: ZPPS Deal Manager for Agreements, which provides decision support and process automation capabilities for sales agreements and contracts; and ZPPS Pricing Information Manager, which helps companies enrich product master data with pricing attributes and relationships.

 

The firm also added Walter Sharp (News - Alert) as vice president of North American Sales and Andy Dvorocsik, a guy who never has to spell his name over the phone, as vice president of Pricing Excellence. Dvorocsik joined Zilliant from Accenture (News - Alert), where he was a partner in their pricing strategy group.