The Times of India, the flagship newspaper of Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL), wants to evolve its Pricewise programme from a dynamic pricing tool to a consultative one, incorporating modules for analysing price volume elasticity and cross sell and upsell combinations, among other things. In an interview with GXpress, Arunabh Das Sharma, president of BCCL, based in New Delhi, India says the company is pushing hard to use its scientific pricing engine to maximise challenged advertising margins. Edited excerpts:
What technology applications does TOI's 'Pricewise' programme involve?
Pricewise is a custom application developed using Java from ease of use and 24x7 accessibility perspectives. It provides instantaneous price quotes and authorisation that seamlessly flow into SAP for order booking. The databases used are Mongo and Oracle.
You have said newspaper media organisations have traditionally viewed pricing from a tactical lens, giving little focus to it in the overall scheme of things. What do you feel the impact of this view has been for newspapers?
Tactical view on pricing has resulted in unchecked discounting that resulted in pricing table going down over the years. This has led to erosion of yield in multiple markets. Also, tactical approach on pricing has not allowed pricing to become one of the strategic pillars on which organisations can plan revenue growth and higher profitability.
Pricing excellence transformation has helped: increase realisation defined as revenue per metric tonne, allow for more accurate bookings and projections on a daily basis and changed sales force focus from volume-driven growth to profitable growth.
What advanced yield management techniques have driven yield growth for TOI?
Techniques used to drive yield growth at TOI include: control on pagination basis the ad edit matrices for publications, calibrated price increases factoring the variable cost increase, volume control on loss-making transactions and evaluation on business parameters to ensure alignment with business objectives.
How were pricing algorithms established and what supporting technology backbone was used for TOI?
Pricing algorithms were established using regression techniques that measure impact of more than 25 parameters on pricing. The algorithms were supported by business logic incorporating external factors such as readership, CPT (cost per thousand), circulation and market shares. Statistical packages were used to establish the relationships between various parameters and their impact on pricing.
Nirmalya Sen
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