Essendant Market Xpert YouTube Video Series

Video 15: Price Strategies – Creating a Sell Plan

• This guide covers details on how to create a sell plan.
• Watch the video

Outline

Ø  You can create sell price strategies from chain data, wholesaler data, or from files you have uploaded to Bid Wizard

Ø  Let’s begin by demonstrating how you can upload your own custom price using Bid Wizard

·         Familiarity with Bid Wizard is required for the following steps. See Bid Wizard - Importing Excel Files

Ø  Login to your Market Xpert account

Ø  Click the Bid Wizard Button on the toolbar

Ø  Click the Start a New Bid Button

Ø  Assign a Bid ID and Bid Name that makes sense for this price file

Ø  This Bid will need to remain in the system for as long as your Sell Price Plan is active

Ø  Make sure My Excel File is selected

Ø  Locate the file and upload it to Bid Wizard just like any other Excel file

Ø  Choose the column with the Required Item Number

Ø  You can optionally map other columns in your cost file, but the Sell Price mapping is required in order for your sell price plan to work properly

Ø  Double-check that the price from your Excel file is mapped to the Bid Wizard "Sell Price" field

Ø  Click Next to import your file

Ø  If your file originated from a specific wholesaler, you can choose that wholesaler in the Advanced Matching

·         Otherwise, leave the Advanced Matching set to Match Anywhere

Ø  Click the Submit Button

·         This tutorial is using a small file, but large price files that originate from a wholesaler can take several minutes to match

Ø  To create a Sell Price Plan, click on Price Strategies on the toolbar

Ø  Click the Create a New Price Plan Button

Ø  Make sure the Sell Plan option is selected under Plan Type

·         You cannot change the plan type once created, you must delete and re-enter all the plan information in order to change the plan type

Ø  Enter a Plan ID that makes sense for this price plan

Ø  Click the Next Button

Ø  Enter a Plan Name for this price plan

·         You can enter a different Display Name

·         The Plan Name is what the price plan is referred to internally while the Display Name is what is shown to Market Xpert users and in Excel file outputs

Ø  You have an option to include a default percent to apply to this plan. This is useful if you wanted to add a default 10% discount off list price

Ø  All the price plan percent fields can accept both whole numbers and negative numbers. The number 10 would add 10%, -10 would subtract a 10% discount

Ø  Using the Net Cost Plan to Use drop-down, select a cost plan you have previously created

·         If you have not created any cost plans yet, you cannot use this function

·         This is how you connect a Cost Plan to a Sell Plan. Cost plans should be created first, then assigned to one or more Sell Plans

·         Imagine a scenario where you have received cost support from your wholesaler on a project that also requires special pricing

·         You would create your special Cost Plan first, then create a Sell Plan that references the newly created Cost Plan

·         This is the reason for supporting multiple Cost and Sell plans in Market Xpert, to address the need for custom price and cost plans at the project level

Ø  When you select a Cost Plan from the drop-down, additional options are available

·         Setting a Floor GP Percent allows you to limit the pricing downside to a minimum GP percent

§  Entering a 10 in the Floor GP Percent would prohibit any sell price generated by this plan from dropping below a 10% GP margin

§  Entering a 28 in the Floor GP Percent and a 28 in the Ceiling GP Percent would fix the GP at 28%. This is similar to a ‘cost plus’ price

Ø  Once you have made your selections, click the Next Button to display the Price Plan Details

·         Price Plan Details tells Market Xpert where to get your prices from

·         Without entering any details, the price would be List Price, plus or minus any percent you entered when the plan was created

Ø  Again, let’s begin by adding the custom file we uploaded to Bid Wizard

·         The assumption is that this uploaded file contains custom prices that we want to override any other prices. A fixed price

Ø  Click the link to add a new Detail record to this Price Plan

Ø  The Source would be: My Bids, bids we have uploaded to Bid Wizard

Ø  Using the Pricing Plans drop-down, select the bid you want to use as your sell price source

Ø  Click the Next Button

Ø  You can enter a display name for this detail record. This is useful when you want to know the price is coming from this particular file

Ø  Price Column does not apply to bids from Bid Wizard

Ø  You can add or subtract a percentage from the prices in this file by using the +/- Percent box

Ø  You can also set the floor and ceiling GP percentage for this file

·         The GP settings here apply to the prices in this file only while the GP settings you entered in the beginning apply to all files/prices

Ø  Velocity Code and Category code do not apply to bids from Bid Wizard

Ø  Since this is a custom price file, we want these prices to always apply, no matter if a lower price is found elsewhere

·         To accomplish this "fixing" of the price, check the Fixed Price box

Ø  Click the Next Button to save your changes. This will return you to the Pricing Plan Details page

Ø  Click the link to add a new Detail record to this Price Plan

Ø  In the Source box, select Staples. Of course you could select any of the chains you are authorized for

·         The Pricing Plans do not apply when using chains as the source

Ø  Click the Next Button

Ø  Again, the Detail Display can be used to indicate when this pricing record is being used as the source for your price

Ø  Price Column does not apply when using chains as the source of your price

Ø  You can add or subtract a percentage from the chain prices by using the +/- Percent box. Zero here matches the chain price, -2 would beat the chain price by 2 percent

Ø  You can also set the floor and ceiling GP percentage for this file

·         Setting the GP floor at the detail level is useful when you want to include a typically low priced chain and also want margin protection only from this particular source

Ø  The GP settings here apply to the prices generated from this detail record only

Ø  Selecting a Velocity Code allows you to match prices only on specific Velocity Codes, A through E. A is the fastest moving items and E is the slowest moving items

Ø  Selecting a Category Code allows you to match prices only on specific Category Codes. These top-level category codes are provided by Essendant

Ø  By not checking the Fixed Price box, we are letting this price "float" and be compared to other prices in our price plan that are also "not fixed"

Ø  Click the Next Button to save your changes

Ø  Click the link to add a new Detail record to this Price Plan

Ø  In the Source box, select Essendant

Ø  In the Pricing Plans box, select X1 – Matrix. Note that this pricing plan list is long and you will have to scroll down to find this entry

Ø  Click the Next Button

Ø  Use the Detail Display to indicate where this price is coming from, X1-C2

·         Note that we used X1-C2 as the Detail Display. This is because we are going to select "Standard Sell 2" from this Essendant Matrix

Ø  Using the Price Column drop-down, select Standard Sell 2

·         If you click the Price Column Data Sample link, you will notice that the prices are different between Sell 1 and Sell 2

·         The Price Column drop-down is where you can choose the column to use when your wholesaler based price plan has more than one selling price column

Ø  All the other options on this page apply to wholesaler plans and you can set them accordingly

Ø  Click the Next Button to save your changes

Ø  Now we have three detail records on our Sell Plan, one from each possible source

·         Custom prices uploaded through Bid Wizard

·         Chain pricing

·         Wholesaler provided pricing

Ø  Our Sell Price plan will first look in the custom file, detail record 1, to see if the item to be priced is contained in this file

Ø  If the item is in this custom file, then the price from this custom file is used, and because this detail record is marked as "fixed", the pricing is complete

Ø  If the item being priced is not contained in the custom file, then the pricing plan will look at detail record 2, Staples

Ø  If the item is carried by Staples, the price is selected, but since this detail record is not marked as "fixed", the pricing check continues

Ø  The pricing plan will next look at the Essendant X1-C2 matrix price, and if found, the Essendant Matrix price will be compared to the Staples price if it too was found

Ø  The lower of the two prices, Staples or Essendant X1-C2 will become the final price, but again, only if the item being priced was not on the "fixed" detail record

Ø  The Change Sequence Order Button allows you to change the order of the detail records

·         The sequence only matters when your Price Plan contains "fixed" prices

·         Our first entry was "fixed" so it is in the correct place, but if we added it later, it would be at the bottom and may need to be moved