Pricing Gets Boardroom Attention

Survey reveals CEO’s feeling pressure to improve price management

Austin, TX - June 25, 2007 – Zilliant, the leading provider of price optimization and price management software, today announced the results of a preliminary executive survey highlighting how pricing has become a CEO and board-level priority. Almost 70% of respondents said that price improvement is a current topic of concern among key stakeholders including the executive team, boards of directors, investors and financial analysts. The survey also indicated that executive-level interest in pricing effectiveness is trending up sharply.  More than two thirds of the companies surveyed said that pricing became an area of strategic focus within just the last two years.

"Heightened interest in pricing, especially from boards and investors, reflects greater awareness of how tightly linked pricing practices are with financial performance," said Eric Hills, vice president of marketing at Zilliant. "Increasing prices by just 1% has been shown to improve a company’s margins by more than 10%, making it one of the most direct and controllable ways to improve the bottom line. This survey validates that pricing excellence has become a strategic imperative."

Other key findings include:

• 80% of these multi-billion dollar companies use manual spreadsheets, homegrown systems and hardcopy price books to manage their pricing process
• 45% of respondents said the pricing tools they provide to sales are "poor", and the balance only rated them as "effective." None of the respondents graded their pricing tools as "very" or "extremely" effective.
• Over 85% stated that price optimization, the ability to set the best pricing targets for segments to maximize profits, was one of their top three reasons for improving pricing.

"Companies today waste valuable time, resources and, most importantly, profits by relying on manual, ad hoc methods to set and execute their pricing," added Hills. "A comprehensive price optimization and management strategy based on data-driven, science-enabled processes and technology is essential to fixing these problems and delivering superior financial performance."

About Zilliant
Zilliant is the leading provider of price optimization and price management applications for manufacturing, high-tech, distribution and industrial service companies. Zilliant Precision Pricing Suite (ZPPS) uses existing transactional data to improve decisions across all facets of price analysis, setting and execution. ZPPS applications combine powerful price segmentation and optimization science with easy-to-use business applications to help companies achieve the best pricing possible on every deal, increasing profits by tens of millions of dollars. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Zilliant is a privately held company. For more information contact Zilliant at 877.893.1085 or visit www.zilliant.com.