Before Omnia: Understanding the customer’s initial challenge 

Struggling with a time-consuming, person-dependent 3-step process, Harman International faced that the market was not properly represented causing market delays and price inconsistencies, impacting reliability in pricing. 

Harman International, a renowned global audio and automotive technology company, operates in numerous markets worldwide. The pricing was done conservatively in the past: The basis of the project relied on a daily data set obtained from a scraping tool in Excel format. However, the manual price calculations were labor-intensive, confined to once a day, excluding weekends, due to diverse role-related processes, resulting in a workflow with inconsistencies & data reliability issues. 

To streamline their pricing practices, they sought a unified approach across all products in the 12 countries they serve. Each product is sold by around 25 retailers per country, resulting in a considerable volume of 300-400 daily offers internationally (within the EMEA region). 

Wishlist

Harman International wanted to implement more dynamic and flexible pricing calculations and tactics based on brand, country, retail landscape and product category to avoid market disruptions and at the same growth the D2C business.

Better implement and leverage the price policy in each market with more freedom for country manager to decide for the best interest in the market (D2C Channel) (instead of just following a scheme → this points refers to the “black & white” - execution of the ‘before’ pricing policy.

Harman International wanted a reliable data source, a rule based automated price calculation and a flexible tool to allow testing of different pricing strategies.

Be able to explain how a price was executed / calculated / easy to demonstrate what happens on the pricing side. 

Key objectives

Comprehensive Market Overview
Harman International sought to obtain a better market overview, empowering them to make informed pricing decisions based on accurate data & reliable results.  

Collaborative Alignment
Harman International aimed to establish easier alignment with key regional stakeholders. This collaboration would ensure a more cohesive and coherent approach to pricing across markets. 

Streamlined & Flexible Pricing Policy Implementation
The company aspired to implement and leverage the Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) Channel pricing policy more effectively in each market. This move aimed to replace the manual, time-consuming and the rigid "black & white" approach of the previous pricing policy and tool leading to more flexibility (testing of different pricing strategies), higher conversion and less channel frictions. 

Transparent & Demonstrable Strategies
The team sought a solution that allowed them to articulate pricing strategies clearly & transparently. The ability to walk stakeholders through each strategy and effortlessly demonstrate the pricing execution and calculations was a crucial requirement.

“Balancing D2C pricing for an international premium brand across 10+ European markets demands a meticulous understanding of market dynamics, and consumer preferences, making it an essential aspect of our operations.” 

Douwe Smet
E-commerce Trading & Operations Lead, Harman 

The Solution

 The primary solution involved updating the existing pricing policy with the insights and expertise of the Omnia team. By understanding what more could be achieved while adhering to the pricing policy, they challenged the status quo and contributed to refining the overall pricing strategy implementation.

 As a result, the company now has a well-defined and approved pricing policy, along with a reliable tool (Omnia software) to effectively implement and maximize its benefits, unlocking a significant untapped potential within the policy. 

Unleashing Omnia: The power of reliability

 Transforming from 5 hours of maintenance to 5 hours of value creation: With Omnia's automated solution, Harman reduced the time spent on daily pricing maintenance from 5 hours to near zero. This efficiency gain allows them to invest those 5 hours into creating innovative strategies and adding real value to their pricing approach.

 Achieving full pricing compliance: From 70% to 100%: After adopting Omnia's automation, Harman transitioned from a labor-intensive 3-step manual pricing process for 5 days a week to achieving full compliance on all channels, 7 days a week, and 4 times a day. 

 Allowing flexibility per country to define the strategy based on market strategy & brand maturity: The pricing policy can be applied independently per country to reflect the D2C channel’s maturity and strategy.

 Guaranteed 100% compliance: Staying within the set pricing policy: With the seamless and intuitive rules setup provided by Omnia Software, Harman effortlessly maintains adherence to the pre-defined pricing policy with every price update while also enjoying the freedom to leverage maximum flexibility within it. 

 “Last year we went live with Omnia in May and until July we had stock issues. In total, this market has grown 203% in the period below compared to last year.” 

Douwe Smet
E-commerce Trading & Operations Lead, Harman 

Outlook and Conclusion

Harman International is now in a position with a positive outlook, happy with what they have, and knowing there are more strategy options to explore, the list of ideas is endless; it just has to be implemented. 

 "With Omnia we learned that the possibilities of dynamic pricing are endless." 

Douwe Smet
E-commerce Trading & Operations Lead, Harman