Case · Distribution · Distributor of hardware and plumbing supplies
100 prices got checked a week. The other 3,700, never.
The system crawls competitor sites every day, matches each product to its own, and flags it when the gap crosses that category's threshold. Whoever sets prices changes them or doesn't.
The context
Buenos Aires · 30 people · 3,800 products · price list and management system.
Integrated withCompetitor sites (public) · price list · management system.
The capabilityPrice and competitor monitoring
01
What nobody knew
Which products were priced too high, and which ones were giving away margin for no reason.
What was looked at, and what wasn't
One person checked three competitors by hand, on Mondays, for the hundred highest-turnover products. The rest got priced off the supplier's list plus a fixed margin, and stayed that way until the next list.
02
What showed up when we looked
In the first week the system compared all 3,800 products against four competitors. 412 were more than 8% above the market. 290 were more than 10% below, with nobody having decided that. And on 60 high-turnover products the price was 6% below the cheapest competitor: margin was being lost exactly where the most gets sold.
03
What decision changed
Whoever sets prices raised 180 and lowered 95, with the data in front of them. For the first time, it got written down which categories the company wants to be the cheapest in and which it doesn't. Coverage: from 100 products a week to 3,800 a day. Alerts: 47 a week, 31% end in a price change. Unit sales on the 95 products that got lowered: +18%.
04
What we built
The system crawls competitors' public sites every day, matches each product to its own (by code, brand and description, with a person confirming the doubtful ones) and flags it when the gap crosses that category's threshold. The alert arrives with the product, the prices, the last 30 days of turnover and a suggestion. Whoever sets prices changes them or doesn't.
How it works
Comes in
Goes out
Four competitors' sites
The company's own price list
The system
Crawls, matches, alerts
Crawls
Matches
Alerts
Every day, all 3,800 products, with a threshold per category.
Alert with prices, turnover and a suggestion
Gross margin by category
Doubtful matches get confirmed by a person. The price gets changed by whoever sets prices.
05
How it's measured from here on
Alerts a week, % ending in a change, gross margin by category. Whoever sets prices spends 15 minutes a day on it.
