Monitoring prices of suppliers and online stores

A supplier is a person or entity that connects the producer and the marketer of a product. Suppliers of consumer goods can be manufacturing companies or resellers, for example.

The main parameters for choosing a supplier for long-term cooperation

A successfully concluded contract with a supplier is the maximum profit from the business for you. At this stage the key issues are:

1. The purchase price of the products of interest.
2. The volume of minimum order of goods.
3. Terms of delivery.
4. The possibility of obtaining of demonstration goods.
5. Availability of warranty cases.
6. Certification of products.
7. Completeness of the offered assortment of goods.

In most cases when choosing a supplying organization the rule "the closer the supplier is to the manufacturer, the more comfortable conditions he can offer to the retailer" works.

How to choose a merchandise supplier company infallibly - working tip-hacks 2022!

• Google queries. Sites of suppliers, as a rule, are not invested in the promotion of sites, so they take a position on pages 2-3 of results. The same first place is for resellers and importers with higher prices (with buildup).
• Specialized Internet directories. This is a special portal with current offers on niches, which facilitates the search.
•  Web sites of your competitors. Organize monitoring of your competitors, especially the content they post on their product pages. It is not uncommon for product photos to contain the supplying company's watermark.
• Trade shows. The schedule of specialized exhibitions in your city is easily available on the Internet. Here you can not only study the price list of companies for the purchase of goods but also personally communicate with their representatives.

The disadvantage of all these methods is the need to manually browse hundreds of online resources, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive.

One of the most effective and simple methods of choice is the use of an automated system to monitor the prices for specific commodity units.

The program will select the most comfortable price tag for the purchase of the desired assortment in the desired volume! You as the customer will only have to negotiate with the selling party on mutually beneficial terms.

How to choose a program for monitoring the prices of competitors and finding suppliers?

When choosing a contractor in this matter should be guided by the tasks that need to be solved! To make an objective decision the main indicators will be:

1. Speed of collecting information. This question is especially relevant when there is a need to process a large number of materials. Considering the total number of products to monitor, and the number of competitors, parsing can take from several minutes to several hours.
2. Report options and types of its design. Helecos provides the option of direct integration with the parser system, as well as integration with BI systems. The most usual format for the user is XLS and some other its derivatives.
3. Data quality and accuracy. Most Helecos customers directly integrate parser data into their projects and BI analytics.
4. Parsing costs. The key factors that determine the cost of monitoring are:
   • The number of checks.
   • The number of competitors to be monitored.
   • The number of products selected for monitoring.
   • Frequency of collecting information (from once an hour to intervals of several weeks, at your discretion).

MRP and RRP - understand the definitions. How the automated monitoring of the market can control these indicators and balance all the "players"?

MRP. What is it and what is its meaning for the manufacturer?

MRP - the value of the price, which is the lowest point of pricing! This is the price tag that is set by the manufacturer and restricts retailers from selling advertised products below a specified value - the Minimum Recommended Price.

There are 2 key aspects of pricing under the MRP policy:

• First: Tracking the actual pricing situation at the retailer is impossible remotely! We are talking about a numerical value, which is determined solely on the basis of advertising posters and messages from the sale organizer.
• Second: We are talking about a unilateral policy established by the manufacturer. There are no intermediaries between the seller and the buyer - the seller himself chooses what price to offer for the sold product.

Based on these criteria and it is recommended to refer to the system to monitor the pricing policy of the producer to control the market, turnover, and his final profit!

RRP. Why is it important to comply with the recommended price for goods?

More often than not, manufacturers offer a recommended price list for the products they supply. This is done in order to provide equal interest for all their representatives in the market, including sales representatives and retailers.

The peculiarity of this policy is its character - recommended! Therefore, in the case of a violation of the price strategy proposed by the manufacturer, it will be difficult to talk about punishing a particular retailer. The exception is the conclusion of an additional agreement to conduct a pricing policy within specific limits.

Peculiarities of the mechanism of practical use of the recommended reserve price:

1. The strategy does not apply to the norms of legal restrictions and prohibitions! Therefore the manufacturer or other market players cannot oblige/enforce the seller to change the final price for the product.
2. Setting/changing and controlling the RRP is left to the brand name manufacturer. However, compliance with this parameter can be monitored, and combating non-compliance can be done by all market participants.
3. The recommended retail price can also act in the conditions of resale of this or that product on the wholesale market.
4. Change of RRP is possible, but only with the consent and observance of the interests of all participants of your trade chain.

A permanent reduction in the MSRP leads to an imminent collapse of the market, so monitoring trends in compliance with this parameter is critical not only for the manufacturer but also for individual sellers.

What does the RRP take into account and why can't it be easily changed to keep the trend going

The formation of the recommended retail price is carried out directly by the manufacturer of the sold products. The main factors of its formation are:

1. Payback, as well as the desired level of profit from sales. This parameter to a large extent depends on the producer's position on the market. For example, in order to occupy a niche and gain a foothold in the market, the markup on goods can be minimal.
2. Analysis of competitors. The increase of RRP level can be justified by the availability of some or other advantages (quality of the goods, additional functionality, service, etc.).
3. Place on the market. With taking the leading position in your industry, there is an opportunity to set the best price.
4. The elasticity of demand for the product. If the growth of the price tag is directly related to a decrease in demand, then the manufacturer has no such opportunity! If there is no such pattern, it is necessary to run a detailed competitor analysis for subsequent pricing.

The main financial indicators that can affect the formation of the recommended price for the product:

• Production facilities. This refers to the cost of their rental, maintenance, and upkeep.
• Tax levies are stipulated by the type of activity of the company.
• Contributions to the payroll of the company.
• Expected profit from sales and a number of other factors.

The most effective way to monitor the MRTs and RRPs in the marketplace is to use the technique of monitoring the prices set by your competitors. This is a necessary process that will allow you to build a competitive business. It is possible to organize the monitoring process by the method of manual data collection or by using different automated parsing systems.

The functionality of modern services for competitor price monitoring

We are talking about one of the main indicators of efficiency, accuracy, and speed of automatic parsing of sites. For the modern user, the authors of such services offer the following functional set:

1. Automatic comparison of merchandise items. Searching for correspondence of the assortment with a number of competitors' products is performed without your participation!
2. Out-of-plan data scanning. With Helekos it is possible to start an out-of-plan monitoring process. The number of cycles is limited by the number of cycles stipulated by your tariff plan.
3. Automated price conversion. The cost of goods will change depending on the current exchange rate.
4. Possibility to work on several projects at the same time. Each project will have its own list of goods to be monitored.
5. Multicurrency. Collection of the prices for the chosen product line can be carried out from the resources working with any currency!
6. A number of projects and tasks for simultaneous parsing. This feature is limited only by the needs of customer service! Depending on the needs, any number of competitors can be monitored. The number of products is also unlimited.
7. Revealing promotion offers and discounts from your competitors. Automatic notifications to your mailbox in case they are detected.
8. Competitors' product availability control for all your projects. This feature is tied to the functionality of the competitor's website, namely the ability to display this information.

Helecos is a multifunctional monitoring service, which, in addition to all of the above, allows you to track price trends, including from complex sites. We are talking about resources with implemented parameter protection, as well as with non-standard product layouts.

In addition, Helecos has implemented a module for manually comparing the assortment. Its essence is the independent selection of competitor's products, similar to yours, for further analysis. You can choose a direct link to the product page or select a suggested variant from the list.

Usability effectiveness of Helecos Parser for Internet stores (retail)

We will talk about setting a dynamic pricing policy for trade in online stores, namely in the retail market.

How can the software Helecos be useful at this stage:

1. Dynamic repricing. This takes into account purchasing and retail costs - your price tag has to be perfect! The price at the end of the monitoring is calculated taking into account 7 factors headed by the cost of purchasing the goods and competition on the market.
2. Automated tagging of goods items. The system is set up and works in such a way that the right products are recognized even if they are spelled differently! The search and comparison of products is fully automatic.
3. The monitoring coverage is almost unlimited. The level of the software allows you to work with a limitless number of products and competitors, providing results in a reasonable amount of time.
4. Price lists are analyzed by product characteristics. You can monitor price levels down to the model, category and even individual product characteristics.
5. History of transactions. With Helekos you can monitor all transactions related to adjustments in the price lists of your products over time. Analyze dynamics, make changes manually, etc.
6. Integration with any business intelligence system is available. Thanks to the implemented data export constructor the result of monitoring can be analyzed in 1C, XLS, CSV, TXT, and XML formats.

The benefits of connecting to an automated parser of prices to monitor the suppliers (wholesale trade)

The convenience of the considered tool for working with suppliers is noted due to the following aspects:

1. The convenience and speed of finding new suppliers. Modern parsers eliminate the need to open countless windows of your suppliers' b2b portals to find the right product. The module works on wholesale prices, balances, suppliers, and merchandise.
2. Full-scale data import. Individual connection to the system is made to upload and process residual products with prices from the price lists of suppliers you have chosen to track.
3. Downloading information in a convenient format. The parser services generate summary price lists with commodity items, characteristics, articles, and a number of other properties of all the products of your suppliers. The consolidated price lists are uploaded to your online store.
4. Dynamic retail price setting. Helecos does not only monitor price lists from competitors' web pages but also provides the tools for calculating your prices considering your purchase, product margin, and other aspects.

Proper choice of the parser allows you to see your individual purchase prices for each supplier and automate the selection of the most favorable price tag if there are several offers for the same product.

Dynamic Pricing module allows you to set retail price lists more competently and correctly calculate the margin, taking into account the procurement price list, RRP, and prices set for identical products by your competitors.

Using the Helecos software, it is possible to compare products for online stores and suppliers even if there are no articles or codes!

The result of price monitoring with automated systems

The parsing process is much faster now that such programs can be used intensively. In addition, the following positive aspects of the implementation should be highlighted:

• There is no need to engage staff for online price analysis and research of retail store counters.
• The data with the pricing policy pursued by the market players being monitored is retrieved in real-time. Thus there is an opportunity to update the received information at any interval in time.
• The procedure of price parsing of competitor assortment is made in the shortest terms. It takes just a few minutes to perform monitoring with the help of modern systems.
• Making effective business decisions based on your competitors' prices to promote your products.
• Dynamic pricing. Price offers for your products will automatically change depending on market trends (according to the algorithm you choose).

There are various terms of cooperation from basic packages for any needs to advanced ones, implying individual monitoring conditions.