Free Online Pricing Course! Each Symposium Attendee will earn 1 credit towards their CPP designation plus receive 1 Online Pricing Course at no additional charge!

8:00 - 9:00 am -- Registration / Breakfast

9:00 - 10:00 am -- "Implementing Pricing Strategies in Latin America"

Speaker: Frederico Zornig, Founder and CEO, Quantiz Pricing Solutions, Brazil

As the economic downturn creates additional pressure on prices worldwide, companies doing business in Latin America need to understand how markets in this region are reacting differently from developed countries. Taking similar approaches to pricing management may not be the best answer at this moment when markets are facing different challenges. In this session, you will learn from real life examples from companies running pricing strategies in Latin America.
Attendees will learn:

1. What are the key factors that must be addressed before defining the most profitable strategy
2. How to manage price concessions in a price sensitive market
3. How to make sure strategies will be executed by the local team

Frederico Zornig is the Founder and CEO of Quantiz Pricing Solutions. He has 16 years of international executive experience at Johnson & Johnson and British American Tobacco. He has authored two books, Acerte o Preço e Aumente seus Lucros (Fix Your Price and Increase your Profits) and Decidindo o Caminho (Deciding the Path). He has also published several pricing articles in the US and Latin America. Frederico is a PhD Candidate at ISM, France and received his MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt.

10:00 - 10:30 am -- Morning Break

10:30 - 11:15 am -- "Channel Dynamics in Latin America: Protecting Markets in a Customer Consolidation Environment"

Speaker: Ricardo Rubi, Director, Simon-Kucher & Partners

As in all developing markets, Latin America has been facing a customer consolidation issue; several customers rapidly grow at the expense of other smaller players in the marketplace. This poses numerous problems for companies, such as: increasingly powerful customers that have a high control of prices, and a loss of small customers that often yield high margins. What strategies can be pursued by companies in Latin America to protect profitable channels? What pricing initiatives can be pursued to retard the consolidation once the danger is imminent? Attendants will learn:

1. Channel protection strategies to prevent future customer consolidation issues.
2. Discount structure initiatives proven to strengthen smaller players in the supply chain
3. Case studies of Latin American companies and what they have done when facing increasing customer consolidation.

Ricardo Rubi’s consulting activities focus on price optimization and developing comprehensive pricing and marketing strategies for both new and existing products. He has worked in numerous studies with clients in the pharmaceutical, consumer goods, construction materials, logistics, software, financial services, and other industries. Ricardo has extensive experience using analytical methods to investigate markets taking into account their idiosyncrasies and operational limitations. Ricardo has worked devising pricing strategies for products in the US, Europe, and many Latin American countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. Ricardo received a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Sciences, with a concentration in Operations Research, from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

11:15 - Noon -- "Defining a Regional Pricing Strategy for Latin America"

Speaker: Manuel E. Osorio, Director, Simon-Kucher & Partners

During the last couple of years, exchange rates and raw material prices have been more volatile than ever, and consolidation has continued among market players. These changes led many companies to review their regional pricing policies, sometimes even changing the currency in which prices were denominated. What are the risks and the opportunities for executives responsible for setting pricing guidelines for the region? What approaches are available to define a consistent, yet flexible, pricing strategy for Latin America? What have others done that has or has not worked? Attendants will learn:

1. The challenges of setting regional price policies across Latin America: volatility of exchange rates and raw material prices, differences between countries, currency selection, gray markets.
2. Approaches to structure the problem and define pricing guidelines
3. Good and bad examples of how different companies have dealt with these issues

Manuel Osorio has been working in strategy consulting since 1999. His activities focus on developing marketing strategies and improving pricing processes for global corporations.
His experience in Latin America includes Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela. Manuel received an MBA degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

12:00 Noon -- Lunch

1:00 - 1:45 pm -- "Pricing in Emerging Markets: The Specific Case of Latin America Countries"

Speaker: Fernando Ventureira, Director of Pricing Solutions’ Centre of Excellence for Software and Systems

This presentation will outline the key factors that make Latin American markets different from Mature Markets and will discuss Pricing Strategies that are appropriate for the region. Some of the key areas discussed include: Insights and practical recommendations on how to handle the Pricing discipline in Emerging Markets. Examples of successful LatAm Pricing Strategies, based on practical Business Cases, with a specific focus on:

• Pricing Corridors & Grey Markets
• Inflation & Money Fluctuation
• Impact & Consequences of the Economical Crises
• Exports & Mercosur
• Regulatory Rules & Local Government Strategies
• Products & Services Value
• Competitive Intelligence & Pressure
• Pricing Professionals and Organizational Structure

• Cultural Component of Pricing

Fernando Ventureira is the Director of of Pricing Solutions’ Centre of Excellence for Software & Systems. Fernando has more than 20 years of experience helping clients worldwide, in a diverse range of industries, to successfully implement Strategy, Management and Operational Improvements Projects, as well as complex Software Development and Systems Delivery projects. Fernando is an expert in Project and Change Management Methodologies like PMIBook, Metrica, DMAIC (Black Belt) and CMMI. He has helped companies to improve their Pricing Capabilities, and utilize Process, Systems and Pricing Tools to achieve their Pricing Objectives. Fernando has an MBA from the EAP (Paris Management School, Oxford Cursus) as well as a Bachelor of Science in IT, from the ESCP (Paris High Business School).

1:45 - 2:30 pm -- Pricing Execution in Latin America: Stories from the Battlefield

Speaker: Patricio Simpson, Sr. Manager, Deloitte Consulting

Executing pricing strategies in Latin America presents several local challenges that need to be considered during the planning phase, such as:

• Markets in the region are very diverse from country to country
• Only in the largest markets (such as Brazil or México) are we likely to find the technological, human, and financial resources needed to apply sophisticated pricing schemes and to implement programs that avoid margin leakage.

Ultimately, field execution must include local teams that can understand the particular nuances and practices that can be found in each market and companies must be flexible enough to adapt quickly to the dynamic realities of the local markets. In addition to the above, attendees will also learn about:

1. Planning for the unique “clandestine” product presentations in the market
2. How to understand the impact of currency (bills vs. coins) and/or financial instruments (credit cards) on sales

Patricio Simpson is a Senior Manager for Deloitte’s Strategy and Operations. He has over 12 years of consulting experience in the Customer and Market Strategy service area focused on interactive entertainment, high-tech, telecomm, media, manufacturing and retail companies. Patricio is a core member of Deloitte Consulting’s National Pricing and Profitability Management Practice, the Deloitte Pricing Center of Excellence and has been involved in launching the LatAm Pricing Practice.

Speaker: Alex Carneiro, ValorArt Ltda.

 

In the first exploratory study of this kind carried out in Brazil, over 200 senior executives have been interviewed. They were asked about their most impactful pricing challenges and their most frequent approaches to Value Measurement, Value Creation, Price build up methods and the key characteristics of the pricing management system they rely on.

 

In order to understand the background to different approaches taken we also surveyed their market share and profitability trends over the latest 3 years and a tentative diagnosis of the markets they operate on was carried out as far as customer price sensitivity and competitive rivalry are concerned. This research included companies from all sizes – from less than US$ 50M to well over US$ 1B in turnover – from manufacturing, services and the trade sectors and its results provide an insightful understanding of some opportunities to get superior pricing performance in business markets in Brazil.

 

Alex Carneiro: As a managing partner of ValorArt, a boutique consultancy firm based in Rio de Janeiro – Brazil, Alex leads its business marketing practice, with a particular focus on strategic pricing.

 

Previously Alex worked for almost 30 years as sales and marketing executive, mostly within Shell, including 5 years as Commercial VP.Production engineer and MBA, Alex also attended senior executive education programs at INSEAD, Wharton, IMD, University of Chicago and Escola de Marketing Industrial over the last 5 years. Twice he was invited by Professor Kent Monroe to participate in the Pricing Research Camp at the University of Illinois.

 

Alex is a member of the Professional Pricing Society, the IMD Marketing B2B group, the Instituto Brasileiro de Governança Corporativa and the Instituto de Marketing Industrial, with many articles published in business marketing magazines in Brazil.

The closing session will bring together many of the symposium speakers for an interactive question and answer session with the audience. A great opportunity to get your questions answered!