How we created an IT product price calculator and automated specification creation
“How much will an IT product cost?” - how often do you hear this question and how quickly can you answer it? Whether it be software, hardware, website development, or developer services — in any case, you will have to sit and spend a certain number of man-hours on the calculation of specifications. What can we say about the specification of the parameters from the buyer or the request for discounts from the manufacturer or distributor - this is no longer turning into hours, but into several stretched days (at best) and long chains of letters.
This post is about how we decided to develop a universal price calculator for IT products with all their features and user parameters. And about what came of it.
This is the first thing we heard on fire with our idea. And our developers told us about it. Automating the pricing of their services is impossible, they said. No calculator can replace a good sales manager and customer interview, they said.
')
But in fact, we did not think of replacing anyone. On the contrary, we were looking for a tool that could save time for CIO when searching for suitable IT products, and for suppliers when calculating specifications for IT directors. We wanted to free up the time of sellers just for sales, and not to occupy their hours and days with complex calculations.
We were looking for a tool that could compose specifications and universally calculate the price of any IT product (software, equipment or services), taking into account the individual parameters of the user. In order to ensure the correctness of the calculator for different categories of products, we have attracted experts precisely in these products. They helped us create calculators and check the correctness of their work.
Looking ahead, we say: we did it. What and how exactly, we will tell below.
In this case, it is not a hackneyed phrase from a call center specialist, but the absolute truth. We very much hope for honest feedback from IT professionals and experts of IT products of different categories. Experts who want to try to develop a calculator for their products are welcome. We are an open platform, open to criticism, new ideas and opinions. And we call the specification and price calculator an expert assessment precisely because we do not pretend to absolute accuracy of calculations, depending on a huge number of factors, but rely on expert opinion. But the approximate price that takes into account the parameters of buyers, it seems to us, is very similar to the truth. With us - the story, and you - to judge.
The most ingenious inventions were created by lazy people. We are not very lazy, so we do not pretend to genius. Nevertheless, over the years of work in the IT field, it became clear that we and our colleagues really need a platform where the entire IT market would be gathered in one place, not only with a description of the products and their application possibilities, but also with objective information about the success of IT projects. Therefore, the first thing we started with was the creation of a catalog of IT products, solutions, implementations, suppliers, manufacturers.
Already in the process of development, it became clear that one directory would not be enough to achieve our main goal - to minimize the extra costs of IT market participants to find each other and to create all the necessary tools for interaction in the sales chain. There are many projects on the market with a reference model for evaluating products and implementations. We wanted to know objective data about products, such as ROI. But in order to calculate the ROI, you need to know the price of the product aside from the profit. This article gives an example of calculating ROI:"How to calculate ROI when implementing Office 365 using a ROI calculator"
That we are at work
At that stage, the idea of automating quotas (calculating price specifications) was itself a discovery. Yes, we came across some calculators built into vendor sites that calculate the final prices of their products. But we did not see such a calculator, where the substitution functions of any parameters both for the product and for the user could be embedded.
We wanted to get a tool that would help the CIO to select the most suitable IT products in terms of solving its specific tasks, regardless of who manufactures or supplies them. A tool that would allow to compare these products not only theoretically by description, but also practically - by implementations, and financially - by price and return on investment. We wanted to build the tool in such a way that the supplier received from the potential buyer ready-made specifications with all the company's parameters taken into account. Thus, the idea appeared to send the user a request for consultation, and a request for a commercial offer, to which the buyer attaches ready-made specifications with part numbers of manufacturers. We wanted to make this functionality free for customers, and so far we have it coming out.
In order to create the calculator creation algorithm itself, we only needed developers. And the price calculator has been developed. The ability to create such calculators is available for all products that already exist in the catalog, and for those that will get there in the future. Information in the catalogs is updated both with our help and with the help of suppliers and vendors who can register with us and add up-to-date information about their products themselves.
It all looked good, but to test how it works on real products and prices instead of test “2 + 2”, we already needed real experts. That is, people who know everything about a product: user parameters, pricing objects - everything that is usually included in the specifications when calculating the price of products by product managers and everything that determines the price.
How does the price calculator for IT buyers - you can read here .
How you can automate specifications and create a calculator of your products to suppliers and IT manufacturers - you can read here .
Initially, we decided that the usual price list of the manufacturer or supplier is a table of price dependence on some parameters (users, years of use, and so on) and repelled by this. But then, looking at the price lists of the largest IT vendors, we saw that often this is a huge data table, where the columns place parameters that only brand managers can understand. Then we realized that you need to redo everything. In the new version, we supported both approaches: “two-dimensional” tables with dependencies on parameters in columns and columns, and a search in “one-dimensional” tables according to specified parameters.
Now the calculator allows you to program almost any dependencies that are needed for calculating discounts, choosing different items of the price list. For convenience, we have built-in support for formulas with Excel syntax.
We have developed a fundamentally new algorithm for creating calculators that anyone can use, online and for free, as well as other functions of our catalogs. Practice shows that the algorithm works correctly. Calculators already created by us for IT products are working correctly, because we were helped to create and check them by experts in these products.
Most recently, we were able to build into the calculation a function of support for the system of discounts for users, which is available to IT vendors.
In the future, we are thinking of making not just configuration lines, but intellectual “positions” that will contain information about whether the product is a budget version or advanced, basic, or already optional. This will allow you to request cheaper / more expensive pricing options. ”
We will give examples of calculators of products that we have turned out. On the images you will see the specifications set by us for the calculation, and by clicking on the links to the product calculators you can substitute any configurations and parameters of users.
Price calculation for Forcepoint TRITON AP-DATA.
Pricing for VMware vSphere
Pricing for Citrix XenMobile
Pricing for Microsoft Office 365
We want more tests and feedback. We need more experts in different product categories to find out if the calculator will work correctly for everyone. Maybe we still made a mistake somewhere? Then there will be room for us to improve and solve new problems.
We would be very useful opinions of people "in the subject." What did we do? What can be done better? What hurts the eye? Perhaps we have not taken into account something and you can give us a fresh look at some functions, features and flaws in our project. We are looking forward to your comments.
This post is about how we decided to develop a universal price calculator for IT products with all their features and user parameters. And about what came of it.
You will not succeed!
This is the first thing we heard on fire with our idea. And our developers told us about it. Automating the pricing of their services is impossible, they said. No calculator can replace a good sales manager and customer interview, they said.
')
But in fact, we did not think of replacing anyone. On the contrary, we were looking for a tool that could save time for CIO when searching for suitable IT products, and for suppliers when calculating specifications for IT directors. We wanted to free up the time of sellers just for sales, and not to occupy their hours and days with complex calculations.
We were looking for a tool that could compose specifications and universally calculate the price of any IT product (software, equipment or services), taking into account the individual parameters of the user. In order to ensure the correctness of the calculator for different categories of products, we have attracted experts precisely in these products. They helped us create calculators and check the correctness of their work.
Looking ahead, we say: we did it. What and how exactly, we will tell below.
Your opinion is very important to us
In this case, it is not a hackneyed phrase from a call center specialist, but the absolute truth. We very much hope for honest feedback from IT professionals and experts of IT products of different categories. Experts who want to try to develop a calculator for their products are welcome. We are an open platform, open to criticism, new ideas and opinions. And we call the specification and price calculator an expert assessment precisely because we do not pretend to absolute accuracy of calculations, depending on a huge number of factors, but rely on expert opinion. But the approximate price that takes into account the parameters of buyers, it seems to us, is very similar to the truth. With us - the story, and you - to judge.
Lyrical digression or “Everyone dreams in his own way”
The most ingenious inventions were created by lazy people. We are not very lazy, so we do not pretend to genius. Nevertheless, over the years of work in the IT field, it became clear that we and our colleagues really need a platform where the entire IT market would be gathered in one place, not only with a description of the products and their application possibilities, but also with objective information about the success of IT projects. Therefore, the first thing we started with was the creation of a catalog of IT products, solutions, implementations, suppliers, manufacturers.
Already in the process of development, it became clear that one directory would not be enough to achieve our main goal - to minimize the extra costs of IT market participants to find each other and to create all the necessary tools for interaction in the sales chain. There are many projects on the market with a reference model for evaluating products and implementations. We wanted to know objective data about products, such as ROI. But in order to calculate the ROI, you need to know the price of the product aside from the profit. This article gives an example of calculating ROI:
That we are at work
At that stage, the idea of automating quotas (calculating price specifications) was itself a discovery. Yes, we came across some calculators built into vendor sites that calculate the final prices of their products. But we did not see such a calculator, where the substitution functions of any parameters both for the product and for the user could be embedded.
We wanted to get a tool that would help the CIO to select the most suitable IT products in terms of solving its specific tasks, regardless of who manufactures or supplies them. A tool that would allow to compare these products not only theoretically by description, but also practically - by implementations, and financially - by price and return on investment. We wanted to build the tool in such a way that the supplier received from the potential buyer ready-made specifications with all the company's parameters taken into account. Thus, the idea appeared to send the user a request for consultation, and a request for a commercial offer, to which the buyer attaches ready-made specifications with part numbers of manufacturers. We wanted to make this functionality free for customers, and so far we have it coming out.
Creating a price calculator
In order to create the calculator creation algorithm itself, we only needed developers. And the price calculator has been developed. The ability to create such calculators is available for all products that already exist in the catalog, and for those that will get there in the future. Information in the catalogs is updated both with our help and with the help of suppliers and vendors who can register with us and add up-to-date information about their products themselves.
It all looked good, but to test how it works on real products and prices instead of test “2 + 2”, we already needed real experts. That is, people who know everything about a product: user parameters, pricing objects - everything that is usually included in the specifications when calculating the price of products by product managers and everything that determines the price.
How does the price calculator for IT buyers - you can read here .
How you can automate specifications and create a calculator of your products to suppliers and IT manufacturers - you can read here .
Where we stumbled
Initially, we decided that the usual price list of the manufacturer or supplier is a table of price dependence on some parameters (users, years of use, and so on) and repelled by this. But then, looking at the price lists of the largest IT vendors, we saw that often this is a huge data table, where the columns place parameters that only brand managers can understand. Then we realized that you need to redo everything. In the new version, we supported both approaches: “two-dimensional” tables with dependencies on parameters in columns and columns, and a search in “one-dimensional” tables according to specified parameters.
Now the calculator allows you to program almost any dependencies that are needed for calculating discounts, choosing different items of the price list. For convenience, we have built-in support for formulas with Excel syntax.
What we did
We have developed a fundamentally new algorithm for creating calculators that anyone can use, online and for free, as well as other functions of our catalogs. Practice shows that the algorithm works correctly. Calculators already created by us for IT products are working correctly, because we were helped to create and check them by experts in these products.
Most recently, we were able to build into the calculation a function of support for the system of discounts for users, which is available to IT vendors.
In the future, we are thinking of making not just configuration lines, but intellectual “positions” that will contain information about whether the product is a budget version or advanced, basic, or already optional. This will allow you to request cheaper / more expensive pricing options. ”
Examples of what happened
We will give examples of calculators of products that we have turned out. On the images you will see the specifications set by us for the calculation, and by clicking on the links to the product calculators you can substitute any configurations and parameters of users.
Price calculation for Forcepoint TRITON AP-DATA.
Pricing for VMware vSphere
Pricing for Citrix XenMobile
Pricing for Microsoft Office 365
What we lack
We want more tests and feedback. We need more experts in different product categories to find out if the calculator will work correctly for everyone. Maybe we still made a mistake somewhere? Then there will be room for us to improve and solve new problems.
What we still lack, but we do not know about it?
We would be very useful opinions of people "in the subject." What did we do? What can be done better? What hurts the eye? Perhaps we have not taken into account something and you can give us a fresh look at some functions, features and flaws in our project. We are looking forward to your comments.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/348474/
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