Pricing strategy

A leading European retailer collaborated with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to implement an automated, intelligent algorithmic approach to optimise its pricing strategy across all its outlets. The Colruyt Group operates over 1,000 physical stores throughout France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Brands like Colruyt Lowest Prices, OKay, DreamLand, and Bio-Planet are among its 10 business formats and diversified business lines.

A successful business model

The Group’s business, especially the success of Colruyt Lowest Prices, is built on keeping costs down and investing resources in guaranteeing the lowest price for every product at any time. But this is no mean feat. Staying on top means monitoring competitors’ online and in-store prices as well as promotions and responding to changes with updated prices for those items and for hierarchically linked items across all stores and business formats.

Over time, Colruyt Lowest Prices felt the need to transform its pricing platform, as it struggled to cope with the sheer volumes and complexity involved. The Colruyt Group then collaborated successfully with TCS as its strategic partner to tap into the power of automation and other digital technologies.

The Next-gen Pricing Engine solution

The Colruyt Group and TCS collaborated to successfully implement the Next-gen Pricing Engine, an algorithmic, near real-time, intelligent system that automates the deployment of the pricing strategy across products, linked items, stores, channels, and brands. 

A real-time mobile app was launched to boost the productivity and accuracy of in-store price recording from competitor locations. The system uses in-parallel memory processing for large volumes of data to generate price recommendations at near real-time speed.

Importantly, the engine caters to the varied pricing strategies relevant to the different business lines of Colruyt Lowest Prices – regular, everyday low prices, high-low, promotions, and markdowns – enabling the competitive benefits to accrue across the enterprise. 

Partnering with TCS for the innovative use of technology is helping Colruyt Lowest Prices respond to competitors with speed and agility, capturing over 100,000 competitor prices and processing up to 50 million reaction prices daily. This has helped the retailer strengthen its competitive differentiation, live up to its brand promise, and drive growth.