On April 25th, we hosted our second webinar of the year titled ‘BrainPROS: The Future of Smart Pricing’, led by Camilla Brugali, Product Manager of BrainPROS, our Revenue Management system.

We continue with our webinar series. In this second edition, we focused on the Brazilian market, aiming to share with bus companies in that country what we have achieved, guiding companies to optimize their revenue management through technology.

In the webinar—headed by Camilla Brugali, Product Manager of BrainPROS, and María Fernanda Brito, Head of Marketing at Reservamos SaaS—the following topics were addressed: 

• Price Law #1.
• The critical points companies face in terms of pricing strategies.
• BrainPROS, Revenue Management system.
• Price is about leveraging context!
• The best time to implement a Revenue Management system.

Price Law #1: Price is Never Ready

The main law and premise that Camilla shared during the webinar is that the pricing strategy is never ready, never definitive, and never the only possible one.

Just as a product requires constant innovation, updates, and new features according to user needs, pricing strategies also require constant adjustments. In Camilla’s words: The market and a customer’s willingness to pay a price are becoming increasingly dynamic, a moving target. There are increasingly more sales channels, competitors, and sources of interaction between an end consumer and a brand. This requires that the pricing strategy be equally dynamic and constantly reviewed and changed, considering various factors to stay up-to-date and competitive.

When we talk about pricing strategies, we refer to all aspects to consider when assigning a price to a product or service. In sectors like buses, there are challenges to establish mass, automated, and intelligent pricing strategies. When speaking of smart pricing, we refer to considering different areas of opportunity. What are these challenges that we have identified working hand in hand with the sector:

• Data standardization.
• Identifying segments to capture pricing opportunities.
• Updating prices across different channels.

Without having a single source of information, it becomes difficult for companies to detect opportunities in an automated and massive way to set the right price.

The price is about leveraging the context

There are countless aspects that a bus company can consider when creating a pricing strategy for each route and schedule. From segmenting their travelers, the most popular and least crowded routes, the days of the week traveled, the time of day, the type of seat, weather conditions, events or current situations, the distance of the journey, ancillaries such as pets, luggage, food, and even the anticipation with which the traveler purchases their ticket.

All these aspects play a role in creating a pricing strategy, so the price of a journey goes beyond the cost for the company; it involves the entire purchasing flow for a traveler, their interests, needs, preferences, etc.

Several models help us anticipate demand. One of them is the traffic to a bus company’s website over time, per user; it’s a way to predict demand. However, there are many ways to think about customizing the pricing strategy according to each traveler and thus achieve the goal of maximizing revenue.

Camilla Brugali, Product Manager, BrainPROS.

Errors commonly made when creating a pricing strategy

One of the major challenges identified by the BrainPROS development team and Reservamos SaaS Revenue Management strategies team are the fears and scenarios often faced by bus companies when creating a pricing strategy.

For many companies, creating a pricing strategy involves misconceptions and issues such as:

• Assuming that if the price is too low or discounted, the company will lose revenue.
• Believing that if the price is too high, the company will be rejecting potential sales.
• Fear of losing sales and therefore profitability on each journey. 

However, these are misconceptions that can lead a company to lose money. In Camilla’s words: When a company today takes responsibility for creating intelligent pricing strategies, it means that it is also willing to understand that user or traveler throughout their purchasing journey. Understanding that over time, that user will have different behaviors and needs. So, we shouldn’t start from the premise of only lowering the price or always raising the price, but rather think dynamically, interpreting that end user more comprehensively and finding ways to retain them and increase their loyalty.

Whenever we think about Revenue Management strategies at Reservamos SaaS, we know that it is necessary, on the one hand, to constantly monitor the different variables in the market, in consumers, in the behavior of the company itself, and on the other hand, to interpret that information and data to propose an intelligent price that pleases the traveler and truly maximizes revenue for the company.

Hence the value that BrainPROS brings, as it is a Revenue Management system that does not require integration, and companies can try it out to increase their insight into the variables that influence the creation of an optimal and effective pricing strategy.

3 reasons to implement a Revenue Management system:

• Data and cloud infrastructure are becoming more cost-effective and better every day.
• Large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence make data collection, organization, and analysis scalable and powerful.
• Customer expectations regarding personalization make dynamic pricing an indispensable strategy for any bus company.

Having technology specialized in the bus sector today is not impossible to achieve. A solution that is capable of concentrating a large source of data is synonymous with cost optimization, and operational processes, and therefore is a cost-effective solution due to its immediate benefits.

In addition, one of the major trends today among brands is personalization. For that, data is required, information that allows a company to adapt uniquely to what each user or consumer requires, not only in terms of the user experience within an eCommerce but also in the pricing strategy, according to their behavior. 

The best time to implement a Revenue Management system is now

Through BrainPROS, bus companies have two paths to delve into Revenue Management and smart pricing.

Competitor Monitor

It is a machine learning-driven module, integrated into BrainPROS, developed to monitor and analyze market behavior to create a differentiated strategy.

The Competitor Monitor facilitates the analysis of public market data. It is used by price analysts, data analysts, operations managers, and sales and marketing managers, among other members of bus companies, to have up-to-date and automatic market information at their fingertips, such as routes, schedules, occupancy, capacity, and prices; and through this comprehensive visualization, make better decisions in their pricing strategies and inventory optimization.

BrainPROS

A Revenue Management system, based on data science, that concentrates all the data a company needs to make revenue-increasing decisions.

BrainPROS provides precise and agile answers to the questions companies have about their markets, helping to strengthen their performance and automate processes and operations.

In addition to the Competitor Monitor module, this system consists of 4 more modules that provide: smart alerts about market supply variations; indicators to measure the performance of their strategies; and smart pricing recommendations to optimize revenue.

Every company has its way of working, its policies, and its objectives. Therefore, our dynamic pricing system is also customized for each company. We provide advice, follow-up, and guidance to help companies bring their pricing strategies to their direct online sales channels.

Camilla Brugali, Product Manager, BrainPROS.

In addition to our BrainPROS system, at Reservamos SaaS, we have internal Revenue Management consultants who support and guide our partners in the creation of their pricing strategies. This way, we ensure that operational teams feel confident about the strategies they are creating, dispelling any doubts or fears about their effectiveness, and showing the potential of BrainPROS, providing them with the necessary training to achieve autonomy in the use of the solution, and thus guaranteeing a maximization of their revenue.

We have several success stories in the use of the Competitor Monitor and BrainPROS. In Brazil, wemobi, a 100% digital company, uses the Competitor Monitor. This module helped the company achieve significant revenue growth, reach a record occupancy rate, and sustain a substantial growth margin. All the data sources from the Competitor Monitor helped this digital company make better decisions about dynamic pricing.

Camilla Brugali, Product Manager, BrainPROS.

Another 100% digital brand located in Mexico is Roll&Bits, which uses the complete BrainPROS system and is an important success case in the use of Revenue Management strategies. In Camilla’s words: The Roll&Bits case is one of great pride for me. Through the use of BrainPROS, the company achieved a 37.8% revenue growth per trip; this means that the implemented strategies allowed Roll&Bits to maximize revenue for each trip taken. And that revenue growth per trip led the company to achieve a 41% growth in total revenue.

Today is the best time for any company to adopt smart pricing strategies. Faced with an increasingly modernized world, demanding more automated processes, more personalized experiences, and a more agile capacity to analyze data, it becomes imperative to have technology that solves all that, helps optimize processes, reduces operational times, and focuses energies on detecting growth opportunities. BrainPROS is the answer that companies seek to achieve those business objectives and increase revenue efficiently.