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Scenarios for Using Price Comparison in Siebel Energy

This topic gives the following example of how price comparison might be used. You might use price comparison differently, depending on your business model. This topic includes the following scenarios:

• Setting Up Rate Plans
• Analyzing Rate Plans
• Comparing Prices and Enrolling Over the Web

Setting Up Rate Plans

Your company's pricing manager creates a rate plan as a new customizable product and associates a class with it that defines its attributes. For this customizable product, she wants Payment Type to be the attribute of the parent rate plan so that the attribute is inherited by its subcomponents. She then creates another product as a subcomponent to represent the different usage types and associates it with the same class.

Next, the pricing manager sets up tier pricing for the class, specifying different tiered rates for different attribute combinations. She sets up a price list for her company and for each of the competitors. She adds both the root product and subcomponents as price list items. She associates the tier pricing with the subcomponents.

A month later, the pricing manager receives the latest publication of residential rates for a major competitor, so she updates her data with the most current information for each rate for that competitor.

Next, she realizes that the competitor has introduced a new rate plan into the market. Because her company does not have an equivalent rate, she creates a new rate product for the competitor's plan and adds it to the competitor's price list.

She can then also model the relevant pricing structure. When a customer service representative or a prospective customer chooses this rate, the comparison reports that there is no equivalent or like-for-like rate plans and returns only those rate plans that match the attributes of the competitor's product or service.

The next rate on her market intelligence gathering list is from a new competitor and therefore not in the database. She sets up a new price list for that competitor, and adds the existing equivalent rate products. She also notes that the rate is offered only within the city limits of Richardson, so she creates a rate structure for which the Region attribute has a value of Richardson.

Analyzing Rate Plans

The pricing manager runs a report each month to compare her company's rates with other competitors in the service area. She needs to review the effectiveness of her company's rate plans, the introduction of competitors' rate plans, and the redesigning of new rate plans to capture the market share needed.

The pricing manager first runs a report that lists all the competitors, their rate plans, and the cents for each kWh for peak, off-peak, and weekend rates associated with each rate plan. This report gives her a good idea of the dynamics in the marketplace.

She next runs a report consolidating the customers' inputs, choices and decision, for every single time the pricing calculator was run for a given time period, displaying the region, service (gas, electric, or both), competitor, rate plan, savings, and if they switched to National Energy. This data assists her in measuring the effectiveness of her rate plans in customer acquisition.

Comparing Prices and Enrolling Over the Web

An energy customer with service provided by a competing firm goes to a Web site to follow up on a price comparison ad he saw.

He is prompted to answer a series of questions. For the first question, he indicates that he wants to receive both gas and electricity service from this company. For his electricity service provider, he selects from a drop-down list that is specific to his region. That action triggers another drop-down list to appear from which he specifies his current service tariff or rate.

Looking at his most recent bill, he enters his quarterly costs. Since he has chosen gas and electric, he then answers similar questions concerning his gas service, and then clicks Finish.

Using the gathered information, the Price Comparison calculator generates his projected annual bill. For each of the company's rate plans, he also sees the savings by switching to the company.

He selects the rate plan that saves him the most money and then clicks the Enroll button. He is then brought to a view that has the proper orderable service entered as a line item. Because he is not an existing customer, he is required to go through new user registration before he can complete the transaction online.