CIL launches new pricing practice as inflation bites
Professional services firm CIL Management Consultants has launched a new pricing practice. The team will help companies to evaluate how to respond to the pressures of inflation, and will be headed up by Mike Gorham.
With record levels of inflation seeing the cost of raw materials and procurement rise across the supply chain, many firms are faced with a choice. Either they absorb the new costs and risk lower levels of profits, or they pass the cost on to customers and risk competitors undercutting them.
The risks of either choice mean that demand for external pricing expertise is booming at present. Looking to meet demand for the specialised line of consulting, CIL Management Consultants has launched a new pricing practice to help agile and fast-growing businesses take advantage of pricing optimisation strategies – something not traditionally available to mid-market firms.
Heading up the new team is Mike Gorham, who arrives at CIL with a mix of consulting and corporate experience. Having worked in SMEs and major corporates, he has also held executive roles in private equity backed portfolio businesses, experiencing how pricing works at different scales in different industries. His previous positions include Marketing & Strategy Director for Lafarge, and Business Development Director for A-Gas.
On the challenge ahead, the new Pricing Director said, “Pricing optimisation has traditionally been the preserve of larger companies, typically billion-pound listed companies. With this new service, CIL sees this as a great opportunity for growth businesses worldwide, as SMEs are hungry to find ways to increase revenues and have the agility to capture substantial gains within months. This service can bolster their capabilities to achieve from 5 to 10% of baseline revenue. And in some cases, much more.”
Businesses put a huge amount of effort into creating value for customers, like developing products to create new revenue streams, but typically much less effort into ensuring that they capture their fair share of this growth. At the same time, with the UK, Europe and the US still enduring the highest inflation in decades, most companies don’t have the experience of recovering from cost inflation. CIL’s pricing capability allows businesses to identify what is going to work best in their market, based on rigorous customer research and deep data analysis.
Commenting on his appointment, Gorham added, “I’m delighted to be joining such an intelligent and motivated team and taking CIL’s excellent pricing capabilities to a new level. We are already seeing benefits for our clients and there’s so much more opportunity out there for others to benefit from.”
