Vivek Anand leads a team of data scientists, statisticians and operations research professionals that apply Data Science and Operations Research techniques to build production ready solutions for problems related to Price Optimization, Inventory Management, and Fulfillment Optimization for a Fortune Fashion retailer.

In this episode, Vivek delves into the strength of combining science and machine learning to make informed pricing decisions. He emphasizes the importance of starting small and continuously enhancing strategies through data-driven approaches. It also explores the differences in B2C and B2B pricing, the impact of AI on supporting salespeople, and the challenges of misaligned incentives in achieving business success.

Why you have to check out today's podcast:

• Understand the need for compensation structures and incentives to align with business objectives that support desired outcomes
• Discover how AI is impacting the way salespeople handle pricing and negotiation
• Learn how to leverage both science and machine learning to make more informed pricing decisions

"If you're new to the journey, start small. You don't have to go and build a transformer network on day one. Even a simple EDA, Exploratory Data Analysis, can give you a ton of insights than just a guesswork."

- Vivek Anand

Topics Covered:

01:19 - What paved his way into pricing

03:26 - How credit risk and interest risk influence pricing derivatives

04:37 - Thoughts on quantifying risks

05:36 - Data science in relation to AI advancement

07:39 - AI capabilities in capturing contextual and temporal information and other pricing techniques using AI

11:30 - Talking about AI and extrapolation

12:47 - B2C pricing versus B2B pricing and the significant difference in data availability between the two

18:38 - How AI can be utilized in the B2B world to assist salespeople in pricing and negotiation

23:57 - Vivek's one best pricing advice

Key Takeaways:

"B2C is mostly, pricing is a lever to generate demand. Whereas in B2B, it's more of a lever to gauge the willingness to pay from the customer's standpoint." - Vivek Anand

"I think data science is a big tent, and AI is a part of it." - Vivek Anand

"The way I think about AI is like, instead of making it heuristics, it learns from the data or it just comes up with a mechanism that just translates input to the output, more systemic, faster learning and can be deployed at scale." - Vivek Anand

Connect with Vivek Anand:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/va2260/

Connect with Mark Stiving:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/
• Email: [email protected]