Corning Optical Upgrades Pricing Optimization for Big Financial Gains
Discover how Corning Optical realized $10 million in positive financial impacts in just one year.
Highlighted Business Outcomes
Modern Data Warehouse
New technology freed up internal IT resources and lowered IT infrastructure expenses.
Fast ROI
Identified price, margin and profit opportunities equaling over $10 million in financial impact in first year.
Framework for Optimization
Vendavo Professional Services delivered speedy implementation and ongoing expert guidance.
Smarter Pricing Lights the Way to Improved Margins for Optical Fiber Giant, Corning
Corning invents, makes, and sells some of the most important innovations in the world. Corning Optical Communications is the world leader in passive optical fiber, with more than $3.5 billion in annual sales of products and solutions for optical based infrastructure. The Corning division has more than 200,000 SKUs that need to be priced, analyzed, and optimized but the company’s internally developed analytics system had limited capability and could only be used by trained specialists that had licenses to the software. With an aging data warehouse that was difficult to modify and expensive to upgrade, Corning selected Vendavo solutions and Vendavo Professional Services for speedy implementation and expert guidance.
Modernizing an Aging Data Warehouse
Corning implemented the Vendavo platform and users can now quickly access and easily manipulate the data to drill down on the attributes and measures that help them make quick business decisions. While putting sensitive pricing and profitability data in the hands of another company was scary and a big hurdle for us to get over, Foret says, Vendavo met every IT and security requirement.
Outsourcing the hosting and upgrades to Vendavo has allowed Corning pricing and sales teams to focus on strategy and execution, rather than technology. The 225 active users on the product line management teams are the primary users and they’ve seen the biggest gains, says Foret. Visibility into pricing and margin patterns through Vendavo dashboards gives them better information to make smarter, faster decisions. As marketplace conditions or inputs change, the company can adjust more quickly.
Visibility into pricing and margin patterns through Vendavo dashboards gives us better information to make smarter, faster decisions. As marketplace conditions or inputs change, we can adjust more quickly.
Continuous Optimization and ROI with Vendavo Professional Services
While lower IT costs and greater reliability were big decision drivers for the Vendavo solution, the addition of Vendavo Professional Services ensures that value is being realized for all stakeholders. Vendavo pricing consultants worked with Corning Optical Communications to outline metrics for success, set goals, and then measure those goals precisely and consistently. Those resources made a huge difference in helping prove value and progress throughout the organization.
Vendavo supported solution design and configuration, change management, and value measurement. Specific value cases created for Corning included the identification of negative margin and low margin transactions, creating a process to monitor and manage costs-to serve at a granular and actionable basis, and establishing business routines for optimizing pricing in general and creating value-based pricing for key products.
Vendavo’s integrated professional services have helped us climb the learning curve faster, implement more smoothly, and deliver on the value of this investment which we’ve calculated in the first year at approximately $10 million in positive financial impact,” says Foret. “Their professional services have been crucial to our success.
About Corning Optical Communications
Overview
Founded in 1851, Corning Incorporated is an American manufacturer of glass, ceramics and related materials, primarily for industrial and scientific applications. While best known for its line of Corelle tableware and Pyrex cookware (businesses which it sold but still holds an ~8% interest in) Corning has transformed itself over the years into a high technology company.
Fast Facts
Industry: Manufacturing
Headquarters: Charlotte, NC
Locations: 107 Corning locations in 24 countries