Meet the Member: Avy Punwasee, Partner | Revenue Management Labs
With over 15 years of senior Revenue Management experience spanning pricing, strategy and analytics, Avy has transitioned between being an in house practitioner with large companies such as Anheuser Busch InBev and Ford Motor Company to consulting for many leading companies on a global scale. Avy specializes in strategic pricing implementation, consistently delivering significant profit improvements across diverse industries.
Avy is adept at enabling companies make sense of their complex and generally diverse environments, establishing how best to capitalise through better pricing. Avy brings leading-edge Revenue Management techniques with strategic pricing accompanied with an executional focus. Avy is a Professional Pricing Society speaker and holds an MBA and BBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University.
Keep reading to hear from FACC-NY's latest Member on revenue management insights, upcoming plans for Revenue Management Labs, and more...
Tell us a little about yourself Avy, and tell us about Revenue Management Labs and how it’s helping companies achieve sustainable revenue growth?
I am a Partner at Revenue Management Labs, which means that I spend most of my time building partnerships with companies in all stages of their lifecycle, helping with the execution of projects and building out our team. I am very proud of the significant strides we have made in assembling our internal team of consultants who have industry leading analytical abilities and a wealth of real-world experience.
Revenue Management Labs is a boutique consulting firm that is solely focused on delivering sustainable top line revenue growth. We do this by focusing on 4 main areas:
- What value does our offer provide to customers relative to competition and how do we fully extract this using price?
- How can we ensure our volume driving investments are optimized?
- Are we able to adjust our portfolio of offers to encourage customers to increase their purchases?
- How do we translate revenue management insights to market execution?
What are some of the biggest pricing challenges you see your clients struggle with today?
The current "pandemic environment" has completely shifted how customers shop and make purchase decisions. As a result, their customer needs and price elasticity has been materially impacted. In some cases, companies have much more leverage to take price, of course in a thoughtful manner, while other companies are out of price position. We find many organizations are struggling to truly understand how much their environment has shifted and what changes they need to ensure they are maximizing their top line.
FACC-NY: As trends change and the market shifts due to business environments (and also due to Covid-19), what are your comments on the state of Revenue Management especially in the fickle times of 2021 and beyond?
Strong revenue management is built on an in-depth understanding of the customer. Anytime that your customers needs shift you should always reevaluate your 4 P's:
Optimize your product portfolio: Validate whether all SKUs are still relevant in your portfolio. Understand whether product size changes need to occur to meet out pocket price point needs.
Evolve your pricing strategy: Assess whether the market changes have opened up an opportunity for you to price in each of your customer and product segments.
Place your product properly: Determine whether your assortment by customer still makes sense.
Re-think your promotional strategy: Calculate return on investment by activation and determine how to optimize. We often find that at least 50% of promotion dollars spent are wasted.
FACC-NY: Could you share with us a success story of a company that you have worked with?
We recently partnered with a North American consumer packaged goods company to determine what would be the best way to enter the Club Channel. They had some very strong brands with presence across Grocery, Drug and Convenience. The partner had some "In and Out" offers in the Club channel over the last few years, but never a permanent SKU with financials that they deemed acceptable.
To start, we went through a detailed assessment of the Club Channel to understand the competitive environment, shopper segment needs and interaction with other channels. The interaction with other channels was particularly relevant as it was critical that the new offer did not create customer conflict and put existing revenue streams at risk. We then went through a full value assessment to understand what offer (product and price) would be necessary to create a SKU that would be able to exceed turn thresholds. Knowing what was required from a market facing perspective we went through a design to price initiative to ensure the requisite product could be delivered at accretive margins.
We are happy to say the product launched into the market 6 months ago and exceeded our volume expectations by +24%. To build on this success, 2 more SKUs are being planned in the next 24 months.
FACC-NY: We’d love to hear about some of Revenue Management Labs upcoming plans?
Revenue Management Labs is in the midst of our European expansion. We have opened a satellite office in Switzerland and are excited about fostering more partnerships in the area. We are confident that our analytical frameworks and local market expertise will lead to game changing solutions for partners.
FACC-NY: What encouraged you to join the FACC and what do you hope to gain from your membership in 2021?
We are looking forward to engaging the wide multitude of businesses within the FACC and sharing the leverage of revenue management. We find that revenue management is one of the most frequently under leveraged business tools, but when used correctly can generate game changing results.
→ Feel free to connect with Avy in the Member Directory within FACC-NY's new MemberPortal*.
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