All projects · IMCD España
IMCD Price Tool
A price increase passed on to every customer without losing sight of margin.
- Client
- IMCD España
- Year
- 2022
- Industry
- Chemicals / B2B distribution
- Role
- Agile Delivery Manager · PM (Project rescue) · Development
- Partner
- Include3
- Platform
- Internal web app, integrated with JD Edwards
- Users
- Product Managers, sales reps and management
- Scope
- Price review campaigns end to end
Price proposal per customer
The proposal per customer and item, with current margin, margin won by the increase and each sales rep’s validation. On top, the campaign margin totals.
Summary
IMCD distributes specialty chemicals and ingredients on behalf of manufacturers such as Ashland. When a manufacturer raises its prices, the tool guides the campaign from the manufacturer's file to the proposal for each customer, with the margin impact visible at every decision.
Screens
Data shown is anonymized.
PPC vs PRC reconciliation
Purchase price list against sales price list: each item shows whether both sides match and what action to take.
Campaign filters
The PM filters by plant, manufacturer, supplier and owner, and ticks the items in the campaign.
Status follow-up
Each line’s status by customer and item, with counters per status and progress towards the deadline.
The problem
When a manufacturer announces a purchase price increase, IMCD has to pass it on to hundreds of customers and items without destroying margin or losing accounts. The process involved Product Managers, sales reps and management, and lived in spreadsheets.
- The manufacturer's file did not match the ERP item master, and some references existed on one side but not the other.
- Each customer's price proposal was negotiated without a consolidated view of the impact on gross margin.
- There was no record of who proposed, who approved or where each review stood.
Approach
The value was not technical complexity but turning a fuzzy negotiation into a chain of explicit decisions. Every step of the campaign has an owner and nothing moves forward without a recorded decision: who reconciles the manufacturer's file, who proposes each customer's price, who validates it and with what effect on margin.
What we built
Header and files
The campaign is created and the manufacturer's price change file (PPC) is uploaded.
Filters and selection
The Product Manager filters by manufacturer, supplier, business unit and line, warehouse and owner, and selects the affected items.
PPC vs PRC reconciliation
Each line is classified as a match, only in the manufacturer's file or only in the selection, and each case has an explicit action: accept the pair, drop the item for sale or for sale and purchase, or add it to the PPC.
Purchase prices and rules
New purchase prices are set and the increase rules for the proposal are configured.
Proposal per customer
For each customer and item: last 12 months' volume, current price, the tool's and the sales rep's proposals, increase type and percentage, and current gross margin against each proposal. A panel sums up the impact in real time.
Validation and tracking
The proposal is validated and the whole campaign has a visible status at all times.
Stack
- Java
- Spring
- SQL Server
- JavaScript
- Bootstrap
- JD Edwards
Results
Every price campaign went from swapping spreadsheets to a traceable flow, with the margin impact in view before deciding.
- Mismatches between the manufacturer's file and the ERP are resolved one by one, each with a recorded decision.
- Sales reps and Product Managers negotiate with the margin of every proposal in front of them.
- Management knows where each campaign stands and who owns the next decision.
The problem was never calculating a price, but that nobody knew who decided what. Ordering the decisions is what made the software possible.
Visual system
A dense back office, small Poppins and two colour-coded actions.
- Background#F4F5F7
- Border#E3E6EA
- Alternate row#F2F2F2
- Primary#28A745
- Secondary#17A2B8
- Notice#7CD1F9
- Aa
Poppins
The whole interface, in small sizes for dense tables