Price f(x) picks up €25M Series B for its pricing optimization SaaS

Price f(x), a startup that offers cloud-based pricing software, has raised €25 million in Series B funding. Leading the round is European B2B technology growth investor Digital + Partners, and consulting firm Bain & Company. Prague-based Credo Ventures and London-based Talis Capital, which both backed Price f(x) at Series A, have also participated in this new round.

Founded in 2011, Munich-based Price f(x) provides a modular SaaS solution for price optimisation management (PO&M) and configure-price-quote (CPQ) for enterprises of any size.

Pricing optimisation software typically helps companies accurately define the price of goods across a vast and constantly changing spectrum of data and variables. This can include things like customer survey data and segments, competitor data, operating costs, inventories, and historic prices and sales.

CPQ software aggregates these variables, thus enabling companies to configure products or services in the most optimal way (i.e. bundling, up-sells, etc.), and price them according to costs, competition and local economic factors.

This end result is that is that it can drastically speed up and improve the accuracy of the quoting process to give customers the best price possible in accordance with all of the above factors.

Price f(x) says it currently serves over 80 global, blue-chip B2B and B2C customers across a variety of industries, including Robert Bosch, SchneiderElectric, Owens- Illinois, Iron Mountain and Sonoco. The company has also developed a strong partner ecosystem with leading global technology, consulting and integration providers, including new backer Bain & Company, and SAP.

Notably, Price f(x) is in the midst of litigation with U.S. competitor Vendavo over a number of patent disputes. In December 2017, Vendavo launched a lawsuit against Price f(x), which the German company refutes. And earlier this week, Price f(x) filed petitions for “Covered Business Method (“CBM”) Review” of four Vendavo patents, and says it will imminently file a fifth, which together will cover challenges to all of the patent claims that Vendavo has asserted in litigation between the two parties.

“Price f(x) has become the leading SaaS pricing solution provider on the market through its customer centric approach and by offering a feature rich, highly flexible pricing tool that is also risk free and fast to implement,” says Marcin Cichon, CEO and co-Founder of Price f(x), in a statement. “Our success is based on the continued satisfaction and loyalty of our customers. This new funding will allow us to help even more businesses to thrive by further expanding our existing platform capabilities and also introducing a new product offering for the SME market segment”.

“For most companies, pricing is the single most effective lever to boost earnings,” says Ron Kermisch, Bain & Company’s global pricing leader. “Yet many companies leave money on the table because they do not set the best price or ensure customers actually pay the price they have determined. Bain & Company sees investing in Price f(x) as a great opportunity to help Price f(x) to become the de-facto standard in pricing and with that to be also the best-of-breed competitive weapon for Bain’s clients, to stay at the cutting edge of pricing”.