Rating: +0
A recent analyst report recommends publishing price lists as a best practice for software companies.
Eric,
Every enterprise company should have a product price list. If not they are not a "software" company vs. a custom development shop that uses their software libraries to deliver a end solution to a customer. Now that being said, most enterprise "solution" software companies do not publish their price lists. The main reason is that pricing is competitive and used strategically in large enterprise deals.
Also, most enterprise software companies sell direct and also through partners, and to government agencies. So they need structured pricing and pricing controls, to avoid channel conflicts, and also to comply with any MFN (most favored nation) clauses are usually written within their major partner agreements.
I couldn't disagree more with the analyst report that publishing your pricing is a best practice; the only caveat is for more commodity software a database for example; or for companies so large like Microsoft and IBM that it doesn't matter; you can view the prices of client access licenses and servers for their products on their web sites; but again - "commodity" software that is almost always purchased through a channel which has lots of pricing controls in place.
The average enterprise "solution" software company should never publish a price list; its not a secret; but there is no reason to leave it open for competitors to view so easily; and from a pure Sales 101 perspective, you stand the possibility of losing even being invited to the dance to sell your software by exposing pricing before selling value. The analyst is wrong; or they need to clarify what type of "enterprise" Software Company they are referring to on this one.
Good Luck,
Peter
September 2008