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this information at incredibly granular levels in real time. That means that the “weight
of responsibility” will shift from the data to the organization so that it can be agile and
responsive enough to make those minute-by-minute adjustments that will improve
customer experience and company profitability.

It is an exciting time as Big Data starts to really deliver on its promise and takes its
rightful place as an engine of growth.

Next outlook for 2013: Going mobile brings old ideas to life, in new ways

Discovering the pricing power of value

June 2014

Petr Partsch – sales chief for Linde Gases, Czech Republic – shares with McKinsey
how understanding the full potential of value completely changed the company’s
approach to pricing.

The “aha!” moment: the spectrum of value

The thing that mattered most to us was understanding the value of products and
services for each group of customers. We really suddenly found out exactly how
value was determined by different segments of industry, the size of customers, and
the ways the product was used. It was a new thing for us to have such a clear view of
spectrum of value. Smaller customers were less focused on cost but more on the
level of service, for example. For bigger customers, technical capability and reliability
were more important. These in effect became pricing criteria.

"When we started to take pricing seriously, we realized that we needed not

only to collect better data but to be more systematic about using it."

In the past, pricing was not a skill we focused on, and we were not very sophisticated
about it. We thought about increasing prices with inflation or growing price as much
as possible, but there was no logic or strategy. When we started to take pricing more
seriously, we realized that we needed not only to collect better data but also to be
more systematic about using it.

Building a pricing system around value

We started developing a new approach after collecting better data—including from
our sales reps—and having discussions with our customers about what they valued.
But we mainly did tests by implementing different surcharges. We learned which fees