AUSTIN, Texas — Zilliant has announced an updated edition of “Stop Racing In A Blindfold!: Big Data + Pricing Science Drive Bigger Profits,” by Jim Vaughn, the company’s global head of pricing advisory services.

First published in 2015, the book discusses what every business-to-business pricing expert usually glosses over: How can companies control pricing for all their products and customers, not just the top 100 with the biggest revenue?

The updated edition has a new eight-page introduction, highlighted by a new framework for connecting typical business school concepts to their equivalent capabilities in a pricing science approach.

That is followed by chapters on foundational ideas and industry pain points, then a look at why backward-looking analytics are not what companies need in an ever-increasing pace of business.

Finally, the book covers the core concepts of pricing and data science, including determining which factors are most highly correlated with higher and lower price points in the market and optimizing market-facing price points.

“There is not a single equation in the book — this is all about an effort to help executives from pricing and sales managers to VPs get emotionally comfortable with what a data science AI/ML framework is so they can start to ask better questions,” Vaughn said. “I wanted to update the book mainly because companies have learned a lot since 2015. Capabilities have grown a lot. Part of that change in mindset is also a hugely different way to sell.”

To coincide with the book launch, Vaughn spoke at the Professional Pricing Society PPS 2024 Spring Pricing Workshop & Conference in Chicago. Vaughn’s session, “Price Management: Small Step, Giant Leap for Pricing-Kind,” focused on what it takes to move from spreadsheets to centralized price management, the value realization and how to leverage it and how pricing teams have gained influence with executives thanks to effective price management.

Vaughn’s experience includes 30-plus years in pricing across more than 25 industry verticals. He also has held management and technical roles, including CIO, director of IT services and product manager, along with executive roles in the U.S. Army and Army Reserve.

He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and holds a Masters Degree in operations research from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Zilliant uses data science and cloud-native software to help businesses put pricing at the heart of their operation. For more information, visit zilliant.com.