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Citing currency fluctuations, Microsoft is all set to increase prices of its on-premises software, online services and Windows licenses in India by up to 11%.

The new prices that are expected to take effect from February 1, 2023, are meant to “harmonize” prices for Microsoft software and services between India and the Asian region, the company said, adding that it “periodically assesses the impact of its local pricing for software products and online services to ensure there is reasonable alignment across regions.”

The change will see India prices for commercial on-premises software rise by 4.5%, Microsoft said in a blog post. Prices for online services are set to increase by 9%, bringing these services close to prevailing dollar prices in the Asian region.

Come February, Windows licences, whose prices are set to increase by 11%, will be the most impacted.

Further, the company said that pricing for select services such as Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 for “direct customers” in India will start reflecting from February.

The price rise will not affect existing product orders for business users that are under price protection licensing agreements, Microsoft said.

“However, prices for new product additions under such licensing agreements and purchases under new contracts will be as defined by the pricelist at the time of order,” the company said.

This means that if an enterprise adds new services before February under the Microsoft price protection program, they would not have to pay the increased prices.

Microsoft claims that despite the increase in prices, its customers in India “buying online services in Indian rupee will continue to find Microsoft cloud offerings highly competitive.”

The change in pricing does not cover Microsoft’s hardware products, such as Surface devices, or Office and Windows consumer products, the company said, adding that the price changes will also not affect resellers prices direct as they continue to be determined by resellers themselves.

Microsoft, like its competitors, such as AWS, Google and Oracle, continues to face revenue slowdown in the wake of the pandemic, uncertain macroeconomic conditions, and geopolitical issues. The company recently reported its slowest growth in five years for the first quarter of its fiscal 2023 despite seeing revenue increase across business segments such as cloud, Dynamics 365 and Office 365.

Microsoft, Pricing

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China’s Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co., Ltd. was founded on a simple but idealistic principle: Better Healthcare for all.

To achieve that vision, the global developer, manufacturer, and supplier of medical devices intends to make health care more accessible worldwide.

But as the cliché goes, that mission is easier said than done, and the difficulties of realizing this goal were never so apparent as when the global pandemic began.

The encroaching virus led to skyrocketing requests for complicated patient monitoring and life-support systems, some customized, others restricted by local regulations.

The surging requests for price quotations were overflowing the normal channel, sometime via email or phone and processed offline. Given the volume and wide range of time zones the company served, timely replies were difficult to deliver. 

The operational challenges and communication gaps have prompted sales staff and dealers to demand for a simple, digital platform that could configure prices quickly and ensure rapid delivery of the vital items – a solution that had to be created as COVID fears were escalating and the medical industry was changing in unprecedented ways.

A transformative vision

With more than 30 years in business, Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics., Ltd. – named for the city connecting Hong Kong to China’s mainland – serves patients in nearly 110,000 of the country’s medical institutions. The company – commonly referred to as Mindray – also has about 50 affiliates outside China.

Of its 14,000+ employees, a quarter are research and development (R&D) engineers specializing in producing new forms of medical technology.

Even so, the company needed to go to enterprise resource planning (ERP) software leader SAP to create a solution to accurately configure and price its complex catalog of products.

A number of SAP technologies would be used, including SAP Variant and Pricing, a software specifically devoted to this particular task.

Prices could now be calculated based on factors like exclusive distribution, an arrangement in which a single distributor operates in a specific region, secondary distribution, which can involve a network of investors, and other considerations.

Everyone would have access to a data management system for dealers, product authorizations and strategies for observing regulatory and marketing requirements unique to certain regions.

Meeting every need

Mindray’s integrated global sales channel solution was deployed in October 2021, providing sales representatives with significant efficiency and user experience improvement, particularly when it came to serving prospective buyers with timely and accurate information.

“It allows us to quickly meet the unique needs of every customer,” Henry Wu, Mindray’s IT general manager, pointed out.

Now, there was unprecedented consistency and sufficiency in the information representatives were receiving about clients, order history and product details, allowing for a better understanding of what each customer wanted.

Manufacturing strategies, along with production planning and schedules, were now based on customer demands, while quotes and approvals could be generated online at a much faster pace.

Not only was time saved – by an astounding proportion – on requisitions, but order errors were becoming extremely rare.

“In just over a month, we processed 2,100 orders through our warehouse,” noted Wang Lue, the company’s application development and support manager.

Procedures that previously took up to two days per order could now be completed in as little as one hour.

Even outside the industry, the creation of the global sales channel solution was considered impressive. Earlier this year, Mindray was designated a finalist at the 2022 SAP Innovation Awards, a yearly ceremony recognizing organizations using SAP technologies to improve business as well as society.

With complete access to accurate, analytical data, the solution reduced the company’s risk in the global marketplace, preparing Mindray’s sales team for both the predictable and the arbitrary the next time a major health emergency occurs.

To learn the details behind their achievement, see Mindray’s Innovation Awards pitch deck.

Digital Transformation

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To make a profit, manufacturers need more visibility into the cost of goods to sell at a price that reflects the value to customers. And that transparency has been lacking to date. From flour to fuel – and now baby formula – the cost of commodities has skyrocketed while availability has plummeted and no one knows when things will turn around.

Clearly, things have gotten out of control. So the leaders at Clariant International, a leading specialty chemical company, decided to build a tool that would monitor and analyze future price changes on finished goods instantly so they could make pricing decisions that pass-through costs to the value chain.

What does a specialty chemical company make?

Modern chemistry delvers solutions and revolutionary products, and Clariant supports global production in everything from home care to vehicles, energy, electronics, mining, agriculture, and cosmetics – even your kid’s brightly colored toys (with safe, stable paint) to the stain-trapping polymers that protect their favorite Star Wars t-shirts.

Plus, to feed a hungry world with higher crop yields, there are “adjuvants” – biological enhancers of herbicides and pesticides that increase effectiveness and sustainability by preventing wind drift in farmers’ fields.

Development is a cause for celebration but getting revolutionary products into the market quickly is another. Here’s how Clariant — an SAP Innovation Award Winner — built a cost forecasting tool that simulates costs end-to-end from procurement and operations, to finance and sales.

In the chemical production industry, nothing stands still

Clariant’s legacy solution for pricing simulation allowed only a single, manual simulation that took several weeks to process making it outdated by the time it reached the business decision makers.

The need for real-time pricing forecasts was driven by the costing complexity of bills of materials (BOMs) and finished products from multiple group companies – not to mention currencies based on tens of thousands of raw materials operating in volatile markets around the world.

Clariant required a robust product costing solution that could simulate finished goods costs for multiple scenarios using data from a wide array of sources. It also needed to offer intuitive reporting and analytics that procurement teams could apply instantly to resolve the many challenges they were facing.

But the biggest drawback for the forecasters was the cumbersome, labor demanding, and error-prone calculation required for 20,000 finished goods, 50,000 materials used, 18 production levels, 67 production sites, and 18 months of forecast simulation.

To move this mountain, Clariant built an end-to-end cost simulation forecasting tool with full visibility to enable proactive pricing and margin management across a variety of factors.

100X Faster –Value-Driven ROI in minutes instead of days

The company based its end-to-end forecasting tool on a production benchmarking and simulation engine from MIBCON NDC built on SAP S/4HANA and SAP Analytics Cloud with robust data processing, system stability, and user-friendly dashboard reporting and analytics. The return on investment for the entire project was realized in just three weeks!

From one manual simulation per quarter to instant forecasting, Clariant’s pricing simulations are 100 times faster than before.

“We can run forecasts almost immediately and provide updated pricing quickly,” says Markus Mirgeler, head of procurement, Clariant. “This shows up in higher margins and better product volume, differentiating us from the competition.”

Instant transparency

The ability to analyze the full production portfolio instantly, based on detailed bills of materials (BOMs) ensures accuracy. Plus, identifying products that require given raw materials, and the systematic collection of future raw material prices, any time, affords flexibility as things change.

Now, sales can rely on a single source of truth for global pricing forecasts that support the bottom line while significantly reducing the possibility of error. With less time needed to obtain the actual and input data as well as for planning and preparation, and empowered by self-service reporting and advanced visualizations, sales can analyze the value chain with pricing simulations and produce reports in minutes instead of days. 

And last but not least, the transparency of cost changes is passed onto customers so they can see the value.

To learn more about the challenges Clariant faced, and the actions the company took that placed them as a winner of the SAP Innovation Awards, read their Innovation Awards pitch deck

Digital Transformation