A PRICING PARTY: BALLOONS,
WIZARDS AND CRYSTAL BALLS
by Christopher Ende and David Hobbie
of Goodwin Procter
(A]PRICING)
(PARTY)
BALLOONS, WIZARDS
AND CRYSTAL BALLS
Check out this related article:
The Pricing Professional's
KM Toolkit
Imagine a huge cloud of balloons floating near
the ceiling at a child's birthday party. Each has a
small but valuable prize inside. The balloons have
different colored strings, are various neon colors
and float at different heights. You can only grab so
many balloons at once, it takes time to find them
and pop them, and even more time to unwrap the
prizes inside.
Drawing on historical pricing data is something
like dealing with all those balloons. Your team
needs to find the right balloons and then unwrap
the prizes inside, i.e., the information about your
organization's work on previous matters.
It's challenging for similar reasons. Many different
aspects of each matter, like the color of the balloon
or its height, need to be considered before the
right set of matters can be located. Then, drilling
into a small set you've collected to find out what's
really driving the size of the balloon (the cost of the
engagement) means you have to "pop the balloon"
and commit some resources to figuring out what's
going on inside.
In short, harnessing the wealth of information
available about historical matters can be a major
