Bart Deckers

Lesson learned: While price flexibility was already important to help companies weather the 2008 crisis, the pandemic made it a crucial line of defense. Since long-term, fixed-price contracts can rapidly threaten companies' viability, the need now is for variable and differentiated price structures to shore up both sales and the procurement process – especially as inflation eats into revenues and profit margins.

What makes China different? While it is not quite true that “China is a law unto itself”, this huge, highly diverse country that has enjoyed forceful economic growth for so long does differ significantly from many of its East Asian neighbors. For the purposes of our analysis, we will briefly mention just a few examples that relate directly to the topic of optimizing sales incentives in the Chinese elevator market.

How companies can embrace the manufacturing evolution It’s no secret that traditional manufacturing has taken a hit in the last few decades. Companies have been under immense pressure to cut costs while ensuring quality of complex goods. While the measures adopted so far have been mostly successful, a number of trends have reached a crossroads – and the old ways are proving not to be sufficient anymore.