Deciding how to price a product is much easier said than done for large companies.

The calculation needs to account not only for the cost of production, which is influenced by a variety of economic factors, but also for internal financial goals and one-off items such as rebates. It’s a daunting task that a Czech startup called Price f(x) AG hopes to simplify with the support of  Credo Ventures London-based Talis Capital. The two European funds announced today that they have poured €4 million ($4.1 million) into the firm’s coffers.

Price f(x) has developed a set of cloud services that promise to automate much of the time-consuming manual working involved in managing product prices. The cornerstone of the lineup is a tool called IntegrationManager that can continuously stream data from a company’s financial systems into a hosted analytics environment where it’s prepared for processing. From there, business professionals are able to interact with their information using the five other services in the startup’s lineup.

The starting point in most cases is PriceAnalyzer, which provides a visual interface for harmonizing product data and identifying opportunities to improve sales. Users can either pass on their findings to the appropriate decision-maker, or, if they find a particularly pressing issue, act on the information on their own using Price f(x)’s complementary PricePolicy service. The tool makes it possible to have rates changed automatically based on factors such as increases in material costs.

Price f(x)’s three other services are designed mainly for handling discounts, credits and the other financial items that affect a company’s customers. The capital from today’s round will enable the startup to expand its feature set even further by hiring more developers. Additionally, Chief Executive Officer Marcin Cichon told TechCrunch that he plans to step up global sales efforts. 

Image courtesy of Price f(x)