Pricing for
Survival or Pricing
for Success?
Taking the Right Approach in 2025
The current business landscape is defined by rapid change,
global uncertainties, and shifting market dynamics. Adding
to this complexity is the uncertainty created by changing
tariffs that ripple across supply chains and pricing models errors, margin leakage, and missed sales opportunities.
globally. Pricing professionals now face a dual challenge— On the other hand, for data-driven decisions and higher
adapting to volatile market conditions while ensuring business efficiency, about one-third of pricing leaders
competitive pricing in a dynamic environment. Businesses are starting to acknowledge they need to immediately
that lean into technology and innovate their pricing prioritize obtaining an advanced and integrated
strategies have a significant edge—transforming pricing pricing technology. These businesses recognize
from a survival mechanism to a strategic driver for success. that pricing technology is necessary for automation,
visibility, and agility in price strategies management.
As the amount of information businesses handle nowadays
continues to grow, companies across all industries
struggle with the ability to easily structure, manage, and This is especially valid now that the shift
analyze such large volumes of data to make the right to digital is accelerating and buyers are
strategic decisions. When organizations are managing increasing the share of wallet they spend
thousands, if not millions, of product prices, this through eCommerce and self-service channels.
can be a challenging task because to keep many
prices accurate and in line with many changing
New market realities are leading many businesses to
variables such as customer demands, costs, and
the realization that spreadsheets and ERP systems are
evolving competitors’ strategies, businesses cannot
just not built to handle the levels of pricing performance,
rely on slow and error-prone price adjustments.
scalability, and even complexity needed to accommodate
pricing for the modern B2B buyers. This eBook will help you
As key enablers to business success, pricing and sales
understand the importance of shedding traditional
teams often find that their efforts are slowed down by
methods of managing price by highlighting 7 key
inefficient, lagging processes and manual tasks. A great
considerations. You’ll learn why technologically-advanced
deal of time is lost in manual updating prices across
pricing capabilities will allow you to gain enhanced
spreadsheets and siloed systems, the cumbersome
understanding and control of your dynamic pricing
coordination of price changes with partner stakeholders,
strategies, so you can succeed in today’s digital commerce
and even chasing down managerial approvals. These
marketplace.
operations usually lead to decreased productivity, human
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Consideration #1
The Ability to Rationalize Prices
By providing a single source of pricing truth, pricing information across systems and cannot fulfill the constant
software enables centralized storage and management and increasing demand of price requests coming from a
of all pricing information in one place, synchronizing growing volume of digital channel transactions. Because
automatically and in real time the most current prices sales teams always need access to refreshed competitive
across back-end systems, like ERP, CRM, and CPQ tools. prices for their customer quotes and agreements, the
It can also serve to supply market-relevant and optimized inability of ERPs to accommodate fast price responses at
prices to eCommerce platforms and other self-service scale can adversely affect your success.
portals. As a powerful pricing data repository with real-
time data-sync capabilities, there are no price conflicts, Furthermore, an all-encompassing view on pricing
duplicate files, or needs for cumbersome spreadsheet with analytics gives you the flexibility to quickly define
management because you can seamlessly establish aggregate and granular pricing views for all your go-to-
pricing governance and consistency through your pricing market channels, so you can analyze any aspect of your
strategies. strategy. Using embedded charts and transaction history,
you can track and take into consideration previous pricing
On the other hand, ERP systems do not provide pricing decisions for a specific price item. You also have access to
management capabilities; you must build and manage your the most important summary metrics of a particular price
pricing strategies elsewhere (most often in spreadsheets) list, which is key to understanding the effectiveness of your
and then manually import the latest prices into the system. pricing strategy.
ERP platforms also struggle with synchronizing pricing
The ERP interface is not purpose-built and intuitive enough
for quick and easy pricing analyses, making it hard to share
pricing strategies with other departments.
Moreover, with comprehensive pricing and
reporting capabilities, performance analyses
can be easily shared among all team members
and other departments in real time, simply by
clicking and pasting a URL into an email or chat.
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Consideration #2
Streamlining Pricing Updates with Automation
In a dynamic market, sales teams can’t wait for a price— price item, all of its followers undergo the same change
and neither should your customers! There are many as well. With streamlined price change submissions and
disadvantages of manual pricing adjustments, the most acceptances powered by technology, pricing managers
concerning being slow, lagging processes. Trying to can ensure price updates comply with the existing
manage pricing effectively across different files and tools strategy of the business, and sales teams are better
can be cumbersome and usually leads to inaccurate price supported in addressing customer demands quickly and
updates and decreased profitability for the business. In accurately. Instead of losing deals to the competition
contrast, automated price calculations (especially when due to long pricing approval turnaround times, with
it comes to large price volumes) mitigate the possibility automated pricing processes you can successfully reduce
of human error and streamline routine pricing tasks by quote cycle time and speed up no- and low-touch deals,
driving precision, consistency, and competitive prices while providing more information to support high-touch
across the whole organization. By configuring event- and deals, where usually a lot of negotiations and exceptions
time-based price calculations, your pricing teams ensure occur. Because accelerated approvals help your sales
up-to-date prices are available to sales teams at any given teams be one step ahead of your competitors’ strategies.
moment, allowing customers to receive quotes from your
organization without any delay. Some industries require companies to execute pricing
updates multiple times in a single day to avoid the risk
An essential aspect of successful pricing management is of an outdated, lagging price. Considering daily, even
the agile price change approval. Quick and synchronized hourly, market changes, and competitive information in
price updates enable faster managerial reviews and your prices as often as needed allows your business to
price acceptances across key stakeholders, driving always be proactive when it comes to market demand. To
business efficiency and improving customer retention. maintain market-relevant, accurate prices and respond
Delivering the right prices, on time, across the company
and its regional offices and subsidiaries is especially
important for large and global organizations, which
often rely on decentralized pricing practices that need
to be aligned across more than one department, entity,
and market. Moreover, process complexity for some
businesses is much higher, requiring specific criteria like
timelines and margin threshold in the approval process.
To accelerate approvals, you need to make large-volume
price changes more manageable. When you have the
capabilities to designate leader and follower relationship
to price items in your price lists, this will allow you to
make myriad price updates much more easily and you’ll
streamline pricing approval processes for the whole
organization. When a price change happens to a leader
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effectively to volatile market conditions, pricing teams By defining data validations, pricing analysts can easily
rely on intraday pricing capabilities that enable them identify and correct discrepancies in sourced pricing data
to automatically execute frequent price updates and at an early stage, so pricing strategies, sales quotes, and
incorporate market information as indexes directly into customer agreements remain consistent and error-free,
their prices. and you don’t have to worry about the consequence of
human error when building out your price lists and offers.
Data validations are an additional area where pricing
technology can help to streamline pricing updates.
Importing manually pricing information into a system
is common practice, but when it involves a spreadsheet
with thousands of lines, it often leads to discrepancies.
That’s why checking the accuracy and quality of sourced
data before using that information into your pricing
strategies is important.
To ensure your pricing data fits within the
predefined limits, you can specify conditions
and numeric values that need to be met.
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Consideration #3
Driving Data-Focused Pricing Decisions in Your
Business
In addition to storing your pricing data in a centralized environment only after you are clear on the outcomes.
manner, pricing technology provides pricing leaders Another key pricing capability for data analysis is the
with a holistic, 360 degree-view of the latest and most ability to compare different scenarios of the existing price
relevant information that allows you to gut-check waterfall chart itself, which is offered only through the most
intuition with defensible data. When it comes to making advanced technologies. By selecting key measures in the
decisions, pricing software is your ally that supports you waterfall as an override or a percentage or value change,
in building your pricing strategies. Some advanced pricing pricing leaders can execute different analyses and better
solutions even use a simulator to give pricing teams the pricing adjustments based on market dynamics.
ability to analyze impact on business performance and
profitability by testing a pricing strategy outcome prior
to launching it. By using a simulator, you will be able to
defend your pricing teams’ decisions in front of C-level
managers and other departments using actual evidence,
proving out how your pricing model will be beneficial to
the business across each and every sales channel, as
well as to the customers you serve.
When current pricing strategies need to be adjusted
due to changes in external conditions, pricing analysts
can first build out and compare different pricing
scenarios without affecting actual prices. This requires
sophisticated comparison capabilities where you can
define your most important key parameters for the
business, such as forecasted annual revenues, volume,
and margin percentage, based on which strategy
corresponds to the business objectives you want to
achieve. Then, leverage pricing software technology to
take the validation of your different pricing strategies
one step further, by using a tabular and a visual format
to easily compare the key parameters of the current
and potential strategies to objectively determine the
best outcome for the business. This allows you to run
the best pricing strategy for the business in that new
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Consideration #4
Relying on Meaningful Analytics Purpose-Built
for Pricing Practitioners
As your business grows, your pricing teams need to be progress and objectives while drilling down into results and
able to better understand how pricing strategies affect trends. Your team will be able to zoom in on every aspect
performance in order to take meaningful corrective of business performance and run comparisons across
actions. With the help of pricing analytics, you can get channels, geographies, products, and customer segments.
insights on whether your products are underpriced or
overpriced for the market; how sales teams are performing; Another useful capability is creating and sharing custom
which deals were won, which lost and why; each customer reports and analyses like the price waterfall with other
segment’s preferences; every sales channel’s profitability, departments. This gives colleagues visibility into hidden
and so much more. Analytics are important because costs, discounts, and the possibility to uncover and
they can help you figure out how to optimize pricing to understand reasons for margin and/or revenue leakages.
maximize the revenues and profits for your business. Being able to rationalize your business’ pricing strategies
across the end-to-end price waterfall is key to enabling
Businesses are currently facing challenges like inflationary harmonized omnichannel pricing in line with sales strategies
pressure, unpredictable supply chains, and rapidly and driving a superb customer experience for buyers.
evolving customer expectations. These conditions make
advanced pricing analytics more critical than ever to help Having the ability to configure and use diverse charts
businesses adjust their strategies to maintain profitability for analysis is essential, but what is even better is having
and eliminate revenue leakages. these insights in the pricing solution you use every day.
To effectively capture sales opportunities, improve Advanced pricing technology empowers pricing leaders
decision-making processes, and stay ahead of the with the comprehensive analytics they need to monitor
competition, businesses must drill deep into multiple business results and take relevant pricing actions in the
aspects of their performance. Pricing analytics empower solution itself, without the need to log in and log out of
teams to respond to market shifts, optimize costs, different tools. Prescriptive insights are extremely helpful:
and refine operations, all while maintaining customer they highlight trends, price, and profit variances, and even
satisfaction. By leaning on robust, purpose-built tools data outliers, which when spotted can be analyzed and
designed specifically for pricing practitioners, you can corrected directly in the price lists. However, most pricing
build strategies that align with today’s complexities and teams struggle to create and update charts in spreadsheets
stay resilient in a continuously changing market landscape. because pulling all their data together for a visual analysis
can be a very tedious process. If you are wondering how
With the help of smart visualizations, pricing leaders can to resolve this challenge, look for a software solution that
also discover what the value drivers for customers are and allows for quick, user-friendly configuration and editing
how to improve profits and sales results. With analytics of charts. Some of the leading pricing software vendors
purpose-built for pricing, you can create customized have enabled intuitive workflow navigation, where you can
dashboard views with quick access to your preferred select a specific point on a chart and view more information
and most important data sources, enabling you to track about it, which takes minimum efforts but offers great
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visibility into granular information. With a customer-inspired
user interface (UI), the solution displays the data in the most Based on that information pricing
comprehensible way, allowing pricing leaders to view and practitioners can perceive what actions or
analyze their information from any business perspective. improvements to take to drive maximum
benefits and profitability for the company.
To see year-over-year change in sales margins and
revenues, and really understand what is driving these
changes for your organization and how they correlate (like Lastly, when the C-suite needs quick custom reports with
price, volume, costs, product mix, etc.), pricing leaders diverse charts and data perspectives, advanced technology
could rely on margin and revenue driver charts. Other helps you streamline your analysis with fast access to
businesses find great use in the Pareto Chart (also known the charts you frequent most and by remembering your
as the 80/20 Rule or the Pareto Principle), which helps last applied selection preferences when you move across
them uncover the top contributing factors, in terms of different visualizations. And you get the answers you are
customers, products, channels, and regions, to the highest looking for in minutes, not hours!
percentage in the business’ results.
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Consideration #5
Getting Guidance on Building the Right
Pricing Strategies, Not Just Cost-Plus
To create and enforce best pricing practices across your pricing strategies management through a comprehensible
entire business, which will allow you to achieve maximum structure, enabling all team members to navigate a
profitability and revenues, you need to be able to manage variety of pricing logic and business rules quickly and
and optimize dynamic pricing in a centralized, efficient with ease, even for the most complex pricing scenarios.
and successful way. But the market is constantly changing This means that when you must define and readjust your
and unless you can adapt to these changes quickly, pricing strategies you won’t lose any extra time and effort
your business might fall behind. And lagging prices in doing so. The result will be higher efficiency for the
often contribute to a market share loss and customer team. If you want to be more successful in dynamic pricing
dissatisfaction. With advanced pricing capabilities, management, look for these pricing solutions that provide
pricing leaders can take action and establish a users with complete guidance on formula building, like
common understanding on their price waterfall function suggestions, descriptions, and error warnings,
and establish a shared pricing language to help them quickly and precisely build even the most
within their teams and across the business. complex pricing formulas, fit for any business challenge.
It is not uncommon for pricing analysts within the same The overall benefit for the business is flexibility
team to devise different price calculation algorithms
and effectiveness in pricing.
and results when they build the logic behind their pricing
strategies, or when they analyze the potential impact
of those strategies on the business, which makes a
common language that much more important. Unless
pricing professionals in the same team share a pricing
language and have a universal approach to building
and analyzing pricing strategies efficiency, there won’t
be consistency in pricing strategies and efficiency
in sales operations. This could lead to a misaligned
team and lost sales opportunities. Without a common
ground, for example, pricing experts may end up taking
an individualistic approach and consider different,
inconsistent variables when looking to propose a margin
increase to a specific price list, which could result in varied
business outcomes and lack of clarity around next steps.
To deploy intended pricing strategies at scale with
algorithmic consistency, pricing teams need advanced
pricing solutions. Such pricing software allows for dynamic
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Consideration #6
Access the Latest and Most Advanced Pricing
Capabilities
If you need dynamic and market-responsive pricing, you The dynamics of this digital buying journey show that
absolutely must explore advanced pricing software that universal price lists are simply not working anymore, and
incorporates AI into your business strategies. Neither organizations need to look for powerful pricing capabilities
spreadsheets nor ERP systems can analyze diverse buying that can adjust quickly to market changes and unique
trends and preferences, or multiple different variables buyer demands. Real-time pricing calculations across
like costs changes, evolving competitor strategies, and eCommerce and other self-serve channels are an essential
channel performance, and use all that information to part of a frictionless and harmonized omnichannel
determine within seconds what the most competitive customer experience. And to make that happen you need
product prices would look like for every customer. Trying prices that are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
to quickly calculate all those variables using only a and 365 days a year and that are scalable to demand
spreadsheet or an ERP system sounds so complex, right? peak inflections and delivered within milliseconds across
your commerce platforms. Without them, you won’t
The rise of eCommerce and digital interactions, be able to meet buyers demands for market-relevant
initially accelerated during the pandemic, permanently pricing that is personalized to their unique needs.
transformed how businesses operate. Customers now
expect seamless, data-driven interactions. B2B buyers Forward-thinking pricing professionals need the power
increasingly turn to digital channels to research, evaluate, to predict the demand response to any price change.
and make informed purchasing decisions. This trend In today’s digital B2B marketplace, AI price optimization
shows no signs of slowing down, as businesses continue technology enables organizations to proactively price
to prioritize speed, accuracy, and accessibility in their based upon customers’ historical buying behavior and
decision-making process. willingness-to-pay, thus driving highly-personalized
experiences for buyers. With AI-driven insights into
Adopting advanced pricing technology not only keeps you the tradeoffs between price demand and profitability,
competitive but also ensures you can meet the evolving businesses can maximize their revenue potential
expectations of today’s buyers with agility and confidence. and power the entire omnichannel go-to-market
landscape while eliminating frictions for buyers.
Digital growth and profitability mean businesses need to
change their perception of eCommerce as only a siloed,
transactional sales channel, and instead start thinking
of it as a new customer engagement instrument. When
leveraged with the power of a comprehensive pricing
software solution, eCommerce (along with other self-serve,
digital channels), can help reduce the business’ costs-to-
serve and expand their customer reach and profitability
to create highly-personalized buying experiences.
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Discounting is an important aspect in commercial negotiations, you can apply a more advanced tiered
activities, often driving growth and customer retention pricing program that will help you meet the needs of every
for the business. To improve the effectiveness of sales, customer you serve much more efficiently. Some of the
some B2B companies use rebates as part of their pricing leading pricing solutions allow users to easily set and
strategies. However, they face a lot of administrative adjust price tiers based on every customer’s volume
workload, because unlike applying a discount for each preferences, and in such a way as to incentivize buyers
purchase, with rebates a seller must recalculate the to incrementally increase their purchasing quantities.
price for the buyer when the total quantity purchased Pricing leaders have complete visibility and flexibility on
reaches the specified volume or amount in the contract. the volume- or revenue-based tier structures, and can
This often requires annual recalculations with back-date extend those capabilities to sales quotes and agreements,
invoicing. Since rebate accruals are often managed in providing customers with more personalized purchasing.
another system, having access to this information and A well-designed scaled pricing model will help you manage
analyzing it is important to understand how profitable each the willingness-to-pay of every customer, maximizing your
customer is to the business. That’s why most organizations revenue from them. It aligns more effectively to the needs
need to rely extensively on the price waterfall analysis. of your buyers, helping your business reduce customer
churn. You will easily know how much your customers are
But there are ways to avoid the complexities of rebate purchasing from you and at what price, increasing not only
administration and price on actual, rather than promised buyers’ satisfaction but also deal win-rates and profitability
volumes. To gain a competitive edge in sales and reduce for the business.
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Consideration #7
Quick Time-to-Value for the Business
Digital transformation can be a long, challenging process, To choose a pricing solution that would drive maximized
especially if you are the only department in the company adoption and utilization among pricing users, look for
pushing for that transition. To help your team drive a vendor that relies on a programmatic approach to
software design and uses different tools to continuously
engagement from other stakeholders, and initiate change
monitor functionality preferences and analyze user
management effectively across the whole organization,
behavior, in order to make enhancements to the
you need an advanced pricing solution that will help you to
software’s interface. This is important because by
adopt best pricing practices and allow better collaboration dedicating efforts to understanding customers’ needs,
and strategic alignment internally and externally for the vendors can continuously make improvements to
business. their product capabilities, which would ultimately
support the daily routine tasks and strategic initiatives
What is key for a successful transformation and adoption of pricing leaders, no matter how the market shifts.
of pricing technology is the ability to provide your
pricing teams with a software that offers an intuitive By establishing accelerated price change approval
user interface (UI). In general, user experience mechanisms, effective communication and frequent
matters, because a better UX leads to more alignment with sales experts on pricing strategies,
successful product implementations and drives revenue, and profitability objectives, pricing teams
greater adoption across the organization, ultimately enable commercial departments of all kinds to provide
increasing pricing teams’ productivity and faster and more competitive offers to customers.
enabling long-term sustainable pricing operations.
What’s the point of setting value-based pricing
strategies if sales teams are not using a value
mindset to sell to customers and your business
ends up competing only on price, losing profits
and revenues, and devaluating its products or
services?
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Moreover, global businesses need pricing and selling profitability and efficiency. Being able to continue doing
teams to be aligned on strategies and market changes, business in a business-as-usual fashion, even when the
especially when extreme events happen, like the market is changing, has proven to be an impossible task
imposition of new tariffs or the coronavirus impact for many organizations, leaving them to face current
on the business’ supply chain. Automation in pricing challenges while rethinking and optimizing their existing
calculations and administration means less effort on workflows.
tactical actions and increased productivity for your
pricing team, freeing their time to focus on more To initiate your digital transformation journey
strategic initiatives and support key sales activities. and select the right pricing technology that
Furthermore, real-time conversions of different units of
will set you up for success, in both the short
measure and currencies directly within price lists allow
and long-term, follow these tips and you’ll
pricing experts to focus on reacting to global market
drive profitability and customer loyalty for
changes in an instant, by acting on those initiatives
that directly affect the bottom line in the business, your business, even during the most dynamic
with immediate results being felt overall in business market conditions!
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Ready to learn more?
Explore how PROS can benefit businesses like yours by taking a closer look
at our pricing solutions.
Smart Price Optimization & Management
• Dynamic price strategies management
• Real-time price execution across all sales channels
• Customer-specific price optimization using AI
• Pricing governance and transparency with smart analytics
