Centralizing Pricing
Centralized programs ensure profitable decisions.
Whether a company grows through a strong M&A engine or has a culture of independent sellers, developing a centralized pricing function is often one of the last steps organizations consider. Still, it represents a tremendous profit lever for the business.
Decentralized pricing often looks like sellers making their own pricing decisions that may fall outside of business objectives. Providing latitude to commercial teams is important; however, a lack of centralized structure can lead to:
- Unwarranted customer discounts that can result in entitlements
- Pricing that is aligned with gut feelings and customer requests, not market factors
- Efforts to win sales and grow volume at the expense of margin
- Regional or product-specific promotional efforts that don’t support business growth goals
- Sales turnover due to limited support and clear guidelines
- Institutional knowledge that lives in a few tenured sellers
Best-in-class pricing organizations utilize centralized pricing programs to ensure everyone in the commercial organization is making profitable decisions toward common goals. Example programs include:
- Centralized pricing algorithms made available to sellers with clear and practical reasoning
- Front-end tools and visualizations that provide price recommendations, approval workflows, and decision support where sales latitude is preferred
- Data management that delivers consistent reporting and clearly answers critical questions
- Defined roles and responsibilities across the organization
- Processes that uphold your pricing goals
Common Challenges
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Pricing Inconsistency
Decentralized pricing enables commercial teams to set or communicate customer pricing outside of established policies or expectations. This results in large variations of invoiced prices that don’t correlate to value drivers, segmentation, margin expectations, or business goals.
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Limited Visibility
Your business may have disparate systems or pricing rules across regions, acquisitions, or organizational functions that make it difficult to aggregate data sources and can result in complex accounting or limited ability to measure financial performance accurately.
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Price Leaks
Decentralized pricing policies lead to in-the-moment pricing decisions regulated only by individual sales reps. This results in discounting, fees, freight, and other pricing elements getting overlooked in the overall cost to serve.
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Lack of Organizational Structure
Who has the authority to make pricing decisions such as price setting discount thresholds, and quote approvals? Businesses need to establish clear rules of engagement, processes the team can easily follow, and roles that are responsible for ongoing pricing and commercial excellence.
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Workflow Gaps
Multiple or complicated systems and tools for sales teams to use—ERPs, CRMs, CPQs, price management apps, Excel-based files—results in sales not logging into appropriate systems, leveraging functionality, or using recommended pricing.
Meet Our Experts
With over 250 dedicated pricing strategy experts, our team helps businesses achieve profit and EBITDA growth through our process proven on over 800 engagements since our founding in 2006.
Andrew Boronka
Andrew is a Principal at INSIGHT2PROFIT. He has more than a decade of experience driving pricing excellence and enhancing client experiences across various sectors including manufacturing, industrial, B2B2C consumer, and distribution. He has led price transformation initiatives across more than 25 engagements contributing to over $200M in EBITDA impact through pricing transformation.
Examples of Andrew’s experience include:
- Implemented multiple quoting tools and pricing engines, achieving significant impact in the waste management service sector driving $1M of impact within the first 90 days of the pilot and $50M during the subsequent national rollout
- Execution of many value-based pricing frameworks within global industrial manufacturing resulting in over $70M of EBITDA generation over multiple years
- Reduced Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) spend by $7M through A/B testing for a supplier of residential building materials
- Utilized competitive benchmarking through web-scraping within the ecommerce space to help drive $14.5M in margin improvement through price within the first 4 months
Andrew earned his B.S. in Accounting from The University of Akron and an A.A. in Business Administration from North Central State College.
Bradley Van Hulle
Brad is a Senior Manager at INSIGHT2PROFIT, with over 5 years of consulting experience, specializing in price and profitability strategies, revenue management, and the implementation and execution of quote applications. Brad has led and contributed to over 10 client engagements throughout his time at INSIGHT. His expertise spans more than 10 industries, including home security, medical supplies, life sciences, industrials, food and beverage, automation, energy sustainability, facility services, and global contract manufacturing. He is well-versed in various pricing strategies, such as target pricing, margin targeting, list plus discount, list price setting, among others.
Examples of Brad’s experience include:
- Led a pricing application and strategic price implementation for a flow manufacturing and distribution organization with over $1.6B in revenue and 90+ independent business units, resulting in margin improvement exceeding $25M
- Led a strategic pricing initiative for a flooring company with revenue surpassing $400M, implementing price level setting strategies and increases across three distinct business divisions
Brad earned a B.S. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan.
Chris Donnelly
Chris is the Vice President of Sales at INSIGHT2PROFIT, bringing over 25 years of leadership experience focused on organizational growth, sustainable change management, and project leadership. He collaborates with both corporate entities and private equity firms to uncover business potential, leveraging strategic and operational improvements to enhance existing pricing methods. Chris’s expertise in pricing and change management helps clients identify and capitalize on often overlooked opportunities for margin enhancement, demonstrating how even slight price improvements can significantly boost their EBITDA.
Chris is well-versed in various aspects of the business landscape, specializing in Price Management, Pricing Strategy, Price Leaks, Software Development, Change Management, Project Management, B2B, and Private Equity.
Chris earned his B.S. in Finance from John Carroll University.
Jenna Mustar
Jenna is a Senior Manager at INSIGHT2PROFIT with over 15 years of professional experience in financial analysis, pricing, portfolio management, project management and process improvement.
Prior to joining INSIGHT, Jenna held several positions at KeyBank where she was responsible for establishing a group focused on retaining and cross-selling their top 300+ merchant services clients. She was also responsible for pricing and portfolio analytics across various areas including finance, payments, and collections. Jenna began her career as an Actuarial Analyst at Willis Towers Watson (formerly Watson Wyatt Worldwide) within the retirement practice while completing four actuarial exams.
Examples of Jenna’s experience include:
- Drove over $23M in annual impact for a leading precisions aerospace components and specialty structures company across 15+ businesses by providing pricing guidance and implementing change management strategies, also provided visibility to the private equity firm on the performance of their investments
- Delivered over 20% annual revenue growth for a $1.2B food distributor while maintaining margins through differentiated weekly list price recommendations for buyers and daily sale price recommendations to sales via direct integration into their ERP system
- Led margin growth of 3% and enhanced visibility into the business for a B2B facilities maintenance service provider through the direct integration into their Salesforce instance of a pricing and dispatch model to optimize both profit and service
- Provided price recommendations to sales of a leading telecommunications provider through direct integration into their Salesforce instances by reducing unnecessary price variation across their business resulting in 5% reduction in discounting
Jenna earned a B.S. in Actuarial Science and a minor in Economics from The Ohio State University.
Justin Seefeldt
Justin is a Managing Principal at INSIGHT2PROFIT and brings 15 years of experience as a management consultant focused on pricing, sales and marketing strategy. Over the past decade, Justin has spearheaded over 70 engagements across various industries concentrating on pricing and profit strategy, resulting in delivering clients more than $1B of value creation.
Prior to joining INSIGHT, he spent several years at a Fortune 500 wholesale distributor, focusing on strategic pricing, private brand management, and commercial analytics.
Examples of Justin’s experience include:
- Collaborated with an industrial holding company to develop a scalable pricing structure and process across more than 40 individual businesses, yielding over $30M of EBITDA impact and 500 basis points margin improvement
- Achieved over $10M of EBITDA impact for an omni-channel building products manufacturer by developing a gross-to-net waterfall that identified key areas of profit leakage and creating corresponding strategies to mitigate them
- Served as a centralized pricing function for a Fortune 500 multinational specialty manufacturer to coordinate pricing strategy and action plans across businesses, executing a $400M pricing action against downward margin pressures
Justin earned his MBA in Corporate Finance and Marketing Strategy & Planning from DePaul Driehaus College of Business, Kellstadt Graduate School of Business and a B.S. in Consumer Economics & Finance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Lucian Morar
Luci is a Principal at INSIGHT2PROFIT, bringing over 20 years of specialized B2C and B2B pricing experience, with 17 years dedicated to leading pricing teams. Serving as a trusted advisor to C-suite executives and Private Equity Managing Directors, Luci focuses on pricing excellence within the manufacturing, distribution, and service provider sectors.
Prior to joining INSIGHT, Luci spent 11 years in Accenture’s Pricing and Commercial Strategy practice, managing engagements in pricing strategy, analytics, execution, governance, and software configuration. His B2B pricing experience covers industries such as appliances, automotive, construction equipment, medical devices, chemicals, and professional services. He also spent 3 years in B2C at Jewel Osco managing pricing from general merchandise, health & beauty to grocery, deli, produce &bakery.
Examples of Luci’s experience include:
- Led the development and implementation of a dynamic model optimizing 320,000 weekly prices for an aftermarket auto parts distributor, achieving 400 basis points year-over-year gross margin improvement in the first year, implemented a robust reporting suite to sustain performance
- Generated over $100M in additional revenue for a multinational industrial company by developing a pricing engine that drove regular price increases for contracted and non-contracted customers, and to support a quoting tool integration with clients Salesforce, led the establishment of a Pricing Center of Excellence (CoE) and enhanced client team skills in negotiation best practices during their contract renewals
- Identified 12% in additional revenue for a professional services client through differentiated rate card modelling, price realization measurement, and leveraging cross sell/upsell opportunities; achieved through a swift assessment of existing price variability across personas and peer groups, informed by their purchasing behaviors
Luci earned his MBA in Marketing & Operations Management from Loyola University Chicago, Quinlan School of Business, a B.S. in Economics and a BA in European Studies from Babes-Bolyai University in Romania.
Matt Busch
Matt is the Senior Vice President of Private Equity at INSIGHT2PROFIT. With over 25 years of diverse experience in commercial, private equity, and management consulting industries, Matt enhances the Commercial Leadership Team’s knowledge of private equity clients’ challenges and identifying opportunities to deliver capabilities and unmatched value across all stages of the deal lifecycle.
Matt’s expertise spans the commercial landscape, encompassing pricing, revenue management, marketing, loyalty programs, sales, distribution, demand planning, inventory, and channel and merchandizing strategies across various industries. He collaborates with private equity firms and C-suite executives, including CEOs, Chief Commercial Officers, Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Data & Analytics Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, Chief Risk Officers, Chief Digital Officers, and other leaders to develop targeted strategies aimed at maximizing enterprise value and minimizing risk.
Before joining INSIGHT, Matt led strategy and oversaw the delivery of large-scale value creation projects in diverse industries. He built and managed high-performing client relationship organizations and played a key role in transformative turnarounds and growth initiatives at companies such as Equifax and Revenue Analytics.
Matt earned his B.S. in Management from Southern Cross University.
Mike Brenner
Mike is a Vice President of Private Equity at INSIGHT2PROFIT, where he has over 15 years of pricing experience across multiple industries and within the consulting field. He specializes in B2B pricing strategy & implementation for distribution, manufacturing, and service providers. Mike has led more than 3 dozen engagements at INSIGHT, excelling in identifying profitability improvement opportunities and offering pragmatic solutions to change management to ensure tangible financial benefits are achieved.
Prior to joining INSIGHT, Mike managed a pricing team at GOJO Industries, focusing on establishing market-based pricing for its PURELL line and heavy-duty cleaning products. During this period, Mike lead the launch of the pricing function within Salesforce.com, along with additional data & systems integrations within the pricing domain.
Examples of Mike’s pricing experiences include:
- Drove over $100M in price improvement for a national sanitation services provider through the launch of an optimized pricing engine, differentiated price increases, and enhanced leakage management
- Led a $20M margin improvement initiative for a primary supplier of packaging solutions by identifying and correcting profitability outliers, implementing a process for strategically addressing cost increase events, and launching price management tools to support optimization of freight recovery and surcharge capture
- Delivered over $20M in margin improvement for a leader in lubricant sales & distribution services through the establishment of a value-based pricing strategy, development of integrated pricing tools, and robust change management program
Mike earned his MBA in Finance and a B.A. in International Business from the University of Akron, College of Business. He has also studied at the Rennes International School of Business in France.
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