Case Study: Global Pricing & Commercial Platform Transformation

Context

Over time, the company evolved from a regional insights provider into a truly global insights organization. What began with roughly 100 salespeople in a single region expanded into 400+ sellers operating across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.

While the business scaled geographically, its commercial infrastructure did not scale with it.

Pricing was still managed through paper rate cards, local spreadsheets, and highly customized proposals. What worked in a small, regional environment became increasingly fragile—and eventually dangerous—at global scale.

The Problem

The lack of a unified pricing and commercial system created several compounding issues:

• Inconsistent pricing across regions for identical products

• Global arbitrage, where customers could materially reduce cost by purchasing U.S. products through EMEA sales teams

• Margin erosion and inefficient depletion of limited research supply

• Customer confusion caused by inconsistent pricing logic and proposal structures

• Internal chaos, with no clear governance, approval standards, or visibility

• Long Onboarding Times for new salespeople to learn the "art" of pricing and product configuration.

In short, the company was unintentionally rewarding the wrong customers, in the wrong ways, while losing control of one of its most critical value levers: price.

I was asked to fix the problem globally—without breaking the business, slowing sales velocity, or eliminating necessary regional flexibility.

The Mandate

The objective was not simply to “standardize pricing.”

The real challenge was to design a system that:

• Preserved regional flexibility where it created legitimate value

• Enforced global consistency where inconsistency created risk

• Scaled across hundreds of sellers, products, and use cases

• Reduced legal and operational friction

• Created transparency and governance without slowing the field

This required rethinking pricing, products, contracts, approvals, and data as one integrated commercial platform.

The Approach

1. Global Product & Pricing Architecture

I created a global product book that defined:

• Standardized products and configurations

• Base pricing by product

• Rules-based pricing formulas tied to defined levers (region, volume, usage, term, customer type)

This established a single global source of truth while still allowing controlled variability.

2. Rules-Based Regional Flexibility

Rather than allowing ad hoc discounting, I designed pricing formulas that adjusted dynamically based on approved variables.

This ensured that:

• Price differences were intentional and explainable

• Regional flexibility existed within guardrails

• Arbitrage opportunities were systematically eliminated

3. Proposal Standardization at Scale

I designed global proposal templates that:

• Reflected consistent pricing logic

• Automatically populated approved product configurations

• Reduced manual errors and rework

Sales teams could still tailor proposals—but only within a governed framework.

4. Contract Automation & Legal Alignment

Working closely with Legal, I led the creation of a global master contract template.

Key outcomes:

• Contracts dynamically reflected products sold

• Sales could generate compliant, customized contracts without legal review for standard deals

• Legal risk was reduced while deal velocity increased

This removed a major bottleneck from the sales process.

5. Discount Governance & Approval Mechanisms

I implemented tiered approval workflows aligned to:

• Discount level

• Product type

• Deal size

• Strategic importance

This ensured appropriate oversight without unnecessary friction.

6. BI Reporting & Commercial Intelligence

The final—and critical—layer was visibility.

I designed a BI reporting and insights portal that allowed leadership to analyze:

• Pricing and discounting by region

• Rep-level and team-level behavior

• Product-level margin performance

• Discount approval patterns and exceptions

This shifted pricing conversations from anecdotes to data-driven decision-making.

Technology Enablement

We implemented BigMachines (now Oracle CPQ) as the commercial backbone.

Notable complexities:

• Largest global deployment BigMachines had supported at the time

• Highly dynamic product and pricing logic

• Deep integration across sales, finance, and legal workflows

Currency Exchange Innovation

A unique challenge was global currency management.

I designed a custom currency exchange model that allowed:

• Quoting and selling in the customer’s preferred currency

• Consistent margin protection despite FX volatility

• Accurate global reporting and comparability

• Stability in pricing by using multi-week averages rather than daily exchange rates.

The Result

The initiative delivered a fully integrated global commercial platform that:

• Eliminated global pricing arbitrage

• Restored pricing consistency and credibility

• Improved profitability and margin control

• Reduced legal and operational friction

• Created transparency into discounting behavior

• Enabled leadership to actively manage pricing as a strategic lever

• Vastly reduced new team member onboarding time

Most importantly, the platform scaled with the business—supporting continued global growth without reintroducing chaos.

Why It Matters

Pricing is not just a number.

At scale, it is a system—one that touches strategy, sales behavior, customer trust, legal risk, and financial performance.

This case study reflects my broader approach to commercial leadership:

Design the system, govern it with data, and enable the field to execute with confidence.