It rarely starts with a major scandal. Usually, it's a minor irritation: the shop shows €3.20, the offer states €3.05. The customer asks who's correct. Your team sends screenshots. Someone searches for an Excel file. Another person makes a 'quick adjustment in the system.' In the end, everyone loses a bit: margin, time, trust. The problem isn't the technology. It's a lack of governance – rules, roles, and a rhythm that make prices explainable and repeatable.
When the price is no promise, every order becomes a negotiation
Contradictions drain energy. The shop advertises tiered pricing, but the contract defines it differently. Sales send out 'special conditions' that no one limits. The ERP holds five versions of the same rule. Service makes decisions on the fly to keep customers. This doesn't create a sales system, but barter. A mature B2B channel works differently: there’s one source for conditions, one logic for tiers, and one timing to smoothly implement changes across all systems. Then the price is not just a number, but a commitment.
Rules instead of exceptions – the silent revolution
Good companies no longer negotiate exceptions, they negotiate rules. 'For this customer group, list price minus ten percent applies; from 50 pieces minus another two; minimum price minus eighteen.' 'For the annual agreement with Müller, minus twelve applies on consumables, from 500 pieces minus four, payment terms 14 days.' 'Project price on SKU 12345 until March 31st minus twenty-two, then back to minus twelve.' Such sentences are not IT poetry. They are the language of a business that takes itself seriously.
The architecture that sells – and endures
The ERP or a dedicated pricing service is the source of truth. It contains list prices, tiers, contract conditions, validity, and limits. The shop displays this exact truth – condition-specific, with the next quantity break, estimated shipping costs, and clear net representation. The CRM makes the rules visible for sales, so no one has to improvise. Your BI layer measures deviations, discount behavior, and the effect on AOV and conversion. When these four cogs mesh, price discussions become strategy rather than firefighting.
Rollout without a Big Bang
Start with an inventory. Collect all price sources, identify duplicates, ban shadow Excel. Then build a pilot: the hundred most important SKUs and the fifty most important accounts, consistently guided by governance. Shop and offer show the same logic, changes go through application, simulation, approval, rollout, and monitoring. Only when this is securely in place, scale gradually – customer group by customer group, product world by product world. This creates stability, not standstill.
How to tell it's working
Tickets with 'price is incorrect' disappear. Quote-to-order increases, and the lead time from quote to order shrinks. The average shopping cart grows because trust grows. The portion of orders processed without manual price approvals becomes the new normal. And rules have an expiration date – not because of distrust, but because of professional planning.
What you should stop today rather than tomorrow
Endless email discounts without a deadline. Excel price lists as the 'source of truth.' Shop promos that undercut contracts. Special conditions without approval. All this sounds pragmatic and is actually expensive. Governance is not bureaucracy, but a defense against creeping margin loss.
Getting sales on board – with respect and tools
Provide the team with a playbook: How do we explain our pricing logic, where are the allowances, how do we present alternatives without breaking our rules? Set up a weekly deal desk consultation. Show rules and tiers where sales work daily – in CRM, not in the SharePoint labyrinth. And do not reward rule-compliant online deals worse than manual heroics. Culture is a strategy that gets paid.
A brief before-and-after moment
Before implementation, 17% of all orders required manual approval. The time from offer to order was 48 hours. After governance, it's 3% approvals, 12-hour lead time, the average shopping cart increases by 6.8%, complaints about price discrepancies approach zero. No fireworks. Just discipline that works.
Subtle next step:
If you want to know how your price truth connects in shop, ERP, and sales, start with our strategy development. In a short time, we clarify rules, roles, and the rollout path – so your shop doesn’t just look good, it sells reliably.
