Why Pricing Transformation Is Not a Technology Problem

Why Pricing Transformation Is Not a Technology Problem

When organizations decide that their pricing needs to improve, the conversation almost always turns to technology within the first few meetings.

This is understandable. Technology is tangible. It can be budgeted, procured, and implemented on a timeline. It produces visible change. And in many cases, the organization’s current tools are genuinely inadequate, which makes technology investment feel like the most obvious and urgent priority.

But technology is an enabler, not a solution. It amplifies whatever capability it is applied to. When that capability is well defined, with clear strategy, structured processes, defined governance, and usable data, technology accelerates performance. When that capability is undefined or broken, technology accelerates the dysfunction.

This is why pricing transformation is not a technology problem. It is a capability problem. And the most important capabilities to build are not technical.

What Happens When Technology Leads

The pattern is predictable.

An organization selects a pricing system. The implementation team configures the system to replicate existing pricing processes. The existing processes, which were designed around spreadsheets and manual workarounds, are automated. The result is faster execution of the same flawed logic, with the same governance gaps, the same data inconsistencies, and the same disconnect between intent and outcome.

The system goes live. Initial enthusiasm is high. But within months, the same problems resurface. Exceptions still proliferate because governance was never redesigned. Discount behavior still erodes pricing because incentives were never aligned. Monitoring still lags because the metrics were never defined properly. And the organization begins to question whether the technology investment was worthwhile.

The technology was not the problem. The sequence was the problem. The organization automated before it designed. It implemented before it clarified. It deployed a system without first building the capability that the system was meant to support.

What Should Come First

Pricing transformation should follow a logical sequence that places strategy and organizational capability ahead of technology.

Make pricing intent explicit. Before any system can enforce pricing rules, the organization must define what those rules are. This means documenting pricing strategy, resolving trade offs, establishing guardrails, and defining success measures. If this work has not been done, the system will enforce whatever the implementation team assumes the strategy to be.

Define the pricing workflow. The organization should know how pricing decisions flow from intent through design, governance, execution, transaction, monitoring, and learning. Each step should have defined inputs, outputs, decision rights, and governance requirements. Without this clarity, system configuration becomes guesswork.

Establish governance. Decision rights, approval thresholds, exception policies, and escalation paths should be defined before they are automated. Automating governance that has not been designed produces one of two outcomes: either the system enforces rules that are too rigid and gets bypassed, or it enforces rules that are too loose and adds no value.

Assess data readiness. The data inputs required for pricing decisions should be identified, standardized, and accessible. If the data is fragmented or inconsistent, the system will produce outputs that appear authoritative but are built on unreliable foundations.

Only after these foundations are in place does technology selection and implementation produce its full value. At that point, the system has something meaningful to automate, enforce, and measure.

What the Right System Actually Does

When the organizational capability is in place, the right system becomes a powerful enabler.

It automates repeatable work. Pricing calculations, rule application, and deployment tasks that would otherwise consume analyst bandwidth are handled systematically. This frees pricing professionals to focus on judgment, strategy, and improvement rather than mechanics.

It enforces consistency. Pricing rules are applied the same way every time, across every product, customer, channel, and geography. Local reinterpretation is prevented. The distance between approved pricing and executed pricing shrinks.

It preserves pricing intent through execution. When pricing logic lives in a governed system rather than in disconnected spreadsheets, the logic that was designed and approved is the logic that reaches the market. The chain of intent is maintained from strategy to transaction.

It reduces manual intervention and error. Every manual handoff that is replaced by system integration eliminates a source of risk. Every validation check that is automated catches errors that manual processes would miss.

And it enables speed without sacrificing control. Organizations with effective system support can make pricing changes more frequently and with more confidence, because they trust that the changes will be implemented accurately and governed appropriately.

None of these benefits emerge from the technology alone. They emerge from the combination of a well designed pricing capability and a system that supports it.

The Right Sequence

The relationship between pricing capability and technology is sequential, not parallel.

Capability first. Then technology. Not because technology is unimportant, but because technology without capability is investment without return.

Organizations that follow this sequence make better technology decisions because they understand what they need the system to do before they evaluate options. They implement more successfully because the processes, rules, and governance that the system must support are already defined. They adopt more quickly because the people using the system understand the pricing framework it is designed to enforce.

And they realize value faster because the system is amplifying a capability that already works, rather than trying to create a capability that does not yet exist.

This is not an argument against technology investment. It is an argument for investing in the right order. The organizations that build pricing capability before they automate it do not just get better technology outcomes. They get better pricing outcomes, which is the point of the transformation in the first place.

This is the twenty-first in a series exploring how organizations can connect pricing intent to execution through disciplined operating models, clear governance, and scalable workflows.

Explore more on pricing, revenue management, and commercial program optimization at the IMA360 Learning Center:

Chris Newton is Vice President of Marketing and Sales at IMA360, where he leads brand strategy, market expansion, and customer engagement. With a background spanning commercial strategy and revenue operations, Chris works closely with enterprise teams navigating the complexities of pricing, programs, and profit optimization. Connect with him on LinkedIn: