Price Changes Are Increasing, but Control Is Not — Survey Points to Execution Gap

A new survey from Zilliant found that 99% of manufacturing and distribution organizations have changed prices in response to economic pressure, yet only half of executives reported strong confidence in their ability to understand how those changes affect margins.

Companies are adjusting prices at unprecedented levels, but control has not kept pace. Pricing changes are undermining margins, customer relationships, and confidence in results. This imbalance becomes most visible in how pricing decisions are executed.

In SAP environments, pricing logic moves through ERP data structures, CPQ workflows, and order-to-cash processes, where fragmentation across systems can create inconsistent outcomes for business users.

Five Findings from the Pricing Without Control Report

The report, Pricing Without Control, finds that pricing has shifted from periodic updates to continuous adjustment, while systems and governance have not kept pace.

Pricing is being managed but not controlled

Organizations are actively adjusting prices, yet pricing remains managed without consistent control, with decisions executed across fragmented systems, inconsistent processes, and loosely enforced governance. As a result, 61% of organizations report reworking pricing three to four times per year or more.

Limited visibility into margin impact

Only 50% of companies report strong confidence in their understanding of how pricing decisions affect margins. That means many pricing changes are made without full clarity on financial outcomes, reducing confidence in results.

No system of record for pricing

Pricing execution spans internal tools, AI-enabled platforms, vendor solutions, spreadsheets, and consultants. The report finds no standard system of record for pricing, contributing to inconsistency across systems and workflows.

Pricing cycles are accelerating

More than half of organizations adjust pricing on a one-to-three-month cycle, while 43% report adjusting prices by 11-20%. Faster cycles increase responsiveness but also place more pressure on systems that must apply pricing decisions consistently.

Margin leakage is visible but not contained

Executives can identify sources of margin erosion, including pricing wars (37%), inconsistent discounting (34%), and inconsistent governance (29%). The report links these issues to fragmented execution and inconsistent governance across pricing processes.

Why Pricing Control Depends on SAP Execution

Pricing is not only changing more often, it is also executed across too many disconnected systems. Zilliant found that 88% of organizations place pricing responsibility with the CEO, CFO, or CRO, while pricing decisions are still executed across fragmented environments, limiting organizations’ ability to enforce consistent control.

AI adoption has, in many cases, widened this disconnect. Organizations are using AI to improve pricing speed, but it does not resolve underlying issues of governance and execution when layered onto inconsistent systems.

Zilliant presents pricing control as an execution problem. Its platform is designed to create a single source of pricing truth, where pricing logic is structured, governed, and applied consistently across ERP and commercial workflows, rather than managed through spreadsheets, workarounds, and individual judgment.

In SAP environments, pricing spans ERP master data, pricing procedures, and configuration rules, and moves through CPQ and sales workflows into quotes, orders, and downstream processes. When those layers are not governed together, pricing decisions can diverge before they reach the customer, introducing inconsistency across transactions.

Zilliant’s SAP-connected products are designed to address that execution gap. Its CPQ integration supports SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA environments, synchronizing data such as materials, pricing procedures, and configuration rules, while creating quotes and sales documents that reflect governed pricing logic.

The objective is to reduce the execution gap created when faster pricing decisions move through fragmented systems. Rather than treating AI as a standalone fix, Zilliant frames it as part of a governed pricing system that can flag inconsistencies, explain outcomes, and more consistent decisions.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

• Execution defines pricing outcomes. Pricing decisions are made frequently but executed inconsistently across systems. This shifts risk from pricing strategy to execution quality, where outcomes depend on how decisions move through ERP, CPQ, and sales workflows.
• Fragmentation limits the value of pricing decisions. Pricing logic is spread across tools, workflows, and systems without a single control layer. Even well-informed pricing decisions lose impact when they are applied inconsistently across SAP environments.
• Faster pricing cycles require a control layer. More frequent pricing changes increase pressure on systems that were not designed for continuous updates. Organizations need a governed pricing layer that can apply decisions consistently across ERP and commercial workflows, rather than relying on fragmented tools and manual execution.