The 5 Forces Driving Smarter Pricing for SAP Leaders

B2B companies are experiencing a changing landscape now several years after the COVID-19 pandemic. With inflation, supply chain shocks, turbulent demand, and trade tariffs clouding what had once been a consistent picture, B2B companies are increasingly looking to pricing, according to the Zilliant whitepaper “5 Margin-and-Revenue-Driving Strategies for 2026.”

The whitepaper argues that pricing is a key lever for disrupting navigation because it is positioned at the intersection of costs, competitive behavior and competitive dynamics. It is an internal capability under the company’s control and Zilliant’s ability to provide real-time market pricing with SAP software can help provide consistent and useful insights as companies use the five strategies highlighted in this whitepaper:

• Craft Scenario Plans and Contingency Playbooks. Having multiple strategic plans reduces decision-making paralysis and includes input from all key stakeholders. Modern pricing solutions with predictive analytics and software can guide companies through this process.
• Build Dynamic and Agile Pricing Strategies. Companies must treat pricing as a real-time lever of resilience. Agile pricing requires good communication and must be backed with logical data so customers will accept changes, particularly if the market is showing volatility in that moment.
• Update Customer-Specific Price Agreements. Companies and their customers often don’t know whether the agreements they signed in the past are profitable now, which can cause margin losses. Companies should equip sales reps with a centralized location and system to update agreements as needed.
• Fend Off Competitive Intrusion and Sell More Effectively. Real-time intelligence is a competitive edge and can be achieved with revenue intelligence software. This can help companies identify opportunities, monitor contract volume compliance, and even win back customers with the right data points.
• Launch Cross-Functional Coordination and Leadership. Companies often have their divisions operate in silos, which hampers communication and effectiveness. Pricing teams, with effective software and systems that provide real-time marketing pricing, can bring these groups together so they are operating from the same message.

The whitepaper argues that the enterprise B2B market will remain volatile and companies will need to treat recent events as features, rather than anomalies. B2B companies that utilize modern price and revenue will be able to improve precision and give customers what they need while staying apace with the current market.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Pricing becomes a strategic control point for SAP leaders. Positioning pricing at the intersection of costs, competitive behaviors, and market dynamics signals a shift from static ERP pricing modules toward integrated, real-time intelligence engines. This shift highlights a product-strategy imperative: SAPinsiders should natively support scenario modeling, predictive analytics, and agile price optimization to get the best results.

ERP landscapes now require continuous, unified commercial and market data flows. Systems must support granular contract management, automated profitability checks, and guided selling workflows. SAP professionals should reassess integration patterns between ERP, CPQ, and pricing platforms, to ensure agreements, contract data, and market signals move without friction or miscommunication.

Pricing modernization is emerging as a catalyst for ERP transformation. Unifying sales, finance, operations and pricing teams through centralized, real-time systems elevates pricing to a leadership and change-management priority rather than a technical enhancement. For SAPinsiders, this creates an opportunity to differentiate through embedded collaboration features, workflow orchestration, and AI-assisted decision guidance.