Global Formwork Manufacturer Cuts Annual Pricing Cycles Across 54 Countries

Overview

The client is a global formwork and scaffolding manufacturer and supplier, operating across 54 countries. As a large enterprise setting prices for both rental and product lines in every market, the organisation needed a pricing foundation that could operate at genuine global scale. 

For years the business had relied on an in-house pricing tool built on legacy technology, which had reached the end of its supported life and could no longer meet the demands of a growing, complex global pricing operation. Price verification and establishment, from European level down to regional level, was handled almost entirely without automation. The organisation set out to replace the tool and automate the cycle end to end.

Key Challenges 

Setting prices annually across 54 countries on unsupported tooling had created substantial operational drag. The organisation needed automation, structure, and speed across every market and product line.

Unsupported legacy tooling - The in-house pricing tool was built on outdated technology and no longer supported, leaving it unable to meet the demands of a complex global pricing operation.

Fully manual price establishment - Virtually all price verification and establishment, from European level down to regional level, was handled without automation across every market.

Excessive email approval chains - Approvals moved by email across 54 countries, creating significant operational overhead and repeated back-and-forth coordination for every single pricing cycle.

Three-to-four-month pricing cycles - Teams had to begin each annual cycle in December simply to be ready for a March go-live, with a mid-year revision adding further burden.

Extreme scale of complexity - The operation spanned 54 countries, seven price lists per country, and approximately 100,000 line items per price list to manage.

Two parallel product line sets - Rental and product pricing had to be maintained alongside each other in every market, effectively doubling the volume of work in each cycle.

Solution

An implementation partner deployed a cloud pricing platform as the primary price-setting environment, replacing manual coordination and email-based approval across all 54 countries and designing the solution around the client's existing annual and mid-year cycles.

Solution Components

Central Price-Setting Module - The platform's price-setting module was implemented as the primary pricing environment, replacing the unsupported in-house tool and absorbing all pricing activity across the 54-country operation.

Automated Approval Workflows - Structured in-platform approvals replaced the email chains previously used to coordinate price verification and establishment between European and regional teams.

Proprietary ERP Integration - The platform was integrated with the client's proprietary non-SAP ERP, loading product and customer data directly into the pricing environment to support the full workflow end to end.

Multi-List, Multi-Line Configuration - Seven price lists per country were configured across two product line sets, bringing rental and product pricing into a single governed environment for the first time.

Analytics Capability - Analytics was delivered as part of the solution, providing structured visibility into pricing activity across the global operation for the first time.

Performance Tuning at Scale - Significant performance work was carried out so the platform could reliably process approximately 100,000 line items per price list across every active market.

Phased 54-Country Rollout - Deployment was executed across four phases, starting with five countries and ultimately expanding to the full 54-country footprint.

Integration Architecture

Rather than rebuilding pricing logic inside the ERP, the platform was integrated directly with the client's proprietary system:

• Inbound - Product and customer master data is loaded from the proprietary non-SAP ERP into the pricing platform, so every cycle works from current, accurate data.

• Outbound - Approved prices are published back to the ERP, feeding rental and product pricing across all 54 countries.

Because each of the seven price lists per country carries approximately 100,000 line items, significant performance tuning was carried out to resolve the throughput constraints encountered during the early phases.