Pricing Architecture
Deriving the Unit of Value When Legacy Industry Benchmarks Fail.
- Ex-MBB Principals
- Named Sector Authorities
- Precedent in the Seat
- 2–8 Week Engagements
In emerging AI and high-growth B2B categories, peer benchmarks do not exist. Legacy reference prices — flat subscriptions, list-price tables, and transactional scan fees — anchor companies to artificial revenue ceilings while unmonetised AI compute costs erode gross margins. We replace peer-copying with ground-up economic modelling, deriving what you charge from the customer's core value economics.
Repricing an installed base is where this gets difficult. The customer's reference price is already set, procurement is watching, and the accounts most exposed are usually your largest. We quantify the baseline value, select the metric, design the monetisation architecture around it, and build the contractual migration path that moves your base without churning it.
When This Work Is Commissioned
The Value Model Has Moved and the Price Metric Has Not: Top-line revenue is recurring, operational outcomes are measurable, but your meter still counts static transactions.
AI Consumption Is Breaking the Subscription: Compute cost varies with usage while the price does not, compressing margins on the customer cohorts that adopt fastest.
Recurring Services Are Exposed to Downsell: Professional services and customer success are billed separately, making them the first line item procurement cuts at renewal.
The Category Is New and Nothing Comparable Exists: Enterprise buyers anchor on old reference prices, and there is no peer set charging for the value your business delivers.
Legacy Accounts Sit on Legacy Terms: Price lists were set for a different cost-to-serve, and account-level economics now vary far more than the pricing does.
Field Discipline Is the Primary Constraint: The architecture may be structurally sound, but localised discounting, sales discretion, and erratic quoting behaviour give the margin back.
Our Approach: Five Stages, One Architecture
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Value Quantification & Willingness to Pay
We build the economic case directly from the customer's own numbers — what the business saves them, earns them, or protects them from — and establish price sensitivity by segment and cost-to-serve. Where no comparable exists, the model is derived from underlying economics rather than benchmarked against a mismatched peer set.
Deliverable Quantified value model, willingness-to-pay analysis, and customer segmentation. -
Value Metric & Model Selection
We determine the unit the business should charge for and the structure around it — subscription, usage, consumption, outcome-based, or hybrid. Tokenised AI consumption and metered usage models are engineered where cost-to-serve moves with adoption, insulating gross margins.
Deliverable Value metric recommendation and pricing model architecture blueprint. -
Packaging & Tiering Architecture
Tier design, feature-to-package mapping, bundling structure, and gross margin modelling across the portfolio — including how recurring services are absorbed into software licence tiers without eroding core software margins.
Deliverable Packaging architecture, tier design, and portfolio gross margin model. -
Migration & Contract Design
The contractual path that moves existing accounts onto the new structure. Services-to-licence restructuring, cohort sequencing, grandfathering terms, and downsell exposure modelled account by account before anything is announced to the market.
Deliverable Migration framework, contract execution paths, and downsell risk assessment. -
Governance & Field Deployment
Price floors and ceilings, discount governance frameworks, and account-level elasticity benchmarks — delivered as playbooks integrated directly into the CRM and CPQ workflows your sales teams actually use.
Deliverable Pricing guardrails, contract elasticity benchmarks, and sales enablement playbook.
Engagements: Fixed Scope, Fixed Timeline
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Phase 1 · Value Metric Diagnostic Sprint
A bounded assessment of the current monetisation model. We audit contract downsell risk, compute margin leakage, customer-level elasticity, and value-metric friction to establish the baseline before full architecture design.
- Timeline
- 2–3 weeks
- Deliverable
- Value model, metric options, and quantified margin leakage assessment.
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Value Metric Architecture
Stages 01 to 03: the quantified value case through metric selection, packaging, and tiering. Commissioned where the business has decided the meter must change and needs the architecture built.
- Timeline
- 5–6 weeks
- Deliverable
- Value metric recommendation, pricing architecture, packaging and tiering design.
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Migration Framework
The commercial and contractual path from the legacy structure to the new one. Services-to-licence restructuring, cohort sequencing, and grandfathering modelled account by account, with negotiation playbooks.
- Timeline
- 4–6 weeks
- Deliverable
- Migration framework, contract paths, and cohort sequencing plan.
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Category Creation Pricing
For businesses building a market with no reference price. Reframing willingness to pay around quantified recurring value, positioning against incumbent pricing conventions without commoditising, and structuring the subsequent land-and-expand motion.
- Timeline
- 5–6 weeks
- Deliverable
- Category pricing architecture, positioning framework, and expansion motion design.
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Shared-Savings & Outcome Model Design
Gain-share structures built to survive contact with a CFO: baseline-setting, savings attribution, measurement methods, share percentage, caps, floors, term, and dispute handling — complete with the pilot structure to prove it.
- Timeline
- 5–6 weeks
- Deliverable
- Outcome model design, contract mechanics, and pilot structure.
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Account-Level Pricing Optimisation
Customer-level pricing built on cost-to-serve, volume commitments, and historical behaviour, with elasticity benchmarked account by account and guardrails deployed into the quoting workflow.
- Timeline
- 4–6 weeks
- Deliverable
- Segmentation model, account-level pricing logic, elasticity and churn benchmarks.
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Full Pricing Architecture
The complete five-stage set, from value quantification through field deployment, delivered against a board or budget cycle date.
- Timeline
- 7–8 weeks
- Deliverable
- Full architecture, supporting models, enablement playbooks, and live executive readout.
Precedent in the seat
The authority signing your mandate has run the transition before
- Consumption and metering
- Services-to-licence
- Category creation and gain-share
- Dynamic and algorithmic
What the Business Gets
A Price Metric That Tracks Value: The unit you charge for moves in lockstep with what the customer actually receives, so growth in delivered value shows up in revenue rather than in infrastructure costs.
The Margin Leakage Sized and Quantified: What your current structure costs per renewal cycle, calculated before anything changes — the basis on which the mandate pays for itself.
Willingness to Pay, Evidenced: What customers will pay and for which unit, established from their own unit economics rather than assumed from a competitor's price list.
A Migration the Base Survives: Cohort sequencing and contract paths modelled against downsell exposure, so the reprice does not become a churn event.
Guardrails That Hold in the Field: Floors, ceilings, and discount governance the sales organisation can operate, backed by the value framing to defend the number in front of procurement.
An Architecture Built to Extend: Structure that accommodates the next product, tier, and adjacency without another rebuild.
Institutional Quality & Execution
Named principals lead every mandate and sign every deliverable, written directly into your engagement letter. Each project carries the joint signature of an ex-MBB strategist and a deep domain authority who has personally run this transition inside a leading technology platform — covering consumption and metering, services-to-licence architecture, and category creation. We do not learn your transition on your accounts.
Conflicts are cleared and our pre-assembled bench is active within 24 hours of instruction. Scope, timeline, and deliverable are agreed before work begins; the diagnostic sprint is priced to the deliverable, and architecture mandates are scoped against the value the work quantifies. Primary research, economic modelling, and the executive presentation are included, with no open-ended hourly billing.
Our work ends at the architecture and the evidence behind it. We do not implement pricing systems, configure billing infrastructure, or take fractional or interim roles.