What is the typical composition of a Pricing Committee, (i.e., which functions are voting members and who attends?) Do you have this committee at BU level or corporate level?
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CFO in Finance (non-banking)a year ago
I used to run pricing at Uber and our committee would consist of: Finance, GM, and sometimes marketing (depending on the type of pricing decision). For example, for a new launch, marketing would be involved, but for a pricing algorithm change, marketing would not be involved. There would be key teams at the corporate level always involved, but then depending on the decision, the relevant GM and operational leads from the BU would be involved.Senior Financial Analysta year ago
In my past experience, we didn't have much depth at the BU level, in terms of talent, personnel etc. All of that sat at the Corporate level. It was the nature of the organization, it wouldn't have been useful to have had that level of knowledge at the BU level. As such our Pricing Committee sat at the Corporate Level.As for attendees, we had Finance, Ops, Sales and Executive representation (CFO/President) depending on the size of the deal. At this organization we had a very high skew when it came to our customers. Put another way, a small handful accounted for the vast majority of the business and as such when our customers went to RFP it could be a big deal.
When it came to voting, we aimed for consensus. Sales wanted the sale, Ops wanted the price to be high, finance wanted margin and the customer wanted a low price. Who was involved depended on the size of the business and how busy everyone was. If it was a small deal, I might have to run most of the deal and then just do a final presentation to inform everyone and get the official signoff. If it was a larger deal everyone would be there. It also depended on how busy everyone was.
In my experience, what you should do is to make sure that you've got a good person taking notes. You need to document what you think should happen vs. what does happen. Often the more people are involved, the more "feelers" are out there and as a consequence you may get more misinformation. I've been in meetings where we've literally competed against ourselves. Its good to keep notes of what you were thinking and why you did it that way. Very often things happen and then later people wonder why things were done the way they were done. You also want to make sure that you have a lessons learned meeting and keep that handy for the next time.
Oracle ERP System Analyst / Accounting Manger in Retail10 months ago
I have seen most recent examples where the individual locations were involved from the aspect of "shopping" around at competitors and providing the results of their research to their District Managers. DMs and DVPs would then use that information to propose pricing changes to the Pricing Team, COO and CFO. Concurrently the Pricing Team would work on their own models and compare their expected results with what the DVPs suggested and some back and forth would happen with the DVP clarifying specific details of a location and why Pricing's suggested change wouldn't make sense. Ultimately the CFO and COO were responsible for blessing the final proposal and bringing to the CEO for final approval.Finance Manager in Energy and Utilities10 months ago
Ran pricing committees for a few years, we have Sales Directors & key managers, FD, VP & Marketing. We really suffered from having too many people involved and had to narrow the focus. Initially we also had everyone on the call at the same time, what made it easier is time slots for distinct segments of the business. This allowed an equal time for all areas to discuss strategies, outcomes etc but also stopped interruption. By reducing the amount of people it cut down on the propensity to focus on 1 or 2 issues and you suddenly have to arrange followup sessions on other issues.We have morphed these reviews into wider business reviews now involving Operational teams to feed in issues into the wider group. Again with time slots and Directors of that part of the business