A Zilliant survey of senior pricing executives across industries shows that while businesses express strong confidence in their pricing strategies, many continue to rely on manual processes that limit their ability to fully realize price increase objectives and help them navigate turbulent economic headwinds.
“Today’s businesses face a striking paradox: high confidence in pricing power alongside significant challenges in price realization,” says Pascal Yammine, CEO of Zilliant. “This disconnect signals that organizations must evolve beyond manual approaches and siloes to embracing pricing technologies that enable strategic advantage, sustainable profitability and competitive differentiation. As we still struggle with the aftershocks of supply chain disruptions, inflation and now tariff uncertainty, resolving this paradox is more crucial than ever.”
Key takeaways:
· The survey found that while 84% of organizations report strong or very strong pricing power, 58% realize less than half of intended price increases. This execution gap persists even though many reported high satisfaction with current pricing technologies.
● Despite high reported pricing power, only 25-39% of organizations have formal pricing methodologies.
● 56% use some form of pricing management software, but Excel remains deeply entrenched, with 42% using it mostly and 19% using it exclusively.
● Most organizations (52%) need 31-60 days to implement price increases, while a significant portion (21%) requires more than 60 days.
● The frequency of pricing updates is accelerating, with 38% of companies executing six or more price updates in 2024, compared to just 24% in 2023.
● Even though respondents reported strong pricing power, they also shared common execution issues across different segments of the pricing process.
● While 39% of organizations have an established pricing council to oversee their pricing operations, few (25%) have price performance analytics available to gauge effectiveness.
● People/mindset issues (28%) represent the largest source of pricing frustration.
● Top operational pain points include inefficiency from manual processes (36%) and errors from manual management (35%).
● Respondents managing their pricing activities using mostly technology are 20% more likely to declare better profit performance relative to their competitors vs. those using mostly manual methods.
● Respondents managing their pricing activities using mostly technology are 5% more likely to declare better revenue growth relative to their competitors vs. those using mostly manual methods.
● Dedicated price elasticity tools, dynamic price management software and pricing optimization tools most strongly influence pricing power.
● Formalized value-based pricing processes, pricing optimization tools and dedicated price elasticity tools primarily drive relative profit performance.
● Established pricing councils most significantly impact revenue growth, formalized value-based pricing processes and formal price increase processes.
● The survey also identified that the primary challenges to pricing technology adoption are human-centered rather than technical. The top barriers include resistance to change (35%) and the perception that pricing is not strategic (34%), while the biggest operational pain points are inefficiency from manual processes (36%) and errors from manual management (35%).
● While implementation challenges remain, the survey presents an optimistic outlook, with 94% of companies expecting growth in 2025 and 59% reporting profit performance better than their competition, creating a favorable environment for pricing technology investments.
