From Pricing to Enterprise Analytics

Article written by Ryan Walter of Jennings Executive Search https://www.jenningsexec.com/

How pricing teams can evolve into broader value-creation engines

Some of the most capable analytics talent in a company sits inside the pricing function. They’re already working across sales, finance, and product. They’re already fluent in margin, mix, volume, and customer behavior. They’re used to ambiguity, and they’re trained to tie data to commercial outcomes.

But in many companies, that talent stays boxed in — narrowly focused on approvals, reports, or static dashboards. The potential to do more is there. It just hasn’t been unlocked.

This article explores how pricing teams can evolve beyond margin management and quote governance into broader, enterprise-wide analytics engines — and what it takes to earn that seat.

Pricing Is Already Cross-Functional

Unlike many analytics teams, pricing doesn’t live in a silo. By design, it sits between sales, finance, marketing, and operations. It already speaks multiple languages — revenue, contribution margin, product mix, customer segmentation. It already deals with data friction, exception management, and competing priorities.

That cross-functional exposure makes pricing uniquely positioned to scale up — if leadership is willing to reframe the function and resource it accordingly.

The Work Is Commercial by Nature

Most enterprise analytics teams take time to learn how the company actually operates. Pricing teams already know it. They’ve been on the receiving end of rep behavior, sales objections, channel feedback, and forecasting pressure. They’ve seen how policies land in the field. And they’ve had to explain why revenue doesn’t match volume — or why a list-price change didn’t drive margin.

The best pricing analysts already act like embedded business partners. Giving them broader ownership — beyond just pricing metrics — doesn’t require a leap. It just requires trust and alignment.

The Tools and Muscle Are Already in Place

Pricing teams are often the earliest adopters of analytics tools. They’re already working in SQL, Power BI, and Excel at a level of fluency many generalist analysts don’t match. They’re used to scraping together data from multiple sources, building logic that can survive a CFO review, and structuring outputs that influence revenue decisions.

That foundation gives pricing talent a head start when companies expand their analytics charter — especially if the broader team is still being built or lacks a commercial orientation.

How the Evolution Happens

We’ve seen pricing teams evolve into broader analytics functions through three main paths:

1. Pull-driven expansion — Commercial leaders start asking the pricing team for help beyond margin (e.g., territory planning, churn analysis, product bundling).

2. Top-down repositioning — The CFO or CRO explicitly elevates the charter of pricing analytics to cover broader business questions.

3. Talent-driven momentum — A strong pricing leader starts building capabilities the business can’t ignore — and earns a broader remit by solving more visible problems.

However it happens, the teams that succeed tend to do three things early: They ask better questions. They document their wins. And they build allies in functions that influence how pricing is perceived.

What to Watch For

This kind of evolution isn’t just about ambition — it’s about timing, readiness, and org design.

We’ve seen it stall when:

• Pricing is seen as “the policy team,” not a business partner

• Analysts are buried in quote approvals and can’t free up time

• Leadership never clarifies who owns what across analytics layers

• Systems can’t support scalable reporting outside the pricing stack

  
  

If pricing is going to expand its influence, the function needs room to operate — and leadership support to claim the space.

Final Thought

Pricing is already where commercial analytics lives. If you want to grow that capability, you don’t have to start from scratch. You just have to recognize the team that’s already doing the work — and give them the mandate, tools, and space to lead beyond their title.

That’s how you go from managing margin to driving enterprise value.