Thinking
Written for people who own the number.
What we have learned in the work, including the parts that went wrong. A more useful test of whether we know this than anything we could say about ourselves.
The frame
Execution posts the price. Decisioning calculates it. Authority decides who may act. Audit keeps the evidence.
The Pricing Authority Stack is the argument every essay here belongs to: four layers that need separate owners, before another platform or AI release forces the question.
Framework
Pricing Authority Stack
The public explainer: the four layers, why they need separate owners, and what an AI release changes.
Read it →Commitments
Trust & AI use
What we do with client data and where AI is and is not used in the work.
Read it →Pilot
AI Intelligence pilot
Evidence-linked pricing diagnostics from structured assessments, de-identified data and expert review.
Read it →The essays, as chapters
Four layers. Every essay argues about one of them.
Grouped by the layer of the Stack it belongs to, newest first within each. The date is secondary; the argument is the order.
01
Execution
Posts the price: the systems and integrations that publish and apply it.
The Language Nobody Translated—and Why Pricing Integrations Fail
Why a shared pricing glossary and complete field mapping must come before connectors, APIs and data-flow diagrams.
One Year After Liberation Day, the Score Is In
What the 2025 tariff cycle revealed about surcharge speed, origin-aware pricing and the commercial impact of nearshoring.
Tariffs Are a Pricing Design Problem, Not a Cost Exception
A twenty-three-day repricing cycle against a cost basis that moves monthly. The surcharge framework, the escalation thresholds, and the contract exposure audit nobody runs.
Your S/4HANA Migration Is a Once-in-a-Decade Chance to Fix Your Pricing Architecture
Condition type hygiene, Z-code you cannot document, and a window measured in quarters. Four questions for your migration team this week.
02
Decisioning
Calculates it: the rules, models and guidance behind the number.
Your Pricing AI Is Only As Good As What You Built Before It
Three stages for agentic pricing: define the foundation, instrument the process, then deploy automation.
The Data Nobody Has, and the One That Blocks Every Pricing ML Project
The quote-outcome history most companies never captured—and why its absence stalls pricing model development before training starts.
Every Pricing Platform Has AI Agents Now. Here's How to Pick Your First 3.
A practical opening portfolio: three agent use cases, three stakeholders and a scorecard based on actions rather than generated insights.
03
Authority
Decides who may act: approvals, decision rights and policy.
Salesforce Just Broke Its Own Naming Rule. That's the Real Announcement.
Salesforce put its force suffix on Anthropic's model. What that naming decision means for SaaS operators, buyers, investors, and implementers, plus five architecture-review questions.
Price Guidance Is Not Pricing Policy. Most AI Pricing Programs Treat It Like It Is.
Why model guidance, commercial policy and the committed price need separate owners, rules and evidence trails.
Salesforce Just Went Headless. Your Pricing Approvals Didn't.
Five pricing workflows that weaken when the CRM goes headless, and why the authority layer stopped being an architectural preference.
When SAP and Salesforce Both Price the Deal, Who's Actually in Control?
Introducing the Pricing Authority Stack: execution, decisioning, and the authority layer almost nobody has built. Agentforce and Joule are about to make that gap expensive.
The Agentic Pricing Layer Is Forming — Who Gets to Own It?
As agents cross traditional platform boundaries, pricing leaders need an explicit hierarchy for decisioning, execution and authority.
From 30+ Price Lists to One Pricing Matrix
Thirty-plus spreadsheets, several markets, and 10-15% pricing variation on identical deals. The fix was not software.
04
Audit
Keeps the evidence: how a price is reconstructed and governed after the fact.