Variance went from plus or minus 5% to plus or minus 25% when you moved to consumption. Realised ASP sits well below list and nobody can say quite when that happened. Both land on your desk, and neither one started there.
For Finance teams · $15M–$75M ARR
We moved to consumption pricing and now finance cannot forecast a quarter.
Our list price looks healthy. What we actually collect is about a third lower.
I can see the margin compressing. I cannot see which deals are doing it.
Four numbers finance carries that pricing created. Each is measurable, each is fixable, and none of them is fixed by better modelling in the finance team.
Pure usage revenue moves with customer behaviour you do not control. Committed minimums plus overage make it survivable: a floor you can forecast, upside you can report.
In companies with no discount governance, 10 to 20 points of gross margin go quietly. List price says one thing, realised price says another, and nobody owns the gap until an acquirer finds it in diligence.
You cannot defend a renewal increase you cannot quantify. Without ROI data per account, a 10% uplift reads as inflation, and customers who like the product still push back.
Commission pays on closed ARR regardless of margin or expansion potential. The NRR problem that creates shows up a year later, in someone else's numbers, as yours.
Each quarter these run unmanaged, the correction gets more expensive:
Forecast misses erode board confidence in the whole finance function, not just the revenue line
Realised price drifts further below list, and every new discount anchors the next one
Renewal increases get waved through at cost-of-living levels because nobody can evidence value
The gap surfaces in diligence, priced into the valuation by someone else's advisers
The fix sits in the commercial architecture rather than the spreadsheets. Three moves put the numbers back under someone's ownership.
A monthly realised-vs-list read by segment, with an owner. The single fastest way to make the invisible leak visible, and the first output of an engagement.
Tiered approval authority, guardrails in the CPQ, and a floor that protects margin without slowing the deals that deserve flexibility.
Committed minimums plus overage on consumption products, so the model has a floor finance can forecast and an upside sales can sell.
Evidence at and above your scale, with governance and measurable margin behind it.
Sales had unlimited discount discretion and margin varied wildly by region, flagged by the board ahead of a liquidity event. We introduced tiered discount authority, CPQ tooling and globally consistent packaging. Enterprise margin stabilised across all regions.
Enterprise customers paid the same as sole traders and sales discounted aggressively to close. WTP research found an enterprise cluster worth 3x the SME base. Three value-aligned tiers plus a hybrid usage metric produced a 28% ARPU lift across the base.
12–16 weeks · $15M–$75M ARR · NDA on request
Bring your list price card and four quarters of realised revenue for your most-sold package. Thirty minutes tells you whether the gap is a governance problem, a metric problem or a comp problem.
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