Pricing & Merchandising Intelligence
Margin defended at the point of quote. Every quote. Every SKU. Every day.
In wholesale and consumer trading, static price lists are where margin quietly disappears. Colony deploys a pricing agent that ingests order history, competitor signals, and SKU-level margin analysis to recommend the right price at the moment of quote — with buyer-side negotiation intelligence surfaced to the commercial team in real time.
Static price lists are a slow leak on gross margin.
In wholesale, most price lists are refreshed quarterly, sometimes annually. Buyers know it. Competitors know it. In practice, this means the top-100 SKUs — which typically drive 80% of revenue — are being sold at prices that are three to nine months stale. Commercial teams spend their time maintaining lists rather than negotiating deals.
Signals it is you
Price lists refreshed less than monthly
Gross margin flat or declining despite input-cost movements
Sales team unable to answer “what's competitive pricing on SKU X today?”
No systematic visibility on which SKUs are outperforming or underperforming vs benchmark
A pricing intelligence layer sits between your ERP and your commercial team.
The Colony pricing agent ingests two years of your own order history, cross-references it with public competitor signals (where lawful), and produces per-SKU margin analysis with actionable recommendations. When a buyer calls in, the commercial rep sees live-pricing guidance, competitor context, and buyer-side signals on the same screen as the order.
Components
Component · 01
Order history ingest
From ERP or data warehouse — no data lake project required.
Component · 02
Competitor signal harvester
Public data only, GDPR- and competition-law-compliant crawling.
Component · 03
Per-SKU margin analysis
Elasticity model per SKU cluster with actionable recommendations.
Component · 04
Commercial-team dashboard
Live pricing guidance on the same screen as the order entry.
Component · 05
Buyer-side intelligence
Order patterns, seasonal signals, and negotiation-window prompts.
What lives under the hood.
Data warehouse
Snowflake, BigQuery, or the client's existing stack.
Elasticity modelling
Bootstrapped Bayesian regression per SKU cluster with confidence intervals.
Recommendation service
Python + FastAPI, sub-200ms per-quote response.
CRM overlay
Salesforce, HubSpot and Dynamics-native embed.
Reported weekly. Reconciled quarterly.
Gross margin recovery of 150–200bps within one quarter across the top-100 SKUs. Commercial team time reallocated from list-maintenance to high-value negotiations. Buyer conversion improves as reps arrive at every call with live intelligence rather than a fixed price sheet.
Annual EBITDA
+£420k
Gross Margin
+180bps
Commercial Utilisation
+30%
Time-to-Quote
−70%
From diagnostic to measurable impact.
Phase · 01
Wk 0–2
Diagnostic, data warehouse audit, SKU tier ranking.
Phase · 02
Wk 2–5
Data ingest, elasticity modelling on top-100 SKUs.
Phase · 03
Wk 5–7
Dashboard rollout, commercial team training.
Phase · 04
Wk 7–9
Full-SKU coverage, competitor signal layer live.
Where else this travels well.
Every Colony playbook is engineered to be portable. The core intervention shape holds — components adapt to the client context.
Building products distribution
Industrial supplies wholesale
Luxury retail buying
Professional trade wholesale
Often deployed alongside this one.
Think this playbook fits your operation?
Three concise steps and a Colony operational specialist will respond within one working day with a bespoke margin-uplift projection scoped to your footprint.