By Michael Evko
A company in the cable assembly industry that must regularly adjust pricing to reflect changing costs and market demand. Because many customer orders remain open across pricing periods, annual price changes can create a recurring operational challenge when older orders need to be brought in line with updated pricing.
The client was operating in an ERP environment where new pricing could be maintained going forward, but existing open orders still required attention. The issue was not that the system could not support pricing changes. The issue was the amount of manual effort required to apply those changes accurately across a large volume of existing orders without disrupting workflow.
Each year, the client faced the same issue: a large list of open orders had to be updated to reflect new pricing. Those updates were not as simple as changing a single item record. They had to account for existing order lines, quantities already entered, and prior totals already in process.
Initially, the need was handled with one off scripts designed to get the client through the immediate situation as quickly as possible. Those scripts worked, but only as a short term fix. They were written for the back end, they were not designed for client use, and they required outside assistance each time the annual pricing update came around.
That meant the immediate problem was being addressed, but the underlying issue remained. The client was still dependent on external support for a process that was predictable, recurring, and operationally important.
Once it became clear that this was not a one time issue, we developed a more durable solution that turned the annual pricing update from a custom intervention into a repeatable process.
We built a program that allows the client to import a spreadsheet containing updated item prices. From there, the system generates an on screen preview of the affected orders and shows which items will be updated with their new pricing. Before anything is finalized, users can review the results and de select any orders that should be treated as exceptions.
After that review, the final update can be executed with a single action. What once required manual effort and technical intervention can now be completed in seconds through a structured workflow that the client can manage directly.
The result is that the client no longer has to scramble each year to work through large lists of pricing changes by hand or wait for outside help to run a custom script. Instead, they have a practical process they can rely on when pricing updates are needed.
What used to be an annual disruption is now a controlled procedure. The solution reduced dependence on manual edits, removed a recurring support bottleneck, and gave the client a cleaner way to manage a task that had previously been reactive and time consuming.
Most importantly, it changed the nature of the problem itself. What was once an annual fire drill is now a straightforward annual process.
