Watch Kris Barker, Senior Pricing & Commercial Manager at Womble Bond Dickinson, discuss BigHand Matter Pricing, how technology can scale pricing support, and why firms need stronger data and commercial insight as clients and procurement teams become more sophisticated.

Transcript

I'm Kris Barker, I am a commercial finance manager at Womble Bond Dickinson, specializing in legal pricing and, more recently, a lot more involved with tech and all things AI.

Q: Why do many firms underestimate the importance of pricing technology?

They underestimate not just pricing technology, but actually the pricing function.

I think it’s part of the evolution of the pricing role and getting buy-in from stakeholders, showing your value, and showing the return on investment that you can bring with the general support.

But in order to roll that out, make it scalable across the business, and deliver that more widely, you then need tech.

Otherwise, you’re relying 100% on more bodies in the business, which obviously isn’t the most cost-effective way of doing things.

It’s all around showcasing your value to start with, building up a reputation and showing the value you can bring, and then getting the tech to enhance and enable the pricing support you’re delivering.

Q: What client pressures are amplifying the value of the pricing function?

Procurement teams are getting a lot more sophisticated, and they’re not sitting on their hands either.

They’re also investing in and exploring AI, and they’ve got access to all of our cost details. They can do their own analysis on the other side and then almost prescribe to you what they want you to sign up for.

If you’re not using any tech or you’re not exploring that yourself, there’s only going to be one winner when it comes to the end result.

Q: Why did you decide to invest in BigHand Matter Pricing?

It wasn’t one catalyst that made us want the technology. I think it was a culmination of a few things.

Procurement teams were getting more sophisticated. We also got some buy-in. We’d been training some of our lawyers, and people could actually see the value and the return on investment that having pricing support gives.

That generated the desire for a solution to help us provide that support more widely, but also more consistently.

Having the repository and your data in one place, where everyone can see and share it, gets everyone going in the right direction together.

Q: How do you measure the success of a tech investment?

For the pricing function as a whole, it’s all around margin.

Margin improvements and the tangible things are obviously the easiest ones to take to senior business leaders and show the impact you’ve had.

The tech itself is more about coverage. Rather than having a pound-note figure, it might be that we’ve now been able to deliver 20 proposals today rather than two.

It’s making sure that they understand all of those other results are coming from being able to scale and do more work.

Q: How will you continue to scale your firm's pricing function?

I think the world has just shifted on its head over the last six to 12 months.

Six months ago, everyone thought that if you wanted to scale pricing support, even with tech like Matter Pricing, you would need more bodies, more support, and more people on the ground supporting partners.

But with the evolution of AI agents to help facilitate that, alongside tools like Matter Pricing, it might actually mean you don’t need the heavy load and the heavy amount of people working.

You just need to be able to use the tech to help facilitate it.

I think those that aren’t using tech at the moment are going to find it really difficult. They’re going to have to invest in more bodies in the business to help deal with all the extra complexities.

Q: What advice would you give leaders who are currently considering investing in pricing technology?

Do it.

First of all, I would try and find a business case internally. Find something where you can show the return on investment and show something that’s maybe not as efficient as it could be.

Then investigate the pricing technology and see how that will help put some numbers on it.

Numbers are always easier to sell to stakeholders and budget holders, and then take it from there.

Q: What stands out about BigHand?

Not to be too cheesy, but it’s the collaborative nature.

It’s very much a people environment. One of the things that drew us to BigHand initially, when we did a first viewing of various products, was the actual people who were involved.

You could definitely feel that you could work with those people rather than against them, or them working for you, and vice versa.