A 90 million dollar B2B software operator was watching seat-based pricing decouple from the value customers actually got. We rebuilt the pricing architecture around outcomes and consumption while protecting the committed-revenue predictability the board required. A three-part model, a committed platform floor plus metered consumption plus an outcome tier, lifted net revenue retention from 108 to 121 percent and grew expansion revenue 34 percent, with 82 percent of revenue still contracted a year forward. Pricing that follows value without surrendering the forecast. That balance was the entire engagement.
Seat pricing had decoupled from value
A B2B software operator with about 90 million dollars in annual recurring revenue sold a workflow-automation platform priced per seat. The model had funded the company's growth, but it was failing in both directions. The heaviest-value customers automated so much work that they needed fewer seats over time, so the accounts that got the most value paid the plan less each year. Meanwhile light users carried full seat licenses they barely touched and churned at renewal. Net revenue retention had drifted to 108 percent, healthy on paper but falling, and the sales team was discounting seats to protect logos, which hid the decoupling rather than fixing it.
The executive team had circled a pricing change for several quarters and stalled on one fear the chief financial officer named plainly. The board valued the company on predictable, committed revenue, and consumption pricing sounded like trading a reliable forecast for a variable one. The Stratenity engagement was scoped to produce a pricing architecture that followed value more closely without surrendering the committed-revenue predictability the board and the audit committee depended on. Both had to be true, or the change would not survive its first quarterly review.
The starting evidence was uneven. Billing data on seats and revenue was clean, but the data that actually mattered, how much work each account automated and what that work was worth to them, lived in product-usage logs no one had connected to the commercial model. The first two weeks joined usage telemetry to the contract book for the first time, and the picture was stark: the top decile of accounts by workflow volume was near the bottom decile by revenue growth. The company had been systematically underpricing its most successful customers, and no one had seen it because the two datasets had never sat in the same view.
A committed floor, metered consumption, and an outcome tier
We rejected the false choice between committed and consumption pricing and built a three-part architecture that carried both. A committed platform fee set an annual floor the customer contracted for, preserving the forward revenue the board required. On top of that floor, customers paid for metered consumption, workflow runs, tied to the actual work the platform performed, so value and price moved together. A third outcome tier let the largest accounts convert a share of measured savings into fee, aligning the plan's revenue with the customer's realized result. We modeled the migration on the existing book before repricing a single contract, so no account faced a repricing that raised its bill without a matching increase in value received.
| Pricing layer | Basis | Revenue behavior | Board concern addressed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Committed platform fee | Annual contract floor | Fully predictable | Forward-revenue visibility |
| Metered consumption | Workflow runs | Scales with usage | Value-price alignment |
| Outcome tier | Share of measured savings | Upside on realized value | Expansion in top accounts |
| Volume commitments | Prepaid consumption | Predictable, discounted | Retention and forecast |
| Overage protection | Capped consumption | Bounded variance | Customer budget safety |
A worked migration made the case concrete. A logistics customer paying 240,000 dollars for 400 seats used only 210 of them but ran nearly two million workflow automations a year. Under seat pricing the account was on track to shrink at renewal. Under the new model the customer committed to a 180,000 dollar platform floor, paid metered consumption that brought total spend to 265,000 dollars, and signed an outcome tier on documented labor savings. The customer's bill rose because its measured value rose, the plan gained a committed floor and an expansion path, and the account, previously a churn risk, became a reference.
We designed the commercial operating cadence before repricing the book. A quarterly review tracked net revenue retention, the committed share of forward revenue, and the accuracy of the consumption forecast against actuals, so finance could see early whether variance was creeping past the board's tolerance. A single revenue executive owned the architecture and the migration schedule, which mattered because the temptation under pressure is to grant a one-off seat discount that quietly reopens the decoupling the whole redesign was meant to close. One owner with clear authority kept the exceptions from becoming the new default.
Value-aligned pricing without losing the forecast
- Net revenue retention rose from 108 percent to 121 percent within three quarters as heavy-usage accounts expanded instead of shrinking.
- Expansion revenue grew 34 percent, driven by consumption and outcome tiers rather than reactive seat discounting.
- 82 percent of forward revenue remained contracted through committed floors and prepaid consumption, preserving the predictability the board required.
- Churn among high-value, low-seat accounts fell sharply, because those customers were finally priced on the work they automated rather than the seats they had stopped using.
- Sales discounting on new deals fell, because the architecture let reps sell a floor plus upside instead of shaving seat price to close.
What the engagement taught
- Committed and consumption pricing are not opposites. A contracted floor plus metered usage delivers both a forecast and value alignment when they are layered rather than chosen between.
- Model the migration on the real book before touching a contract. A repricing that survives is one where no account's bill rises without its value rising too.
- The outcome tier belongs only where value is measurable and large. Attaching it to accounts that cannot document savings turns a clean model into a dispute.
- Seat discounting was a symptom, not a strategy. Fixing the architecture removed the reason reps were shaving price to hold logos.
- The board's fear was specific and legitimate, and naming it, forward-revenue predictability, told the design exactly what it had to protect.
How to run this in your business
- Find where your current pricing metric has decoupled from the value customers receive, and quantify the gap on your real accounts.
- Design a committed floor that preserves forward revenue before you add any variable layer, so predictability is built in, not bolted on.
- Meter the variable layer on a unit that tracks delivered value, and reserve outcome pricing for accounts where value is measurable and material.
- Model the migration across your existing book and confirm no account is repriced upward without a matching value increase.
- Instrument net revenue retention, expansion, and the committed share of forward revenue, and expand the new model only as those hold against baseline.