Driving Smarter Pricing at Scale With BASF

BASF harmonized pricing across 10 divisions and reduced invoice errors worldwide

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As one of the world's leading chemical companies, BASF operates across virtually every industry — from automotive and healthcare to construction and agriculture — making pricing uniquely complex. With commoditized products, highly specialized offerings, global supply chains, and strict regulations, BASF needed a scalable, standardized approach to pricing. Over a 15-year partnership, BASF and Conga co-innovated to transform pricing and CPQ across ten operating divisions worldwide.

BASF's Pricing Transformation

15-year co-innovation partnership spanning 10 global BASF operating divisions

Standardized scale pricing harmonized across all business units with flexible configuration

Lower invoice errors and fewer credit/debit notes, improving end-customer satisfaction

Reduced manual inputs and faster quote generation for BASF sales teams

The Challenge: Managing Complex Scale Pricing Across a Global Enterprise

Too much customization, not enough standardization

BASF's pricing complexity stems from operating in nearly every global market with a highly diverse product portfolio—from commoditized chemicals to highly specialized offerings. Each of BASF's ten operating divisions had distinct requirements for scale (tier) pricing: some wanted pre-defined scale breaks that sales users could adjust; others required fully locked configurations; and some had no need for scale pricing at all. Without a unified pricing framework, individualized customizations proliferated, creating an unmanageable patchwork of pricing approaches across the organization. BASF needed a way to harmonize and scale pricing globally while preserving the flexibility each business unit required.

The Solution: A Unified CPQ and Price Optimization Platform Built for Scale

Standardized tier pricing with business-unit flexibility

BASF implemented Conga Smart CPQ and Price Optimization & Management to build a standardized, modular scale pricing framework. In the back office, product managers define standard tier scales — including scale break thresholds, price adjustments, and volume-based offsets — within Conga's Price Management module. These predefined scales are then surfaced automatically to sales users within Conga Smart CPQ when building a quote, with configurable rules determining whether users can override defaults based on each business unit's requirements. When overrides occur, updated scales are written back to the price management system, ensuring the most customer-specific pricing is always pulled into future quotes.

The configuration capabilities allowed us to create steering rules in the background so we can enable functionality based on business needs — I call that modularity, and I believe it is one of the strongest suites of our pricing platform.

Sandip Deshpande

Senior Pricing Manager

BASF

The Results: Faster Quoting, Fewer Errors, and Smarter Pricing Decisions

Modularity, speed, and invoice accuracy at global scale

The impact of Conga's platform was felt across three dimensions. First, modularity: one unified platform now serves all ten BASF operating divisions globally, with configuration — rather than costly customization — accommodating each business unit's unique requirements. Second, speed: by defaulting scale pricing based on business rules, sales users enter fewer manual inputs per quote, improving the experience and reducing friction in the sales cycle. Third, accuracy: publishing standardized prices alongside scale breaks has measurably reduced price discrepancies at the invoice level, resulting in fewer credit and debit notes and a better experience for BASF's end customers. BASF's accelerated adoption of Conga CPQ across all ten divisions earned them the Conga Customer Outperformer Award in the Growth category.

About the client:

BASF

Chemicals / Specialty Chemicals

Ludwigshafen, Germany

Products used:

Configure Price Quote (Smart CPQ)

Price Optimization & Management

BASF is one of the world's largest chemical companies, with operations in virtually every country and market segment — including automotive, construction, healthcare, and agriculture. Founded over 150 years ago, BASF employs approximately 112,000 people worldwide and reported sales of approximately €65 billion in its most recent fiscal year. BASF manages pricing across ten global operating divisions, each with distinct product portfolios, customer bases, and go-to-market requirements.

FAQs

How does CPQ software help chemical companies manage complex scale pricing?

CPQ software like Conga Smart CPQ allows chemical companies to pre-define tier and scale pricing rules in a central back office, then automatically surface those rules to sales users at quote time. This reduces manual input, enforces pricing consistency across divisions, and ensures the most customer-specific pricing is always applied — minimizing errors and speeding up the quote-to-order cycle.
What is scale pricing and why is it important in B2B manufacturing?

Scale pricing—also called tier pricing—incentivizes customers to purchase higher volumes by offering lower unit prices at defined quantity thresholds. In B2B manufacturing and chemicals, it is often required contractually and is a key lever for driving profitable volume growth. Managing it accurately across a large enterprise requires a centralized platform that can handle complex rules while remaining flexible for individual business units.
How does Conga Price Optimization & Management work with CPQ?

Conga Price Optimization & Management acts as the back-office engine where pricing teams define and maintain standard price lists, scale breaks, and adjustment rules. These are then pushed directly into Conga Smart CPQ, so sales users always quote from the most current, approved pricing — with configurable controls that determine when overrides are permitted and how they are routed for approval.