Overview

• Product / Initiative: Pricing, Advertisement & Promotions Optimization

• Role: Product Manager (Strategic Initiatives)

• Location: Chicago, US

• Scale: Top U.S. retailer with nationwide operations and multi-billion-dollar omnichannel business

• Outcome: Defined a future-state product and process strategy projected to deliver $2M in annual benefits

Problem / Opportunity

The retailer’s pricing, advertisement, and promotions processes were fragmented, manual, and misaligned, resulting in:

• Disconnected pricing and price planning workflows

• Slow price change cycles due to complex approvals

• Limited visibility into performance metrics for data-driven decisions

This lack of integration constrained agility, impacted margins, and created operational inefficiencies at scale.

Goals & Success Metrics

• Primary Goal: Reimagine pricing and promotions workflows as a productized, scalable capability.

• Success Metrics:

  • ⏳ 30% reduction in promotional cycle time

  • 📈 Increased pricing agility and alignment across functions

  • 💰 $2M in projected annual benefits through streamlined workflows and smarter pricing decisions

Strategy & Approach

• Defined a clear product vision for an integrated pricing and promotions platform.

• Conducted journey mapping to identify bottlenecks, redundancies, and high-impact opportunities.

• Partnered with marketing, pricing, operations, and finance teams to co-create desired outcomes.

• Used an impact vs. effort framework to prioritize process and technology investments.

• Identified capability gaps and proposed a phased roadmap toward automation and intelligence.

Solution & Execution

• Proposed an end-to-end product architecture integrating pricing and promotional planning workflows.

• Recommended rules-based pricing automation to streamline approvals and reduce delays.

• Defined MVP scope focused on quick wins — price change setup automation and standardized pricing logic.

• Developed a scalable rollout roadmap, aligning technical, business, and operational stakeholders.

• Secured executive alignment by linking recommendations to measurable business impact.

Impact & Results

• 💰 $2M annualized benefit identified through process efficiencies and pricing improvements.

• 🚀 Accelerated price changes by streamlining handoffs and approvals.

• 🧠 Improved decision velocity through unified pricing and promotional insights.

• 📊 Established a product strategy foundation for future analytics and optimization capabilities.

Frameworks Used

• Impact vs Effort Value Prioritization to maximize ROI

• North Star Metrics & KPI Trees for modernization goals

• Capability Roadmap Framework for phased delivery

• Journey Mapping & User Research to uncover inefficiencies

• Experimentation & MVP Pilots to validate automation concepts

• Strategic Alignment Framework for funding & exec buy-in

My Role & Contributions

• Defined modernization strategy to transform siloed pricing and promotions workflows.

• Applied impact vs effort value frameworks and North Star metrics to focus investment.

• Conducted user research across pricing, marketing, and ops to shape the capability roadmap.

• Led experimentation pilots to validate automation and workflow improvements.

• Partnered with senior leadership to secure funding and alignment.

• Delivered a $2M projected benefit blueprint and positioned platform for advanced pricing intelligence.

Retrospective & Learnings

• What worked: Framing operational improvements as a product strategy strengthened executive alignment.

• Improvement area: Earlier technical feasibility checks would have accelerated MVP definition.

• Key learning: Treating internal processes as products with clear metrics and roadmaps drives sustainable, scalable business value.