Bidding and Pricing Optimization for Professional Services Provider

The Challenge

Following a recent private equity acquisition, a multibillion-pound global consultancy sought to strengthen its commercial performance. Investors saw an opportunity to grow gross margins through more effective bidding and pricing practices, greater consistency across bids of varying size and complexity, and pricing that better reflected the value of the firm's differentiated expertise and capabilities.

Our Approach

Combined bid-debrief and win/loss analytics, project-level margin analysis, competitive intelligence, and stakeholder interviews to identify opportunities across incumbent and challenger pricing, bid quality, price-to-win capabilities, post-award margin management, and the productization of repeatable services, data, and IP.

The Impact

• £35M in estimated incremental gross margin over three years

• 6 initiatives spanning pricing, bidding, delivery, and productization — from monetizing incumbency and pricing to win as a challenger, to closing quality-score gaps and stopping post-award margin leakage

• Actionable pilot-led roadmap with clear ownership, live bids priced under new guidance, and a price-to-win tool and operating model to support execution