BASF Agricultural Solutions, a division of one of the world’s largest chemical companies, sought to expand its customer base by delivering tailored contracts while improving internal processes. With Board, the Enterprise Planning Platform, and the expertise of implementation partner celver AG,
BASF Agricultural Solutions implemented a global pricing management tool to standardize processes, increase transparency, and streamline approvals. The tool enables sales teams worldwide to see the impact of pricing decisions in real time, balancing global consistency with local market adaptability. BASF Agricultural Solutions now benefits from faster planning, integrated data, and the flexibility to meet unique regional needs.
BASF Agricultural Solutions is a division of BASF Group, one of the largest chemical companies in the world with 112,000 employees. BASF Agricultural Solutions supports farmers and growers worldwide with a comprehensive portfolio of seeds & traits, crop protection products, digital tools, and sustainability approaches, to help deliver the best possible outcomes for farmers, growers and our other stakeholders along the value chain.
Dr. Vinay Singh
Global Process & Product Owner Pricing at BASF Agricultural SolutionsWith Board, we have achieved the perfect balance between global transparency and local creative freedom in sales planning, empowering teams to see the impact of their decisions instantly.
Dr. Vinay Singh
Global Process & Product Owner Pricing at BASF Agricultural SolutionsLacking transparency in diverse processes and technologies
In its global business-to-business operations, BASF Agricultural Solutions faced challenges in managing tailored customer contracts with complex pricing and discount structures. While the main business processes were standardized globally, regional differences in customer and organizational structures led to highly diverse tools and workflows, including Excel and local databases.
Global and Regional Headquarters faced difficulties ensuring transparency, managing accruals, and maintaining flexibility. Sales employees lacked the ability to quickly assess how their decisions impacted prices, sales, and margins. Dr. Vinay Singh, Global Process & Product Owner – Pricing at BASF Agricultural Solutions explains:
“Our goal is to continue growing our customer base through tailored contracts, but we needed to empower sales teams to make quick decisions and document agreements effectively.”
Balancing local and global needs
After evaluating multiple solutions, BASF Agricultural Solutions chose Board, the EnterprisePlanning Platform, for its flexibility and ability to unify processes. Implementation partner celver AG provided technical expertise and in-depth understanding of BASF’s complex requirements, ensuring a successful deployment.
The project began with a pilot phase in three high-sales, high-complexity countries, using on-site workshops to map regional processes.
“We wanted to generate strong buy-in from the countries right from the start, so we didn’t go for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach,” explained Pau Vinyes, former Global Price Manager at BASF Agricultural Solutions.
This collaborative approach enabled the team to develop a core application with standardized global processes and a uniform database. The application also allowed for regional adaptations, ensuring faster rollouts and easier maintenance while meeting the unique needs of each market.
BASF Agricultural Solutions used this core application to introduce features such as sales volume planning and forecasting and an operational pricing tool. These tools give sales teams the ability to evaluate pricing impacts on margins and profitability in real time while maintaining transparency across global and regional operations.
In parallel, planning-relevant data and processes were integrated into Salesforce, enabling seamless collaboration between the platforms. Customer master data flows into Board for use in sales and revenue planning, with processed results sent back to Salesforce and other local systems as needed. Dr. Vinay Singh adds:
“Board enables us to integrate data from various applications into a single source of truth, process the data, and return it to different systems. This flexibility has been critical to the project’s success.”
Dr. Vinay Singh
Global Process & Product Owner Pricing at BASF Agricultural SolutionsWith Board, we’ve seamlessly integrated multiple systems into a unified ecosystem, connecting our diverse IT landscape effortlessly.
Dr. Vinay Singh
Global Process & Product Owner Pricing at BASF Agricultural SolutionsGaining transparency, flexibility, and efficiency
BASF Agricultural Solutions has realized significant benefits by adopting Board as its global sales and pricing management platform:
- Real-time pricing transparency: Sales teams can evaluate pricing impacts on target prices, sales, and margins instantly, enabling informed decisions during negotiations.
- Flexibility for regional needs: The system accommodates both key account and broad market business models, while allowing for local customization within a globally standardized framework.
- Enhanced collaboration: The integration of Salesforce and Board ensures smooth data sharing, creating a unified ecosystem for sales planning and reporting.
- Simplified approvals: Discount adjustments are now subject to predefined approval levels, increasing clarity and speeding up processes.
- Comprehensive analysis: Users can simulate pricing options for single customer deals, track profitability, and conduct cross-country analyses to identify trends and optimize strategies.
Dr. Vinay Singh notes:
“Board allows us to model our business processes into IT systems, giving us unprecedented flexibility and new opportunities in international business. I am delighted we chose Board as the platform to underpin our global sales management!“
Turning his thoughts to the future, he concludes:
“At BASF Agricultural Solutions we are already running pilots relating to AI and GenAI. Much of our sales data, marketing data, and pricing data already exists within Board’s architecture so we’re now looking at how best to utilize GenAI and maximize the amazing impact this data can have across the business.”
BASF Agricultural Solutions' goal was to integrate the diverse planning and pricing processes of different countries into a single, semi-automated platform. It was crucial to develop a user-friendly and adaptable application that could handle the complexities of country-specific operations.
