Shervin Esfahani explains how MP ONE turns market data, pricing decisions, and measurable outcomes into a continuous growth engine for the aftermarket business.
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The old pricing playbook for machine manufacturers is broken. Annual price updates, cost-plus calculations, and static list prices can no longer keep pace with today's structural market volatility. Shervin Esfahani, VP Global Marketing at MARKT-PILOT™, explains how MP ONE enables manufacturers to turn market intelligence, pricing decisions, and performance measurements into a continuous growth engine.
Shervin, let’s start with the big picture. What has changed in the machinery industry that makes pricing such a critical topic right now ?
Shervin Esfahani: The old pricing playbook for industrial and machine manufacturers is basically broken. For many years, companies have set prices once a year, volatility was relatively predictable, and cost-plus across hundreds of thousands of SKUs felt “good enough.”
What’s different now is the level of structural pressure: tariffs, geopolitical turmoil, supply chain disruptions, and overall market volatility are all hitting the bottom line at the same time. Manufacturers are actively looking for new growth levers, and the aftermarket space has become one of the most powerful levers they can pull if they get pricing right.
You describe MP ONE as a Pricing Performance platform. What exactly do you mean by “Pricing Performance”?
Shervin Esfahani: Our mission at MARKT-PILOT is to make pricing effortless for machine manufacturers, and we do that through what we call Pricing Performance. Pricing Performance is the discipline of taking market data and pricing decisions and turning them into measurable outcomes continuously.
It’s a closed loop: you start with information and intelligence, you make confident decisions, you implement prices effectively, and then you measure the impact and adjust. Without all these components working together in today’s more volatile, structurally dynamic economy, you simply won’t be successful.
MP ONE is built on three integrated engines. Can you walk us through how they work together in the daily life of a machine manufacturer?
Shervin Esfahani: Imagine a machine manufacturer managing 50,000 SKUs in a highly competitive market with new competitors and lots of online stores selling their spare parts. The question is: how do you price effectively in that world?
The first component is the Intelligence Engine. This is where we extract not just generic market data, but the specific type of market information that is critical for confident decisions. The Intelligence Engine unifies internal and external market data, giving manufacturers real-time clarity into their markets, parts, and competitive landscape. It transforms fragmented signals into structured intelligence needed to make confident, informed pricing decisions.
The second is the Decision Engine. This is where manufacturers actually make and implement those decisions in a governed and traceable way: they can build price books, apply segmented pricing, and have a lot of flexibility while always seeing what decisions were made and why.
The third is the Performance Engine. Here they measure the impact of their decisions: they can trace which pricing changes led to increases or decreases in revenue, market share, or margins, and then adjust their strategy accordingly. Together, these three engines create the closed loop that defines Pricing Performance.
How can MP ONE support pricing in markets where transparency is low, but pressure is high?
Shervin Esfahani: This is where we see some of the biggest impacts. Even if competitors are not fully transparent, the buyers of spare parts are constantly scanning the internet for alternatives and different pricing options.
MP ONE provides breadth of insight by bringing that scattered information together. We also use things like cross-references: we can look at alternative parts and “will-fitters” that don’t share the exact same part number but are competitive in the market. This gives a manufacturer in a high-pressure, very competitive market enough transparency to make the best decisions at the right time. They can “win the moment” when the customer is ready to buy.
“Our mission at MARKT-PILOT is to make pricing effortless for machine manufacturers, and we do that through what we call Pricing Performance. Pricing Performance is the discipline of taking market data and pricing decisions and turning them into measurable outcomes continuously.”
From an organizational perspective, which teams in a company benefit from a Pricing Performance platform?
Shervin Esfahani: Of course, the pricing organization itself benefits, because they finally get a continuous, closed-loop setup instead of disconnected tools. But it doesn’t stop there. Pricing Performance is a team sport. Finance benefits because they can see how pricing decisions influence growth and profitability. Sales benefits because they can rely on better, more market-aligned prices instead of annual, gut-based adjustments, and leadership benefits because they can treat pricing as a strategic lever, not just as an administrative task. Whenever organizations see pricing as a way to gain competitive advantage, that’s when Pricing Performance really starts to pay off.
You mentioned earlier that most manufacturers today use a traditional “pricing stack”. How is MP ONE different from those traditional tools?
Shervin Esfahani: Today, many manufacturers use a mix of price management, price execution, and other tools. The problem is that this stack does not provide a fully closed loop: they might be managing or executing a set price on an aftermarket part, but they don’t have the market insight to make these decisions confidently, nor can they easily see how those decisions impact revenue and adjust in an agile way.
Traditional systems are often difficult and clunky. They require big teams to manage, update, and develop. MP ONE is designed to be easy for pricing teams to leverage, and it gives leadership the information they need to understand both the decisions made and the growth impact those decisions have across the organization. That’s a major difference to what’s on the market today.
If you had just a minute to explain the strategic value of MP ONE to a CEO, what would you say?
Shervin Esfahani: I’d tell them: MP ONE gives you a way to know what’s happening in the market, make confident decisions based on the right information, implement those decisions effectively, and measure the impact so you can continuously improve. In other words, it turns pricing into a real growth lever in your aftermarket business, not just a yearly exercise.
What are the biggest misconceptions you see when it comes to pricing in machine manufacturing? ?
Shervin Esfahani: One false belief is that pricing is a finance problem. It’s not. It’s really a growth problem. Pricing is all about supply and demand and how you adjust to the market, so the more knowledge you have, the more power you have.
Another myth is: “I need all the information and all the market data to make the right decisions.” We don’t see that in practice. What you really need is the right information, the most accurate and most relevant data in your market, to build the confidence to make good decisions.
Looking ahead, how do you see Pricing Performance evolving in the next three to five years? ?
Shervin Esfahani: The reality is that volatility is no longer cyclical; it’s structural. The unexpected is basically the only thing we can reliably expect. In this more dynamic world, Pricing Performance becomes a requirement to compete. Manufacturers that don’t adopt this new way of thinking will fall behind and won’t be as competitive, while early adopters of Pricing Performance will come out on top over the next three to five years.
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