Intelligent Pricing Architectures for Autonomous Order-to-Cash Transformation

Abstract

Enterprise SAP pricing is undergoing a structural evolution across three distinct phases: static condition record management, AI-augmented optimization with human-in-the-loop governance, and emerging autonomous pricing where AI commits condition values within pre-approved bounds without per-transaction human approval. No architectural roadmap connects these phases within SAP's clean-core extensibility model. This paper proposes a three-phase SAP pricing evolution framework and an architectural blueprint for autonomous Order-to-Cash pricing using SAP Joule, BAdI-governed AI integration, and BTP event mesh. Design science methodology is applied with feasibility assessment from IBM's Blue Harmony global enterprise program. The architectural components required for Phase 3 autonomous pricing are already present in current S/4HANA environments, the transition is a governance maturity decision, not a technical capability gap. A six-dimension governance framework, covering confidence floors, tolerance ceilings, material risk classification, transaction value limits, customer tier rules, and retraining frequency, defines the conditions under which autonomous condition value commitment is operationally safe. The proposed framework provides enterprise architects a validated pathway from AI-augmented to fully autonomous pricing without architectural rework.