Pricing strategy is all about flexibility.  While time and materials is the most flexible, a per PC pricing strategy can work as well.  You just have to take all the issues into consideration.

Per PC Pricing Strategy Issues

Scope
With a per PC pricing strategy the scope issues are pretty well taken care of.  Typically a business will add more PC’s and your price then goes up. But what happens if you set up a yearly contract and then three months later they add a few more systems?  

With a per PC pricing strategy you have to plan for this type of contingency.  You do this be ensuring you have the ability to run a change order through to bump up the contract price for the remainder of the duration.  

PC Definition
When your pricing strategy is based on each PC, how do you define a PC?  For example, is it just a desktop PC or does it include notebooks, sub-notebooks?  Does it include PDAs, like Palm devices and CE devices?  What if there’s a second PC on a user’s desk?  Does that count as a PC or a half a PC or no PC?  If the device is going to be a support burden you need to count it if you want a per PC pricing strategy to work.

Peripheral Devices
When you bill using a per PC pricing strategy you have to consider the support burden caused by items other than the defined PCs.  What if there are network attached storage devices, printer servers, wireless access points, appliances, file servers, app servers, terminal servers, etc…?  Every one of these items could conceivably be a burden. This is where the per PC pricing strategy gets less straightforward.  

Bottom Line on Pricing Strategy
Pricing strategies that use a per PC basis can work for long term business contracts.  The key issues are (1) making sure you have a change order process in place for additions, and (2) clearly defining what constitutes a PC and considering the support burden of devices other than PCs.  If you carefully consider these issues, you should be able to execute a  successful per PC pricing strategy.  

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Pricing Strategy. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Pricing Strategy, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.