Price volume mix analysis, or PVM, decomposes a change in revenue or margin into three drivers: how far prices moved, how many units sold, and what the sales skewed toward. It explains a variance rather than reporting one.

Each effect is isolated by holding the other two at prior-period levels. The price effect asks what revenue would have done if only prices had changed. The volume effect does the same for units. Mix captures the remainder, the shift in composition across products, segments, or channels. The three reconcile to the total, which is what makes it a bridge instead of a set of ratios. The order of isolation matters, since sequencing shifts value between the buckets, so the convention has to be fixed once and documented.

In B2B, PVM tends to live in FP&A and get read as a finance exercise, which is where its usefulness leaks away. Of the three drivers, only price reflects choices a commercial team made. Volume follows demand and sales effort. Mix follows what buyers wanted. Price follows what your people agreed to, deal by deal, and it is the one line management can act on directly.

The uncomfortable reads are the ones worth having. Revenue up 6% on a negative price effect means volume and mix carried a quarter in which pricing quietly gave ground. That is margin erosion with a growth story wrapped around it, invisible in pricing analytics built on totals rather than drivers.

PVM turns a number everyone accepts into three numbers someone owns. Reach out to Acustrategy to find out what your last good quarter was actually made of.