Example project · Quotes and orders from email - Emailed RFQs into a review queue, then a quote
Inside sales re-keys every RFQ line by hand. We build intake that reads the email and attachments, matches lines to the catalog, and hands the salesperson a reviewed list to approve.
Illustrative project plan. Company details describe the scenario; this page does not claim a completed customer engagement or measured results.
Northfield Bearing & Supply. 35 people, bearings and power transmission, roughly 40 emailed RFQs a day.
The situation
RFQs arrive as emails, PDFs, and spreadsheets. Two inside-sales people spend the first hour of every day typing part numbers into the ERP quote screen.
Customer part numbers, competitor cross-references, and inconsistent units cause most of the errors. Nobody knows how long a quote actually takes.
What we would build
- A shared-inbox rule forwards RFQ emails to the intake service.
- The service extracts line items from the email body, PDFs, and spreadsheets, and matches each line to your catalog and cross-reference tables.
- A review queue page shows each RFQ as a line-item list with a match confidence, the flagged lines, and the reason each was flagged.
- On approval, the quote draft is produced in your normal template, as a PDF plus an import file or a supported ERP quote, depending on what your ERP supports.
The workflow in action
What comes in
From: Oak Mill Manufacturing Subject: Can you quote the attached parts list? Attachment: RFQ-1048.pdf 12 lines, including: • BRG-204 — 24 EA • FST-830 — 200 EA • 3/8″ tubing — 80 [unit missing] • “Same seal as last time” — 6 EA
What the team receives
A 12-line draft and 2 explicit exceptions.
- Ten lines have catalog candidates.
- The tubing needs a unit of measure.
- The seal needs a confirmed item identity.
- The original request remains attached to the review.
The exceptions—not another inbox.
- Missing unit
- “80” might mean feet, pieces, or another unit. Do not assume. Ask the customer to specify.
- Ambiguous item
- “Same seal as last time” is not a verified product match. Request the part number or identify the correct prior order with the salesperson.
- Commercial review
- Apply only authorized pricing rules. Confirm availability, delivery promises, and permitted substitutions before sending.
- Sample clarification
- “Thanks for your request. Could you confirm the unit for the 80 units of tubing, and the part number or previous order for the seal? We’ll complete the quote once those are confirmed.” Drafted for the salesperson. Nothing sent.
What you would see - Week by week, what lands on your desk.
Week 1
A one-page scope, a list of 200 past RFQs pulled for testing, and a written definition of what counts as a correct match.
Weeks 2 to 3
A review session where your sales lead works through 50 extracted RFQs on screen and marks what the matching got right, wrong, or should have flagged.
Week 4
One salesperson using the review queue for live RFQs, with everything still double-checked against the old process.
Weeks 5 to 6
The whole inside-sales team on the queue, a daily count of lines matched, flagged, and corrected, and a handover session.
What you would have at the end
- The intake service and review queue, documented, with a named owner on your side.
- Your cross-reference table cleaned up and loaded, with a process for adding to it.
- A weekly report of RFQ volume, match rate, and time to quote.
What it would not do
- Sending quotes automatically. A person approves every quote.
- Guessing part numbers. Unclear lines are flagged, not filled in.
- Changing prices or discounts. Approved pricing rules are applied as they are.
How we would measure it
- Minutes from RFQ received to quote sent, measured before and after.
- Share of lines matched without correction.
- Quote errors caught by the customer, per month.
Let’s start with one thing.
What would better performance look like?
Bring a result you want to improve, a symptom, or a workflow you already understand. You do not need to know the bottleneck yet. We’ll help choose what to investigate first.
No transaction files needed for the first conversation.