Industries
Four industries, four different intake problems
“Automate RFQ intake” means something different in each of these. What arrives, what has to be read, who decides and which system holds the answer are all different — so the workflows are too.
High volume, high variation, estimator-limited
Machine shops
The unit of work is the part, and the same part is quoted repeatedly at different quantities, revisions and lead times. Most of the intake effort is not analysis — it is reading a message to find a part number, a revision letter, a quantity break and a material, then finding what that part was quoted at last time.
What this looks like in the inbox
- The same customer sends a request as an email one week and a spreadsheet the next, with different column names each time
- A request arrives for a part quoted four months ago, and finding the previous quote takes longer than pricing the job
- Quantity breaks are buried in a sentence — "price for 25, 50 and 100" — and get missed on the first pass
- Revision letters change without the file name changing
- One estimator holds the intake queue, and their holiday is visible in the quote turnaround
What that changes in the build
- Extract
- Part number, revision, quantity and quantity breaks, material and requested date — with anything missing recorded as missing rather than guessed.
- Match history
- Link a new request to previous quotes for the same part number and revision, so the estimator starts from what was quoted before.
- Revisions
- Flag a request as a revision or a duplicate of an open one, instead of opening a second unrelated job.
- Route
- Assign by machine capability, material or customer, using the rules the shop already applies informally.
- Review screen
- One screen showing extracted fields next to the original message and attachment list, so checking is faster than retyping.
- Systems
- Requests usually land in a shared mailbox; the destination is a quoting or shop-management system, an ERP, or a spreadsheet that has quietly become the system of record. Whether a write path exists is verified during assessment, never assumed.
Drawing packages, revisions, engineering review
Metal fabricators
A request is usually a package rather than a part: a set of drawings, a bill of materials, finish and certification requirements, and a project reference. The expensive failure is not a mistyped quantity — it is quoting against a superseded drawing, or missing a finish requirement that was mentioned once in an email body.
What this looks like in the inbox
- A drawing package arrives as a zip file, and revision B of one sheet arrives separately two days later
- Finish, coating and material certification requirements appear in the email but not in the drawing package
- It is unclear whether a request needs engineering review before anyone can price it
- Multi-part projects live in one email thread until the thread becomes unreadable
- Requests for the same project arrive from two different contacts at the customer
What that changes in the build
- Assemble
- Group everything relating to one project reference into a single record, even when it arrives across several messages and several days.
- Revision control
- Track drawing revisions and raise a flag when a newer revision arrives after quoting has started.
- Requirements
- Capture finish, coating, tolerance and certification requirements as explicit fields, not as free text nobody rereads.
- Engineering gate
- Route packages meeting agreed criteria to engineering review before they reach estimating.
- Attachment inventory
- Track which sheets and documents are present, so a missing sheet is noticed before the quote goes out rather than after.
- Systems
- Project references usually live in a CRM or a project spreadsheet while costs live elsewhere. The realistic first integration is normally between intake and whichever system holds the project record.
Repeat orders, several handoffs, reconciliation
Manufacturers
Less of the work is quoting and more of it is order handling. Much of the intake is recurring: purchase orders against existing agreements, schedule changes, and releases against blanket orders. The cost is not thinking time — it is retyping and reconciliation between departments that each keep their own copy.
What this looks like in the inbox
- A purchase order is entered into the ERP, then repeated in a scheduling spreadsheet, then emailed to production
- Customer service answers order-status questions by asking someone else to check the system
- A price on an incoming order does not match the agreed price, and the mismatch is found late
- Schedule changes arrive by email and are applied to some systems but not all
- Approval paths are informal, so it is unclear who signed off on an exception
What that changes in the build
- Validate
- Check incoming orders against agreed prices and terms, and surface every difference for approval instead of accepting it silently.
- Enter once
- Create the order record once, with an idempotency key, so a retried delivery cannot produce a second order.
- Approval path
- Route exceptions — expedite, split shipment, hold — along the path the business already uses, and record who approved what.
- Status visibility
- Give customer service a current view of order status without having to ask another department.
- Reconcile
- Compare what was ordered against what was created on a schedule, and report differences rather than overwriting them.
- Systems
- An ERP is normally the system of record, with a CRM or shared mailbox in front of it and spreadsheets filling the gaps. Whether the ERP offers a supported write path is the single most important question, and the assessment answers it.
Enquiry volume, routing, sensitive categories
Industrial distributors
Speed of response is much of the product. Most enquiries are short — availability, price, a substitute for a discontinued item — but answering requires stock data, a cross-reference, and knowing which branch or representative owns the account. Volume makes manual triage expensive; regulated categories make full automation unwise.
What this looks like in the inbox
- Availability questions arrive faster than anyone can check stock and reply
- A competitor part number arrives with no cross-reference, and the enquiry stalls
- Enquiries reach the wrong branch and are forwarded twice before anyone owns them
- Freight and lead-time questions need a carrier quote before they can be answered
- The same customer appears under three slightly different names, so account matching is manual
- Hazardous, controlled or regulated items are mixed in with ordinary enquiries
What that changes in the build
- Account match
- Match the enquiry to an account, and flag near-matches for review instead of picking the closest one.
- List enquiries
- Turn multi-line spreadsheet enquiries into a structured table of part numbers and quantities.
- Cross-reference
- Apply the existing cross-reference table where one exists, and mark items that need a human lookup rather than substituting a guess.
- Route
- Assign by branch, territory or representative using the rules the business already applies.
- Hold for a person
- Hazardous, controlled or otherwise regulated categories are always held for a person. This is a rule, not a confidence threshold.
- Systems
- A CRM usually owns the account relationship while stock and pricing live in an ERP or distribution system. Read access for availability is often achievable before write access is; the assessment says which is realistic.
Request a workflow review
Your intake is not quite any of these
It never is. The review starts from how your requests actually arrive and who touches them, not from an industry template.
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