AI intake and RFQ systems

Two commercial workflows with different time pressure

An intake system handles frequent inbound requests. The buyer may be checking stock, asking for a service, or trying to understand whether the company can solve the problem. A slow first response gives the buyer time to call another supplier.

An RFQ system supports larger deals. Speed still matters, but a fast answer with a weak scope or wrong margin can be more expensive than a late one. The team needs evidence from earlier projects, technical input, consistent estimation, commercial approval, and a record of the assumptions behind the offer.

Intake engine

The intake engine reads requests from the channels the company already uses. It identifies the customer, retrieves account and product context, asks for missing information, and routes the opportunity to the right owner. It can prepare a first response, quote draft, or recommended next step before a salesperson reviews it.

For a wholesaler, that may mean checking stock, customer-specific pricing, delivery options, and substitutes. For a service company, it may mean qualifying the need, retrieving relevant work, and preparing a call brief.

RFQ system

The RFQ workflow supports the complete path from request to reviewed offer:

1. An RFI, RFP, or RFQ enters the system.
2. The system researches the client, project, requirements, and known constraints.
3. It retrieves similar projects, estimates, delivery results, and reusable proposal material.
4. Delivery and engineering owners clarify what the client needs and what the company can responsibly offer.
5. The system prepares the estimate, price, margin view, assumptions, and approval route.
6. Commercial owners review discounts and the final offer.
7. Actual delivery results are compared with the quoted assumptions and reused in future estimates.

Forward-deployed delivery

Commercial workflows depend on company-specific pricing rules, source systems, terminology, and exception handling. We work with the people who answer requests and build against live examples. The first release covers a bounded request type, then expands as the team verifies the output.

What we measure

For intake, the main measures are first response time, qualified opportunity rate, quote preparation time, conversion, and revenue from the channel. For RFQ work, we also measure estimator effort, margin variance, approval time, proposal reuse, win rate, and the difference between quoted and delivered effort.

Our wholesale intake success story describes a system that prepared product, stock, pricing, and delivery context before the salesperson returned the call.