Quoting looks like a sales activity, but much of the elapsed time is operational. A request waits in an inbox, product descriptions have to be translated into catalogue items, account pricing is checked, availability is confirmed, an approval is chased and a document is assembled. The rep adds value where the commercial judgement is real; the surrounding retrieval and formatting do not need them.
The map below is a composite of distributor quote workflows. It assumes pricing rules exist somewhere, even if “somewhere” includes a spreadsheet and two experienced people. If the business cannot state which discounts are allowed and who approves the rest, documenting that policy is the first deliverable.
The workflow as it usually runs
- 1A customer emails a list of products, quantities and timing.
- 2A rep identifies the account and translates descriptions into SKUs.
- 3They look up account terms, price lists and recent quoted prices.
- 4They check stock, lead time and possible substitutes.
- 5They calculate discounts and margin.
- 6Anything outside their authority is sent to a manager.
- 7The quote document is assembled and emailed.
- 8The rep follows up and later re-enters accepted lines as an order.
The eight opportunities
1. Turn the request into a visible queue
Create one quote record from the email or form and track its owner, age and status. This removes the private-inbox problem and makes response time measurable. The original request remains attached so nobody has to reconstruct what the customer asked for.
2. Normalize customer language into catalogue items
Customers use old part numbers, abbreviations and descriptions that do not match the ERP. Search, alias tables and purchase history handle most of this. A model can propose matches for genuinely free text, but a person should confirm ambiguous items before price or availability is promised.
3. Retrieve the commercial context
Account terms, contract pricing, volume tiers, credit status and recent quotes should appear on the work item automatically. Today the rep often checks each source because nobody has joined them. This is integration and lookup work, not a prediction problem.
4. Apply the price hierarchy consistently
The system should know which price wins: contract, promotion, customer tier, quantity break or list. Make the precedence explicit and test it. If two spreadsheets disagree, the workflow must stop with a named policy exception instead of choosing whichever file was opened last.
5. Add margin and approval guardrails
Calculate margin using current cost, freight and any account-specific terms. Quotes inside the rep’s authority proceed. Quotes outside it enter an approval queue showing the requested discount, resulting margin and comparable history. The manager decides the exception, not the arithmetic.
6. Bring availability and lead time into the same view
A good price on unavailable stock is not a good quote. Retrieve available-to-promise inventory, open purchase orders and supplier lead times. If the requested item cannot meet the date, propose known substitutes for review rather than making the rep start another search.
7. Generate the quote from approved data
Once lines are approved, document creation should be mechanical: correct legal entity, terms, validity date, product lines and totals. Store the exact version sent. Copying figures into a document creates risk without adding commercial judgement.
8. Convert acceptance without re-keying
An accepted quote should become an order from the approved structured lines, subject to a final availability and credit check. Follow-up reminders and expiry can be scheduled from the same record. The outcome then feeds back into pricing history instead of disappearing into the sent folder.
What we would build first
Begin with the queue and the single quote workspace: customer context, catalogue match, pricing, margin and availability in one place. That alone removes system switching and creates the data needed to automate. Add automatic document generation next. Delay autonomous discount decisions until the authority rules and exception history are stable.
The hidden project
Pricing automation often becomes a pricing-policy project. That is useful. A workflow cannot consistently enforce a rule the business has never agreed on.
Return to the seven distributor workflows and choose the next process to inspect.