Modelling RFQ-to-quote turnaround before automation

The problem

Assume 12 RFQs a week landing in a shared inbox, and 20–30 minutes to assemble each quote from emails, price lists and past jobs. That creates a 17–26 hour monthly range to investigate before allowing for exceptions and rework.

The firm should also record its actual time-to-quote and how many sent quotes are ever followed up. This scenario does not assume a win rate or a follow-up baseline.

What the Blueprint found

A firm like this typically holds its pricing rules in a spreadsheet and writes quotes by hand. A workflow session often surfaces that most RFQs arrive missing something — drawings, quantities, deadlines — and the back-and-forth to complete them is where days disappear.

If that pattern holds, the Blueprint would test three options in order: enquiry triage that flags missing information back the same day, structured quote drafts built from the pricing rules, and scheduled follow-up on every sent quote. Tooling and exceptions must be confirmed in the actual firm.

What gets built

An intake that sorts and acknowledges RFQs as they land and asks for whatever is missing straight away. Structured quote drafts assembled from the firm’s own pricing rules, reviewed and sent by the estimator. Follow-up sequences on a business-day clock, so no sent quote goes quiet.

Templates, pricing rules and escalation points are approved by the firm before go-live, and every outgoing message can be routed through human approval.

What changes

The implementation hypothesis is that faster first response and consistent chasing recover estimator hours and reduce quotes lost to silence. Exceptions and human review mean no percentage should be promised up front.

Measure time-to-quote, follow-up completion and win rate for four weeks before and after launch. Any uplift is an observed result only after that comparison.