One of the key elements of the sales process is the quoting process. It is critical to prepare a quote in time and with accurate information to create a positive first impression among the customers. A streamlined quoting process enables organizations to quickly turnaround a quote that is accurate and easy to understand. Having a systematic quoting process further increases the opportunity to win more business with new or existing customers.
Issue
An aviation manufacturing company’s quoting process was complex and time-consuming. Quality of the quotes especially errors in product pricing was another challenge. Complexity and inefficiencies in the process had an impact on the turnaround time for generating the quote. The average time required to send a quote to the customer was 3 days, which lead to dissatisfaction among the existing customers and increased the risk of losing new business opportunities.
Solution
The objective was to implement a process that is efficient, accurate and fast. A process mapping was done to identify waste/inefficiencies in the quoting process. A centralized product & pricing catalog database was created for quick access to accurate product and pricing information to prepare the cost estimate. RFQ (Request for quotation) tracker was created to keep track of all the pending RFQ’s with the due date and the progress to ensure timely response to the customers. Eliminated pricing errors by creating customer-based quote templates with an automatic calculation. Additionally, a database to track customer purchase history was created to keep track of the purchase trend and for upsell opportunity by recommending an increase in order size while creating quotes.
Result
The solution implemented streamlined the quoting process resulting in an efficient quoting system. Reduced the turnaround time to send the quotation to the customer from 3 days to 1 day with 100% accuracy and increased the team capacity to process 20% additional quote volume.
