Proposed workflow for validation with the customer team. The design, assumptions and ROI scenarios are illustrative—not customer results, guarantees or forecasts.
Concrete starting point
Engineer-to-order RFQ and proposal flow
Specifications, sizing, costing, exceptions and approvals move through email and spreadsheets, slowing the quote while making technical and margin risk hard to see.
Proposed approach: Create one governed RFQ evidence path: extract and cite requirements, reuse only approved engineering content, route deviations to specialists and retain human approval for price, margin and contractual commitments.
Current pain
Sales repeatedly chases engineering, costing and approvals while requirements sit across attachments and earlier bids.
Business impact
Slow responses consume selling time, delay pipeline conversion and increase the risk of omitted requirements or weak pricing discipline.
Redesigned Human + AI workflow
- AI extracts requirements and links each one to the source document and revision.
- AI retrieves approved reference answers and drafts a compliance matrix, assumptions and proposal.
- Engineering resolves deviations. Commercial owners approve price, margin, terms and commitments.
- The bid owner issues the approved proposal and captures win/loss learning.
600 engineered quotes/year × 2 engineer-hours released/quote × ₹1,500 loaded hourly cost
₹18 lakh annual capacity value
Illustration only—not a customer result or forecast. Baseline hours, usable capacity and financial attribution must be validated during the diagnostic.
Change and adoption
Create one approved answer library, name content owners and set review deadlines. Train reviewers to check citations and omissions. Never allow AI to commit pricing or contractual terms without approval.
Systems and data
CRM opportunity; RFQ attachments and revisions; approved technical library; costing/CPQ records; price lists and approval rules; proposal versions and win/loss reasons. Separate customer-confidential material by access rights.
KPIs with clear definitions
- Median and P90 proposal cycle time
- Engineering review hours per issued proposal
- First-pass technical completeness
- Share of proposals within approved margin policy
- Proposal cycle time = elapsed business hours from complete RFQ intake to approved issue, reported as median and P90.
- First-pass completeness = proposals accepted internally without material rework / proposals reviewed.
- Review effort = reviewer hours per issued proposal.
- Margin discipline = proposals within approved margin policy / issued proposals.
Measurement and verification
Compare similar RFQs by complexity and product family. Measure cycle time, rework and reviewer effort first. Assess win rate over a full sales cycle with sample size disclosed. Count only approved incremental contribution margin in a value case.
Accelerators where relevant
WinsProposal supports the governed RFQ workflow; PulseIQ connects proposal decisions to downstream order, margin and delivery outcomes.