B2B distribution
AI Quote Engine
We lose orders because we quote on Thursday for an enquiry that arrived Monday.
A distributor receiving 500+ specification enquiries a week by email and PDF. Producing each quote means checking stock, applying the account's negotiated pricing tier, calculating freight to destination and confirming lead time — four systems, one salesperson, and a margin nobody verifies under deadline pressure.
The product
AI Quote Engine
The queue, the approval screen, the exception list. Every number is readable and every handover is visible.
QEQuote Engine
M. VossSales
- Enquiries this week
- 517
- Auto-parsed
- 463
- Awaiting approval
- 38
- Manual review
- 16
- Median turnaround
- 41m
- Low-margin caught
- 22
89.6%
spec ambiguous
was 2.4 days
before sending
Parsed from enquiry
- Product
- XYZ-240 flange assembly
- Quantity
- 250 units
- Destination
- Rotterdam, NL
- Required by
- 15 October
- Account
- Existing · Tier 3
Ref QE-48291 · Rotterdam Marine Fitters BV
Assembled quote
- Unit price
- €184.00
- Tier 3 discount
- −7.0%
- Freight to Rotterdam
- €420.00
- Line total
- €43,200.00
- Resulting margin
- 28.4%
System recommendation
Within this account's historical purchasing band and above the 24% margin floor. Stock covers 250 units from Rotterdam depot with 4 days' lead time.
- Margin above target
- Stock confirmed
- Lead time meets required date
Human approval is required before any quote leaves the system.
Built by Koderead to show the operating system. Figures are a worked example.
Watch one record
Where the handover actually happens.
A screenshot shows a state. This follows a single record through the system, including the point where it stops and waits for a person.
Specification arrivesMon 09:12
Free-text email with a PDF attached. One of about a hundred this week.
Parsed to a line itemMon 09:12
Tuned against this distributor's own enquiry corpus, not generic OCR.
Four systems checkedMon 09:13
Stock, lead time, the account's tier and the freight table.
Margin calculated before anyone sees itMon 09:13
Against the floor, not after the quote has gone out.
Salesperson approvesMon 09:31
One screen, margin shown. Nothing leaves without this step.
State
- From
- Rotterdam Marine Fitters BV
- Format
- Email + PDF
- Account
- Existing · Tier 3
- Read by a person
- Not yet
Quotes are prepared, never issued unattended — commercial commitment stays human
Deeper into the build
The screens where a person is still in the loop.
A queue is easy to show. What matters is what happens at the record, at the approval, and at the exception — because that is where the design either holds or does not.
- Customer
- Rotterdam Marine Fitters BV
- Product
- XYZ-240 flange assembly
- Quantity
- 250 units
- Unit price
- €184.00
- Tier 3 discount
- −7.0%
- Freight to Rotterdam
- €420.00
- Resulting margin
- 28.4%
System recommendation
Approve. Within this account's historical purchasing band and above the 24% margin floor. Stock covers 250 units from Rotterdam depot with four days' lead time.
- Margin above target
- Stock confirmed
- Lead time meets required date
Pricing floors and discount ceilings are enforced by the system and cannot be overridden. No quote leaves without human approval.
Parsed from a free-text email with a PDF attachment. Four systems checked in the time a salesperson would have opened the first.
- Enquiries this week
- 517
- Auto-parsed
- 463
- Stopped and asked
- 16
89.6%
rather than guess
- Two SKUs match the specification7Candidates listed, salesperson chooses
- Quantity unit ambiguous4Boxes or units — asked, not inferred
- Destination outside freight table3Held for manual freight quote
- Export-controlled item2Routed to compliance review
16 items awaiting a person, grouped by cause so one decision clears a class rather than a case.
A wrong SKU is more expensive than a slower quote. These sixteen would previously have been resolved by a guess under deadline pressure.
The change
Where the work moved.
Amber marks a step the system performs. Solid ink marks one a person still performs. The counts above each column say the same thing in numbers.
Today
5 human steps- Performed by Customer
Spec arrives by email
Often as a PDF
- Performed by A person
Salesperson identifies SKUs
By hand
- Performed by A person
Stock checked
Separate system
- Performed by A person
Pricing tier recalled
From memory
- Performed by A person
Freight estimated
Spreadsheet
- Performed by A person
Quote sent
Margin unverified
After
1 human step- Performed by Customer
Spec arrives by email
- Performed by Automated
Parsed to SKU, qty, destination
- Performed by System
Live stock and lead time checked
- Performed by Automated
Tier pricing and freight applied
- Performed by A person
Approved with margin shown
One screen, one click
- Performed by System
Quote issued and tracked
- Automated
- A person
- System
- Customer
Scope of authority
What this system is not allowed to do.
On a real engagement this is a document your operations lead signs before anyone writes code.
- Quotes are prepared, never issued unattended — commercial commitment stays human
- Pricing floors and discount ceilings are enforced by the system and cannot be overridden
- Export-controlled and hazardous goods route to compliance review
- An ambiguous specification stops and asks; it is never resolved by assumption
Built from
The solutions behind this build.
Your version of this
This took a mapped workflow before it took any code.
If this looks like your b2b distribution, the place to start is the same place we started here.