Estimating for many businesses is a necessary evil...

• Expensive
• Time consuming
• Occasionally wrong - Without it there is no work to produce - or sales to invoice.

The challenge was to: -

• Reduce the cost of estimating
• Increase the accuracy
• Speed up the whole process

Customers requested quotes but only one in ten became an order, each one took two days to produce or, - put another way each order was costing £2,000 in estimating costs.

The solution centred around combining the Client Relationship Database and a sophisticated website. When customers interact with the website to obtain a quote they fill in details on a form.

The estimate request form is linked to a set of tables administered by the client. Users enter their requirements and email address - the website makes the calculations in a couple of seconds and emails the user the answer.

Details are recorded in the database and appear on a sales persons To-Do follow up list.

ROI This site paid for itself in a few months.

The benefits are:-

1. Inputting cost is borne by the user.
2. All interactions are recorded and the opportunity to follow those up with clients is provided.
3. It enables the site owner to put resources in to better quality relationships with clients rather than the repetitive task of long winded calculations.
4. Quotes which once took two days are produced in two seconds.
5. Clients and internal staff who now also use the system can get quotes 24/7.
6. Consistency of quotes has been improved and because everything is keyboard controlled there are no more illegible hand written scraps of paper circulating.

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One last thought it is often suggested that if you were to launch such a system that your competitors would come on calculate prices and then under cut you.

In reality though what happens in business is, if you want to find out a competitors pricing you ask a friend to submit some spurious enquiries to your competitor.

They do the work in high expectation, but of course all that  work comes to nothing, but they have incurred all the costs.  That said we do have a solution...

Summary

For this customer what was once an expensive but necessary chore has become an:-

1. Opportunity to increase productivity
2. Accelerate communications
3. Improve customer satisfaction