One price list.Five hundred people quoting.
How a global water technology manufacturer replaced spreadsheet quotations and email margin approvals with a Quotation Approval Application covering both standard and build-to-order requirements - integrated to Salesforce and the ERP, with approval routed by how much margin is being given away.
The situation
A quotation for a pump is not a line off a price list. It depends on configuration, on currency, on the customer, and on how much margin the seller is willing to give away. Once channel partners are quoting alongside the internal sales team, the same product can leave the business at several different prices.
It was being done in spreadsheets. The calculations were manual, so they were slow and occasionally wrong. Margin approvals went out as emails and came back as replies, with no consistent rule about who had to approve what. Price and lead data already lived in Salesforce and the ERP, but the quotation did not, so numbers were re-keyed. And when a customer asked what had been quoted six months earlier, the answer depended on whether someone still had the file.
Once channel partners are quoting alongside your own sales team, the same product can leave the business at several different prices.
What we built
We built a cloud application that the internal sales team and the channel partners both work in - more than five hundred users - so every quotation is produced from the same master data and the same margin rules. Product detail, price lists, and margins are maintained centrally by an administrator and applied consistently, in whichever currency the deal needs, whoever is doing the quoting. The calculation that used to be done by hand in a spreadsheet is done by the application.
Approval is routed by margin. A price inside the normal band clears on its own; the further it departs from standard, the further up the chain it travels, to C-suite where the discount warrants it. Approvers act from the notification email itself rather than logging in, so a quotation is never waiting on someone opening an application. Build-to-order items are raised and approved in the same flow, and once approved a BTO item converts into a standard product in a single click. Salesforce and the ERP are integrated by API, so lead data and price data come from the systems that already hold them.
Inside the application
The parts that carry a quotation from enquiry to approved price.
For the seller
- Quotes and revisions raised by internal sales and channel partners alike
- Automatic calculation in place of manual spreadsheet working
- Multi-currency pricing drawn from one maintained price list
- Quote status tracked as won, lost, or under discussion
- Full revision history, and the price history behind it
- The approved quotation file issued once sign-off is complete
For management
- Margin-banded approval, routed by how far a price departs from standard
- Approval given from the notification email, without logging in
- BTO items raised, approved, and converted to standard in one click
- Master data, price lists, and margins maintained centrally
- Access rights by role across sales, partners, and administrators
- MIS and real-time reporting scoped to each user’s rights
What changed
Outcomes as reported by the client. The user count is theirs; we have not attached percentages to the rest, because the ones worth quoting are the ones the client measured themselves.
Everyone quotes from the same numbers
Five hundred-plus internal and channel users work from one maintained price list and one set of margin rules, in whichever currency the deal needs. The same product stops leaving the business at several different prices.
Approval became a rule rather than a favour
How far a price sits from standard decides who has to approve it, and approvers act from the email. A quotation is no longer held up because the right person had not opened their inbox in the right order.
The quote history outlived whoever wrote it
Revisions, the prices behind them, and the status - won, lost, or under discussion - are held in the application. What was quoted six months ago is a lookup rather than a search through somebody’s folders.
How it was built
Cloud-hosted, and integrated by API to Salesforce and the ERP already in use.
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Quotations, discount approvals, rate contracts, channel pricing - anywhere the number depends on who is asking and who signs it off. Tell us how yours works today and we will tell you honestly what it would take to make it consistent.