10 Hours to 2 Minutes with Excel Quote Automation

Home / Case Studies / Automated Quote Tool

Case Study Summary

PROBLEM

Creating quotes for projects was taking hours of manual effort. Our client wanted to automate this process to save a lot of time and reduce customer acquisition costs.

SOLUTION

Overall, we developed a tool that fully automates the creation of quotes. This tool transformed a tedious, time-consuming process that took hours, and reduced it down to a couple minutes.

OUTCOME

Developed an automated tool that creates quotes in minutes instead of hours
Eliminated 99% of the manual effort when creating quotes
The tool saves 1 day of work per week (over 400 hours per year)
100% Client Satisfaction

COMPANY

INDUSTRY

Commercial Roofing

LEAD DEVELOPER

Pete Thompson

AUTOMATIONAL

Results

99%

Reduction in Manual Effort

1 Day

Saved Per Week

400+

Hours Saved Per Year

Client's Perspective

David Bradke

Sales Rep

"I needed a way to quickly and accurately produce material quotes for roofing contractors. For years, I have prepared them manually. I had attempted to create various ways to speed up the process, but this turned out to be frustrating and a waste of my time, so I continued to do them manually.

When looking for a company to automate this for me, I was concerned that they wouldn’t be able to create my vision, that it would be expensive, and that it would take too long to create. After I spoke to Pete at Automational about my needs, I felt comfortable that he understood what I needed and that they knew how to create it.

Once we got started, the process was phased in so we never got off track. And the end product was amazing! It incorporated useful features that I didn't even envision when we started. Now I have an automated Quote Tool that amazes everyone I show it to.

I used to spend one hour to prepare a single quote manually. But now in just a few minutes, I can prepare not one, but up to a dozen quotes for the same customer. I prepare as many as 10 quotes per week so it has saved me one day per week easily. Not only that, but the resulting quote documents are much more professional looking.

With that said, I would highly recommend Automational. Based on my experience, I don’t think you could go wrong. The end product outperformed my expectations. It was a very quick process and the cost was more than reasonable given the end result. Automational really grasped what I wanted and built on that to make it even better."

The Journey

CLIENT

David Bradke (Sales Rep)

PROBLEM

For David, creating quotes required a lot of tedious, manual effort. As expected, quotes were taking a lot of time to create.

Like in most industries, there's no guarantee of winning a customer's business after creating a quote. Consequently, it's very common for the time required to create a quote to end up being a sunken cost.

In fact, it's probably one of the largest contributors to a higher cost to acquire a customer. It's a challenge that all businesses face.

David needed a way to automate the quoting process to save a significant amount of time and to reduce the cost to acquire new customers.

In addition, automating quote creation would provide a significant competitive advantage. It would allow David to create far more quotes and win more contracts, in a fraction of the time.

To solve this problem, David had tried to streamline the process over a few years, but it had only led to more frustration. He decided to look for expertise in this area to explore automation possibilities.

SOLUTION

David reached out to see if automation was even possible. We discussed his needs and vision, and put together an estimate for the project.

David was excited to get started, so we developed a phased-in execution plan and got to work.

The quoting process was very complicated, so there was a lot of collaboration to iron out all of the sophisticated calculations and details.

This part was a lot of fun, as I got to learn about commercial roofing.

Together we developed a fully automated quoting tool in Excel, using VBA and user forms. The automated quoting tool eliminates nearly all of the manual labor that required so much time before.

Dave can now create quotes within minutes instead of hours. This has allowed him to run circles around the competition.

Could automating one of your processes transform your business?

If so, reach out to us today.