3–4 days → < 10 minutes RFQ-to-Quote Turnaround
92% faster quote turnaround, $15,000 saved every month
9AI replaced Tempsens' manual RFQ-to-quote workflow with a five-stage, SAP-integrated pipeline running live in production.
92%
faster quote turnaround
$15,000
saved every month
0%
SAP master-data errors
585%
3-year ROI, projected
#The story in three moves
The situation
100+ RFQ line items a day, each interpreted by hand. Five days to a quote, 480 engineer-hours a week spent on structured data entry, and an 8% SAP master-data error rate putting wrong prices in front of customers.
What we deployed
A five-stage pipeline that ingests any RFQ format, parses the specification, generates an IEC 60794-compliant architecture and BOM, prices it live from SAP and issues a signed, branded quote PDF.
The outcome
Turnaround down to under 10 minutes, engineering effort down 92%, $15k saved every month, SAP data errors eliminated on day one, and a projected 585% three-year return.
RFQ received → spec parsed → cable engineered → priced from SAP → signed PDF
in under 10 mins
#The bottleneck, in numbers
100+
RFQs per day
3-4 days
quote turnaround
480 h
engineering / week
$22,000
labour cost / month
8%
SAP master-data errors
Why the manual process couldn't keep up
Unstructured inputs
RFQs arrive as PDFs, scanned drawings and free-text emails. No two look alike, so no two can be handled the same way.
Domain-heavy design
Generating a cable architecture demands IEC 60794 knowledge held by a handful of senior engineers.
Manual SAP lookup
SAP BAPI pricing was a copy-paste step between two systems, performed by hand on every single line.
Separate design step
Quote PDF formatting needed its own pass before anything could be sent to the customer.
Errors reaching customers
An 8% SAP master-data error rate meant incorrect pricing went out on live quotes.
#Every quote was a custom engineering job
Tempsens manufactures industrial cables and temperature measurement equipment for process industries across India and the GCC. Every sale begins with an RFQ — a specification that arrives as a PDF, an Excel file, a scanned image, or free text in an email body.
Before anyone could price anything, an engineer had to:
Interpret the incoming specification, in whatever format it arrived
Draft a cable architecture compliant with IEC 60794
Build the bill of materials, layer by layer
Pull current material pricing out of SAP by hand
Produce a branded quote PDF — often for several variants of one spec
#Implemented AI capabilities
Reads every enquiry
A mailbox agent connects to your intake inbox and ingests RFQs as PDFs, Excel files or plain-text email bodies, including prior thread context.
Qualifies RFQs
A qualification engine classifies each email and filters out non-RFQ correspondence, with a manual override always available.
Extracts line items
Cable family, conductor, cores, sizes, standards and optional layers are parsed. Anything ambiguous or missing is flagged for quick human review.
Engineers the cable
A cable-physics engine generates the cross-section, side view and build process, and calculates weights and material quantities layer by layer.
Prices in real time
Material rates are pulled live from your existing pricing source, so every quote reflects current costs.
Generates the proposal
A fully formatted quote — margins, taxes, rates and layout configurable, with separate domestic and international templates. Every field editable.
#The end-to-end workflow
Inquiry
Mailbox ingested automatically; customer, BOQ line items and QR criteria parsed into a tracked record.
Requirement Analysis
Engine pulls the cable-relevant specification into a structured sheet the engineer reviews rather than searches for.
Clarification
Conflicts and missing values flagged against the applicable IS / IEC clause, with a draft mail and tracked closure.
Cable Engineering
Rules engine proposes the full construction stack per size, customer TS overriding IS. Engineer approves or overrides.
BOM Generation
Layer-by-layer weights computed for every size in the BOQ at once from the approved construction.
Pricing & Margin
BOM flows into a rate master; landed cost computed automatically. Margin stays a human decision.
Proposal + GTP
GTP per size and the commercial quotation generated from the same approved record, on your company template.
Handover
One record carries the enquiry from mail to submitted quotation, with SAP integration for order handover.
Proven in production. This exact pipeline is live today — quotation turnaround fell from 3–4 days to under 10 minutes.
#Before vs after: Quoting operations
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quote turnaround | 5 days | 10 min | 99.8% faster |
| Engineer hours / week on quotes | 480 hours | 40 hours | 92% reduction |
| Monthly labour cost | $22,000 | $7,000 | $15,000 saved |
| SAP master-data errors | 8% | 0% | Eliminated |
| Quote pricing accuracy | 91% | 99.4% | +8.4 pts |