Automate quoting and proposals with AI
When quoting takes days, deals go cold. Much of that delay is mechanical: reading the request, pulling pricing and product data, checking availability, formatting a proposal, and sending it. AI can turn an incoming request into a draft quote in minutes, using your real pricing rules and your real catalog, so your team reviews and sends instead of building from scratch. The model does the reading and the drafting; your rules do the math; a person approves before anything reaches the customer. ResonateOps builds quoting automation into the tools you already use (the shared inbox, the ERP or price list, the CRM, the proposal template) and deploys it to run reliably inside your own accounts. Three weeks, a fixed price agreed up front, a 60-day operational guarantee, built by a senior engineer who makes sure the numbers and the system are both correct.
How does AI quoting automation work?
The automation watches the channel where requests arrive (usually a shared inbox or a web form), reads each request, and extracts what is being asked for: products or services, quantities, specs, delivery constraints, the customer. It looks the customer up in your CRM, pulls prices and availability from your catalog or ERP, applies your pricing logic (volume tiers, customer-specific terms, margins, minimums), and produces a formatted draft in your proposal template. The draft lands where your team already works, with anything unusual flagged. A person reviews, adjusts if needed, and sends.
Two design choices make the difference between a demo and a system you can trust. First, the language model never invents a price: prices and rules live in structured data you control, and the model only reads the request and writes the prose. Second, every quote passes validation (totals, margins, missing fields) before it is presented for approval, so faster does not mean sloppier.
- Parse incoming requests from email, forms or WhatsApp, including attachments
- Look up the customer and their terms in your CRM
- Apply your pricing rules, discounts, minimums and product data from the source of truth
- Generate a formatted, on-brand draft proposal in your template
- Sync the quote to your CRM and flag anything unusual for review
Which quoting processes are worth automating first?
The best candidates share three traits: high volume, rules that a person can write down, and a delay that is costing deals. Distribution and manufacturing quotes built from a catalog are the classic case. Service quotes assembled from a rate card and a scope checklist are the second. Custom engineering quotes that need a site visit and an expert judgment are usually the wrong first project: automate the intake and the document around them, not the judgment.
A common pattern in manufacturing and distribution: quoting takes two to three days because each rep builds their own version in a document, and deals are lost to competitors who reply the same afternoon. A system built on Gmail, the ERP price list and the existing template takes the inquiry, builds the quote with current pricing, and leaves it ready for review in minutes. That is an illustrative scenario of the kind of work, not a specific client result, and it is the shape most first projects take.
Your pricing rules, enforced
Quotes are only useful if they are right. The system encodes your real pricing logic explicitly (tiers, customer terms, currency, taxes, minimum margins) and validates every output against it, so a wrong number cannot reach a customer because a model felt confident. When a request falls outside the rules (a product not in the catalog, a discount above the threshold, a customer with an open balance), the draft is flagged rather than guessed. A person still approves before it goes out, and every approval is logged.
What does it cost and how long does it take?
A fixed price agreed up front after a free 15-minute discovery call, with the build typically taking three weeks: one week to map the request sources, the pricing rules and the template; one to build and connect; one to test against real historical requests and go live. Quoting automation is a custom implementation, so it is quoted to scope rather than sold from a list price; the ResonateOps blog post on how much AI automation costs explains what moves the number. Infrastructure and AI usage are billed to you, in your name, with a cap declared in the proposal.
After launch, the 60-day operational guarantee applies: if the agreed metric (for example, quote turnaround under 24 hours for standard requests) is not met, the work continues at no cost or you get a refund.
What do you need to have ready?
Less than most teams assume. The first week of the engagement is where the rules get written down if they only exist in heads today.
- A price list or catalog in any structured form (ERP export, spreadsheet, database)
- Five to ten real past requests with the quotes that went out, to test against
- Your proposal template, even if it is a Word document
- Someone who knows the exceptions: who gets which discount and why
Related
Frequently asked questions
Can it handle complex or custom pricing?
Yes. Your pricing rules are encoded explicitly and validated. The AI drafts; your rules and a human approval keep it accurate. Requests outside the rules are flagged for a person instead of guessed.
Does it integrate with our CRM and ERP?
In most cases yes, through the API where one exists or through exports where it does not. We confirm the integration path in the free discovery call before any commitment.
Will the AI make up prices?
No. Prices come from your structured data, never from the language model. The model reads the request and writes the prose; the numbers are looked up and validated.
What if a request needs an expert to price it?
The system still does the intake, the customer lookup and the document, then routes the pricing decision to the right person. You save the mechanical time even on the quotes that need judgment.
How long until the first automated quote?
Typically three weeks from the first call, for a fixed price, with a 60-day operational guarantee after deploy.
Let's talk for 15 minutes about your operation.
A free call. I'll tell you straight which processes today's AI can solve and what your infrastructure needs for them to actually run. If it fits, we move forward. If not, I point you the right way, free.