Processing tenders presents building materials manufacturers and distributors with significant time challenges. On average, companies in the industry need between 30 and 120 minutes to process a single tender. Given several thousand quote requests per year, it quickly becomes apparent that enormous time expenditure is involved.

Simple and Easy Virtually Doesn’t Exist

In hardly any other industry is offer creation as complex as it is for construction suppliers. This is due to the underlying structure of the process.

The Greatest Challenges:

1. Extensive Bills of Quantities The construction industry is characterized by detailed tenders that require precise calculation. The high level of detail is necessary to create accurate offers but leads to high time expenditure.

2. Diverse Tender Texts The variety of planners and planning software used, together with multiple suppliers per product group, leads to a wide range of tender texts. This complicates standardization and rapid processing of inquiries.

3. High Number of Inquiries Low margins in construction lead to many projects being individually tendered. This results in a high number of inquiries arriving at distributors and manufacturers.

Classic Approaches Are Neither Sustainable Nor Scalable

Taking obvious measures is a good first step, but they are often elaborate and offer only partial solutions.

Classic Solution Approaches for More Efficient Offer Creation:

Hire More Employees One possibility to handle the workload is to hire more employees. However, this is not only costly but also not sustainably scalable.

Use Machine-Readable Formats Like GAEB Integrating machine-readable formats like GAEB (Common Tendering and Award Conditions) can increase efficiency. However, this does not reduce the main effort - assigning products to tender positions.

Better Position Own Products with Planners Better strategic positioning of products with planners simplifies the process. Nevertheless, this only partially simplifies it.

AI as an Engine for Efficiency Gains

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has not only the potential but has already begun to revolutionize quotation management at building materials manufacturers and distributors. AI technologies offer innovative solutions to significantly increase efficiency in the process.

AI-Powered Solution Approaches for More Efficient Offer Creation:

1. Reading PDF Specifications A central challenge in the quote process is reading and extracting information from PDFs, as not all customers send GAEB files. AI-based systems can be efficiently deployed here. They process documents, automatically extract relevant data such as item number, position text, and requested quantity. This significantly minimizes the need for manual data entry and accelerates the entire process.

2. Recognition of Relevant Tender Items Employees in quotation management often have to identify items relevant to them in tenders with hundreds of pages – a complex and error-prone process. AI systems use pattern recognition to efficiently identify relevant items. This enables employees to focus on what’s essential.

3. Suggestion of Matching Products and Configurations Selecting suitable products for tender texts is often time-intensive. AI-based recommendation systems address this by suggesting products based on required product properties in the tender text. This significantly simplifies product selection and contributes to reducing workload.

Conclusion

AI in Quotation Management Becomes a Lever for Greater Competitiveness

Through automation of time-consuming manual tasks, not only is processing speed increased, but the error rate is also reduced. Building materials manufacturers and distributors can thus use resources more efficiently and focus more on strategic aspects. Want to see how this works live? Reserve a demo appointment for AI software for automating quotation management specifically for building materials manufacturers and distributors.