How to answer spare-parts RFQs overnight: from PDF to quotation

An industrial buyer sends the same RFQ to four traders. The one who answers every line first, with a lead time on each, usually gets the order. The work in between is not selling: it is reading, retyping, asking and waiting, and it is the same work on every RFQ.

Here is how that work runs on a desk that does it overnight, step by step, and what your team still decides.

1. Read the RFQ where it lands

The desk reads every e-mail the minute it arrives, and every attachment on it: PDF, spreadsheet, Word, image, up to six per e-mail. An enquiry is recognised as an enquiry, a supplier's offer as an offer, a complaint as a complaint, and an auto-reply as automated mail that makes work for nobody. Each e-mail gets one line in English saying what it is and whether somebody owes a reply, whatever language it was written in.

2. Turn it into an order, not a to-do

One click turns the enquiry into a draft order. A spreadsheet is read cell by cell, up to 300 lines, so a number is never retyped and never "corrected" by a model. A PDF or a photo is read by a model, up to 100 lines. The brand is guessed from the number's shape: Komatsu's 3-3-2, CAT's seven characters, Liebherr's bare digits. Ask for "only the Liebherr lines" and you get one order per machine. Nothing is saved until someone presses Create.

3. Ask every supplier at once

The desk ranks your suppliers by how many of the order's lines their price lists cover, equivalents included. Tick the ones to ask, and each gets a request by e-mail with an Excel sheet, in its own currency, numbered from the order: ORD-2026-0016 becomes SRQ-2026-0016-1, -2 and so on. A number is never reused, so every answer finds its way back to the right request.

4. Read their answers back in

Suppliers reply in every format: a screenshot, a PDF, a spreadsheet, three lines in the e-mail. The desk reads each answer into its request, line by line, and shows each price beside the one it would replace, with the reason for the match. A long sheet is read thirty rows at a time so nothing is cut off. "In stock" is recorded as in stock, the offered brand and quality are kept, and a line delivered in lots keeps its lots.

5. Cost it and send the quotation

The request you choose fills the order's cost, converted at that request's own exchange rate, with freight by weight, duty and VAT per line. The quotation is built as PDF and Excel on your letterhead: lead times in days, "in stock" where it is, weight per line and in total, lots and alternatives printed as such, and a long part number never split across two lines. It is numbered from the order (QUO-2026-0016-1), sent from the desk, and its status tracked.

Your team starts the day by checking, not by typing.

What your team still decides

• Which suppliers to ask, and which answer to take.
• The margin, and every price on the quotation.
• When the quotation goes out, and to whom.

Where RFQ time actually goes

On a thirty-five-line RFQ, most of a buyer's morning is spent on three things: retyping numbers from a PDF, writing the same request to five suppliers, and copying their prices back. Those are exactly the three the desk does. The judgement stays with your team.

The systems: TERRA-202 TRIAGE, TERRA-301 RFQ, TERRA-302 SRQ, TERRA-303 OFFER and TERRA-304 QUOTE.

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