How to Build an Automated Procurement Inquiry & Quotation System

Almost every procurement and supplier interaction involves inquiry and quotation, which traditionally suffers from fragmented requests, inconsistent supplier responses, and labor‑intensive price aggregation.

Problems with Traditional Supplier Quotation

New demands require procurement to locate suppliers and request prices.

Multiple suppliers must be compared for the same product.

Returned quotations need manual consolidation, price comparison, and confirmation of unit price, effective date, and payment terms.

To address these issues, an automated inquiry and quotation system was built.

System Overview

Procurement can launch batch inquiries online with a single click, automatically notifying each supplier. Suppliers receive a notification, enter their price, and the system instantly aggregates the data into a comparison sheet.

The following sections detail the construction of the system.

Step 1: Create an "Inquiry Demand Pool"

Establish a central pool that stores all products needing quotation. Build a "Inquiry Demand" form that syncs fields from the procurement request.

Use the form as the basis for filtering unprocessed demand rows, preventing omissions.

Step 2: Set Up "Procurement Initiates Inquiry"

Create a form where procurement selects products and corresponding suppliers, then triggers the quotation workflow with one click.

After submission, the system creates an individual quotation task for each supplier, visible only to that supplier, with a time‑limited reminder.

This eliminates reliance on email and phone calls.

Step 3: Build a "Supplier Quotation" Entry

Each supplier receives a dedicated quotation task showing the product list to be priced.

Develop a "Supplier Quotation" form.

Allow multiple revisions before the deadline; lock the form afterward.

Step 4: Construct a "Comparison Dashboard"

Instead of manual Excel or PPT charts, the system automatically generates a comparison analysis with key charts and detailed tables.

Chart area: trend, volatility, distribution.

Metrics include number of quoted items, quotation frequency distribution, average price per product, and max/min price curves.

Two detailed tables provide material‑level and supplier‑level comparisons, both exportable, sortable, and filterable.

Step 5: Implement a "Price Confirmation" Form

After comparison, a confirmation module records the final price, writes it to a "Product‑Supplier Price" table, and makes it available for downstream purchase orders while preserving historical records for audit.

Impact After Deployment

For Procurement: Workload is reduced to simply judging the best price; the system handles data collection, aggregation, and comparison.

For Suppliers: A standardized entry ensures they know exactly what to fill, eliminating format errors and missing information.

For Management: Every step is timestamped and logged, providing clear traceability and data‑driven process control.

The system is available as a ready‑to‑use template that can be registered and deployed immediately.

In summary, by modularizing the workflow into five forms and linking them through automated processes, companies can achieve a faster, more accurate, and less labor‑intensive procurement quotation cycle.