Manufacturers & distributors
We build custom software for manufacturers and distributors. Usually the first piece is quoting: pulling the specs, the pricing and the past jobs together so your team can send an accurate quote the same day.
Redbroch has done hands-on work inside a manufacturer, sitting with the people who quote, take orders and answer the phone. The problems below are the ones that came up again and again.
“Can you quote 250 of the mounting bracket from last spring, but in stainless and with a second hole pattern?”
Sound familiar?
Most growing manufacturers and distributors run on an ERP, a shared inbox, a folder of spreadsheets and a few people who remember everything else.
Anything off standard means digging up a similar job, checking material and labor, asking around for the latest price and building the quote by hand. Meanwhile the customer is getting numbers from someone else.
One estimator carries years of judgment about what a job takes. When they are out, quotes wait. When they retire, a lot of that judgment leaves with them.
Specs in PDFs, pricing in a spreadsheet, the last order in the ERP, the exception in someone’s email. Sales and the floor spend the day asking each other where things are.
Built around what you already run
What we build
Quoting assistant
It reads the request, finds similar past jobs, applies your price lists and costing rules, and drafts a quote with its working shown. Your estimator reviews, adjusts and sends. Nothing goes to a customer without a person signing off.
Order intake
Purchase orders arrive as PDFs and email bodies in every format. The tool pulls the lines, matches part numbers and customers, and stages the order in your ERP for review. Anything that does not match is held and flagged.
Cited assistant
Sales and floor staff ask in plain language and get an answer that links to the spec sheet, procedure or job record it came from. People can check the answer in one click, and the knowledge stops living in one inbox.
Reporting
Quote turnaround, open orders, margins by customer or product family, backlog. Pulled on a schedule from the systems that already hold it, so nobody rebuilds the same spreadsheet every Monday.
These are examples of what an engagement can produce. Which one comes first depends on where the work actually piles up in your business.
How an engagement works
Each step is useful on its own, and you decide whether to take the next one.
We sit with the people who quote, enter orders and answer questions. We look at the ERP, the inbox and the spreadsheets as they really get used, and come back with a short list of what is worth building and what is not.
We build a working demonstration on a small sample of your quotes, orders or spec sheets that you choose to share, or on synthetic data shaped like them. You see it handle your kind of work before committing to anything larger.
One tool, scoped tightly, running in your environment for one team. We stay with the people using it while it settles in and fix what the first weeks turn up.
Once the first build is in use, we agree on the next one: another product line, another team or another process. Scope and price are agreed before the work begins.
What you can expect from us
Quotes, order confirmations and customer replies are drafts until someone on your team approves them. The approval step is part of the design from the first day.
We agree on what information is needed, who can see it, where it may be processed and how it is retained and deleted before we use any of it. Pricing and customer lists are treated as the sensitive records they are.
We start with your ERP, your email and the files your team already uses. Where another service or local hardware would help, we agree on the design and access first.
A drafted quote shows which past jobs and price lists it used. An answer links to the document it came from. Anything that cannot be traced gets flagged for a person.
Start a conversation
Call, text or email Samuel directly. A first conversation is half an hour, and you do not need a technical specification to start one.
(619) 330-4831
[email protected]
Please leave customer pricing and other sensitive records out of a first message. We will agree on a secure channel before any are needed.
Or use the contact form