Guide
RFQ automation software for industrial distributors
Every distributor knows the routine: a customer sends a request for quotation as a PDF, a spreadsheet or a few lines in an email, and someone on the inside sales team retypes each line, works out what the customer actually means, finds the matching item in the catalog and only then starts pricing. RFQ automation takes over the retyping and the lookup, and leaves the judgment to your team.
What RFQ automation actually means
“Automation” gets used loosely. Generic OCR turns a document into text. A generic AI assistant can summarize an RFQ. Neither gives you what a quoting team needs: a clean table of line items, each one tied to a product in your catalog, with a clear signal of how sure the match is and what still needs a human decision.
For a distributor, useful RFQ automation does four things:
- Extracts every line from the customer’s document, with quantity, unit, part numbers and the original wording.
- Keeps the source of each line (page, sheet or row), so anyone can check it against the original.
- Matches each line to your catalog and explains why, instead of just returning a guess.
- Hands off a reviewed, structured file to the quoting or ERP system you already use.
Why manual RFQ processing is slow
The work is rarely hard. It is repetitive, and it is full of small traps:
- Every customer uses a different format. One sends a PDF export from their purchasing system, another a spreadsheet with merged cells, another a list typed into an email.
- Descriptions don’t match your catalog. The customer writes “10k resistor 0805 1%” while your catalog says “RES SMD 10K OHM 1% 1/8W 0805”.
- Units and quantities are ambiguous. Feet versus reels, each versus box, a list number read as a quantity.
- Part numbers come in variants. Suffixes, cross-references and the customer’s own internal codes.
- Mistakes are expensive. A wrong item or unit on a quote either loses the deal or costs margin when it ships.
Because each RFQ is handled by hand, turnaround depends on who is available. Large RFQs wait, and the team spends its time on data entry instead of pricing and following up.
How RFQ Inbox automates it
1. Import the RFQ
Upload a text-based PDF, an Excel file (XLSX), a CSV, or paste the email text. RFQ Inbox reads tables and line lists, including numbered lists in plain emails. Scanned images need OCR first; RFQ Inbox does not run OCR today.
2. Extract the lines
Each line keeps its original description and gets structured fields: quantity, unit, manufacturer part number and any customer reference. Fields that can’t be found are left empty and flagged, never filled in with a guess.
3. Match to your catalog
Every line is compared with your imported catalog using several strategies, from the most certain to the least:
| Strategy | Score | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Exact internal SKU | 100 | The customer quoted your own SKU, or it appears in the line. |
| Exact manufacturer part number | 96 | The MPN on the line equals the MPN in your catalog. |
| Customer alias | 90 | A customer reference you have stored against one of your products. |
| Alternative part number | 88 | A known cross-reference or equivalent part number. |
| Normalized description | 70–90 | Same product described differently, after normalizing text. |
| Technical attributes | 50–75 | Key attributes in your catalog (size, rating, material) appear on the line. |
| Text similarity | 40–67 | Only wording overlaps. Shown as a lead, never assumed. |
Each line gets up to five ranked candidates. Every candidate shows its score, the strategy that found it, what matched and what differs, so a rep can confirm it in seconds instead of searching the catalog.
4. Review
Matches scoring 85 or more are suggested as the primary candidate. Between 60 and 84 they need a human to confirm. Below 60, RFQ Inbox does not assume a match at all. Your team accepts, edits or rejects each line, corrects quantities and units, and marks the RFQ ready.
5. Export
Download the reviewed lines as CSV or XLSX with these columns: original description, matched SKU, product name, quantity, unit, proposed price, line total, match status, missing fields and source reference. Prices come only from your own catalog.
What gets flagged instead of guessed
The fastest way to lose trust in automation is a confident wrong answer. RFQ Inbox surfaces doubt explicitly:
- Unit mismatches: the catalog sells by the reel and the customer asked in feet.
- Manufacturer mismatches: the part number matches but the brand on the line is different.
- Partially matching attributes: some specs line up, others don’t.
- Missing quantity, part number or price: listed per line, and again in the export.
It works alongside your ERP
RFQ Inbox is not another ERP and does not ask you to replace one. It covers the step before the ERP: getting lines out of customer documents and matched to your SKUs. The export drops into your existing quoting process, so adoption doesn’t require an integration project.
Who it’s for
Teams that receive RFQs and quote from a catalog, especially:
- Electrical distributors: contractor RFQs mixing wire, breakers, conduit and fittings.
- MRO distributors: maintenance RFQs with many low-value lines and plant part numbers.
- Bearing & power transmission distributors: RFQs full of suffix variants and cross-referenced part numbers.
- Electronic component distributors: MPN-heavy BOM-style RFQs with specs written in shorthand.
How to evaluate RFQ automation software
Whichever tool you look at, these questions separate useful automation from a demo:
- Does it match to my catalog, or only extract text? Extraction alone still leaves the lookup to your team.
- Can I see why each match was made? A score without evidence can’t be checked quickly.
- What happens when it isn’t sure? Look for explicit thresholds and flags, not silent guesses.
- Where do prices come from? They should come only from your data.
- Can every line be traced to the source document? Page or row references make review fast.
- Does it fit my ERP as it is? A clean export beats a long integration for getting started.
- Can I test it on my own RFQs? Real documents expose problems that sample files hide.
RFQ Inbox offers a paid pilot on your own RFQs for exactly that last point. See pricing or how it works.
Send a sample RFQ and your catalog. We’ll show you the review table on your data.