Skip to content
Thnkers
Start a project

Quoting & orders

Quoting and order systems for make-to-order manufacturing: from the drawing to the quote in days

We build quoting and order systems for manufacturers who make every product to order — switchgear, sheet metal, machinery, furniture, HVAC. The system holds your suppliers’ price lists, reads customer drawings, prepares the quote and tracks the order through production. One Italian switchgear manufacturer went from about ten days per quote to two, on a 1,887-item catalogue, three weeks after the first call.

Book a 30-minute callSend a message

Updated

Your week

If this is your week

  • A customer sent a drawing on Monday. The quote goes out next Wednesday, if the engineer is not on site.

  • Brand price lists arrive as 85 MB Excel files. Someone re-types them.

  • The customer asked for an equivalent from another brand. That means an afternoon in three catalogues.

  • The director asks how many quotes are open. The answer is in four inboxes.

  • The person who knows the prices is 61. Nobody is writing anything down.

The system

What we build

  • A multi-brand catalogue with analogue groups — pick the item, see every equivalent with its price.
  • AI reading of PDF and DWG drawings into a draft bill of materials; the engineer checks and decides how deep to go.
  • Automatic pricing with your margins, discounts and customer rules.
  • Branded quotes in your layout, in your customer’s language.
  • An order pipeline with roles — sales, engineering, production, director — so nothing lives only in email.
  • A director’s dashboard: open quotes, win rate, workload, deadlines.
  • A gateway to your ERP or accounting software, so nothing is typed twice.

Process

How it works

Before: a request arrives by email, the engineer prices it from memory, retypes it in Excel, formats it in Word and emails it back. After: the request enters the system, the system reads the drawing and drafts the bill of materials, the engineer confirms it, the quote goes out and the order is tracked from there.

  1. 01

    Call: you show us three real quotes and the price lists.

  2. 02

    Pilot: your catalogue loaded, one product family quoted end to end, 3–4 weeks.

  3. 03

    Build: remaining families, roles, ERP gateway, your layout.

  4. 04

    Running: price lists updated as brands change them, AI reading included up to your volume, phone support.

Proof

A real one

  • Low-voltage switchgear manufacturer, Italy

    2 daysper quote, down from about 10

    Before
    About 10 days per quote, prices in one engineer’s head, drawings read by eye.
    After
    2 days per quote, 1,887 items across several brands with analogue groups, AI reading of drawings, four roles, a director’s dashboard. Built by one developer in about three weeks on React, Node.js and PostgreSQL, deployed on the client’s own server.
    Read the full case

Ready core

Why weeks, not months

The quoting core already exists: catalogue, analogues, pricing rules, quote layout, pipeline, dashboard. What changes for you is your price lists, your rules, your language and your ERP. That adaptation typically takes 1–4 days of configuration per product family, which is why a pilot fits in a month.

After launch

What we keep running

Supplier price lists updated as they change. New brands and analogue groups added. Drawing reading up to the agreed monthly volume. The ERP gateway watched after every update on either side. Support in Italian and English, by phone. A new employee trained when the old one leaves.

Limits

When this is not for you

  • If you make a catalogue product with fixed prices, a standard configurator or your ERP’s quoting module is cheaper.
  • If your quotes are three lines with no drawing, Excel is fine.
  • If you need a full ERP replacement, that is a different project and a different supplier.

Pricing

How pricing works

Three parts, always.

  1. 01

    A pilot with a fixed price

    One pain, 3–4 weeks, a result you can measure.

  2. 02

    A build with a fixed estimate

    Which can be spread over 6–12 months.

  3. 03

    A monthly fee that keeps the system running

    Hosting, current prices and catalogues, working integrations, support, small changes.

Numbers come after the first call, in writing. More on pricing in the FAQ

Questions

Questions about this

  • Does the AI read every drawing correctly?

    No, and we do not promise a percentage. It produces a draft bill of materials from PDF and DWG; the engineer checks it and decides how much to trust. The usual gain is a couple of hours instead of a week.

  • Can it run on our own server?

    Yes. The switchgear system runs on the client’s Ubuntu server. In that case the monthly fee covers price-list updates, drawing reading through our API and support rather than hosting.

  • Will it work with our gestionale / ERP?

    If it has an API or an export, yes. We have connected quoting to client CRMs through data export; we ask what you run on the first call.

  • How long until the first quote comes out of the system?

    In the pilot, 3–4 weeks from the call, for one product family.

  • Is the interface in Italian?

    In whatever language your staff work in; quotes can go out in your customer’s language.

Related

Often needed alongside

Contact

Tell us what is missing.

Thirty minutes, in English or Italian. You describe the process; we ask questions. We reply within one working day.

Book a 30-minute call
Response time
We answer within one working day.
How we work
A small team based in Italy, working with companies across Europe in the EU time zone. We visit production sites when a project needs it; the rest runs online.