From Email to Quote in an Hour: RFQ Handling for South African Manufacturers

A Request for Quote (RFQ) email lands in your inbox. Before lunch, your competitor has already replied — and the customer has already moved on. Clara changes that by reading every RFQ email, extracting the details, linking past orders, filing drawings, flagging gaps and preparing the quote for an estimator to approve, so the customer hears back the same morning and nothing goes out without sign-off.

If you have ever lost a quote because someone was in a meeting, on the floor or buried under another urgent task, this is for you. Here is how Clara handles RFQ emails from arrival to ready-to-approve — and why that matters for South African manufacturers competing on response time.

What happens when an RFQ email arrives?

When an RFQ email comes in, Clara reads it the way an estimator would — only faster. It identifies the customer, the product or part being quoted, the quantities requested and the required delivery dates. It then structures that information into a draft quote record, ready for a person to review.

This matters because the first step in quoting is usually the slowest: opening the email, reading through it, making sense of what the customer actually wants and typing it into your system. That is admin work, not pricing work. By the time someone gets to it, hours have passed. Clara handles that first step in minutes, so the estimator starts with the information already organised.

How does Clara link past orders and context?

Clara does not treat each RFQ as if it arrived in a vacuum. It links the incoming request to the customer’s previous orders and quote history, so the estimator can see at a glance whether this is a repeat job, a variation on something you have quoted before, or a brand-new enquiry.

For a manufacturer quoting the same or similar parts regularly, this context is valuable. It means the estimator does not have to dig through old emails or folders to find a reference price. The history is already there, attached to the draft quote, which speeds up the approval decision and helps keep pricing consistent across repeat business.

What about drawings and attachments?

Most RFQ emails come with attachments — drawings, specs, sometimes a whole chain of previous correspondence. Clara files those drawings and links them to the correct quote, so nothing gets lost in someone’s inbox or saved to the wrong folder.

The practical benefit is simple: when the estimator opens the prepared quote, the drawing is right there. They do not need to go hunting for it. That removes a small but common friction point that slows quoting down and occasionally leads to quoting the wrong revision of a part.

How does Clara flag missing details?

An RFQ is only useful if it is complete. Clara checks the email for the information needed to quote — quantities, material specs, delivery dates, tolerance requirements — and flags anything that is missing or unclear.

Instead of discovering halfway through pricing that the customer forgot to mention a critical dimension, the estimator sees the gaps upfront. They can either request the missing details from the customer immediately or make a note before approval. This prevents quotes going out with assumptions baked in, which leads to rework, disputes or lost margin later.

Does anything go to the customer without approval?

No. Clara prepares the quote, but a human estimator approves it before anything is sent. This is a deliberate design choice: Clara handles the admin — the reading, extracting, linking, filing and flagging — so the estimator can focus on the part that actually requires their expertise: the pricing decision and the final sign-off.

This means you get speed without losing control. The customer hears back faster, but nothing leaves your business that has not been reviewed by someone who knows the job.

Why does faster RFQ handling matter for manufacturers?

Manufacturers lose quotes to slow admin, not slow pricing. The estimator who can price a job in ten minutes still loses the deal if the email sits unread for three hours. In a market where customers send the same RFQ to multiple suppliers, the first complete, credible response often wins.

Clara’s RFQ handling compresses the time between email arrival and quote preparation from hours to minutes. The estimator still does the pricing. The customer still gets a quote that has been reviewed and approved. The difference is that it happens the same morning, not the next afternoon.

Closing

Responding to RFQs quickly is one of the simplest ways to win more work — and most manufacturers lose time on admin, not on the actual pricing. Clara reads the email, extracts the details, links the history, files the drawings, flags the gaps and hands a prepared quote to your estimator to approve. Nothing goes out without sign-off, but nothing sits waiting for someone to open their inbox either.

If you want to see how Clara handles your own RFQ emails, get in touch with our team and we will walk you through it with a real example.