How an architectural metalwork company
built a buying team without hiring one

For years, jobs went to the same few suppliers. That was the system. When bigger projects came in, the team had started asking other suppliers to quote, but all of it was manual. They drafted requests, chased replies, and compared offers in a spreadsheet nobody else could read. Most jobs never got that comparison. Savings they'd been leaving on the table.

We set out to fix that: a real quote comparison on every job that's worth one, without hiring anyone new. The target is a clear cut in procurement spend.

The pain

A small ops team. Hundreds of jobs a year. One way to source: call the regular suppliers. When they tried to widen the net, the quote work didn't fit anywhere. Quotes lived in inboxes and in the head of the buyer.

What we built

A working map of the supplier base. On one side, the structured data: last prices, days to fulfilment, historical cost. On the other, the parts that don't show up in a spreadsheet. Who they liked working with and why. Where the quality issues had been. Which engineer at which supplier actually picks up the phone. Everything the team carried in their heads, sitting next to the numbers, in one place that stays when people leave and gets better every time a new quote runs.

On top of that map, a quote workflow that takes a job from start to finish. It drafts and sends requests, chases responses, finds new suppliers when the regular list isn't enough, and comes back with a recommendation. The team approves and the quote goes out. It runs in the channel the team already uses, so there's nothing new to learn.

The shift

Each quote takes less time. The team can now run a real comparison on more jobs and pick the supplier that fits the job: sometimes cheapest, sometimes fastest, sometimes the one they trust on a tricky part. On the price-led jobs, savings are showing up on the procurement bill. The map gets richer with every quote. The work doesn't grow with it.

The AI implementation partner for Europe's industrial backbone.

anora.labs

One workflow. One call. One answer. Whiteboard the workflow your ERP can't hold. We come back with a pilot scope or tell you it's not for us.

Book a scoping call

The AI implementation partner
for Europe's industrial backbone.

One workflow. One call. One answer.
Whiteboard the workflow your ERP can't hold.
We come back with a pilot scope or tell you it's not for us.