The next step became 72 more orders.

The challenge

The quote went out. The work was not finished.

Customers relied on the distributor for the right component or a configured package that fit an approved application. A quote could bring together the customer’s requirements, several supplier responses, an engineer’s review and the commercial terms needed to make the order worthwhile. Issuing that quote did not end the coordination. A supplier still owed a lead time. The customer asked about an alternative. A revised document needed to reach the right person. An agreed follow up date arrived while the inside sales team was working on the next request. Six people carried the selected quote queue. They knew the accounts and the products, but too much of their day went into reconstructing the conversation before they could move it forward. The owner wanted to win more suitable work from the quotes the business was already producing, without putting the correct specification, margin or delivery commitment at risk.

The system

Start with the next action on an open quote.

Struq began with a defined group of valid issued quotes, clear owners and agreed follow up dates. It checked what the existing software could already do, identified the coordination still passing between people and connected the records needed for that operation. The workflow brought the current quote, customer conversation, relevant history and unresolved questions into view. A routine follow up could go out under the agreed permission; a new reply, expired quote or changed requirement stopped the routine sequence and returned the work to the right path. When a supplier answer was missing, the request named the unresolved detail. When a customer asked for a substitute, the proposed change and source documents reached the applications engineer. Commercial exceptions went to the authorized owner, and a tentative lead time never became a delivery promise without the business’s approval. After technical and commercial approval, the order information reached operations with the correct revision attached. Moving that packet was a coordination step. It did not release an order or approve an assembly.

The result

Six more orders from the same quote volume.

The measured queue held at 200 eligible quote opportunities per month. At the 40% baseline win rate, 80 became orders and 120 did not within the observation window. Winning 5% of the quotes that had not closed added six orders per monthly cohort, moving the overall win rate to 43%. Across twelve cohorts, the difference was 72 additional orders. At $12,500 in net realized revenue and $10,000 in direct cost per added order, those orders produced $900,000 in additional revenue and $180,000 in additional gross profit after fulfillment and adjustments. Additional operating and system costs sit outside that figure. The inside sales team’s coordination time for the defined tasks moved from 240 to 144 hours per month, 96 hours released for selling, account attention and exceptions. That time was tracked separately and was not added to the financial result as payroll savings.

The owner’s experience

Why the scope expanded

The first scope made due follow ups and unresolved customer questions easier to manage. Expansion depended on accurate records, staff use, reliable permissions and evidence that the work was useful. Missing supplier answers were a natural next scope because they often decided whether the customer could make a decision; the handoff of already approved order details into operations followed, where the same discipline around current records and ownership mattered. Each addition kept its own boundaries: technical review stayed with engineering, commercial commitments with authorized staff, and more orders still required enough supply and delivery capacity. Agreed repeat order conversations remain a separate opportunity, measured without counting an order already included here.

How we measured it

The result starts with 200 eligible quotes per month and a 40% baseline win rate, leaving 120 quotes not won per monthly cohort. Winning 5% of that pool adds six orders and moves the overall win rate from 40% to 43%. Twelve comparable cohorts produce 72 additional orders, each contributing $2,500 in realized gross profit after applicable direct costs. The $180,000 belongs to those orders after fulfillment and adjustments; it is not automatically profit realized within one calendar year.

Financial basis

Realized gross profit

Period

Twelve monthly quote cohorts, followed through close and financial maturation