- Why now
- When we shared our work on automation, the CEO named expedite quoting: the highest ongoing email pain, a real opportunity, and very hard to manage.
- Who uses it
- Bought by the CEO. Used every day by the head of expedite pricing and the estimators who quote alongside them.
- The problem
- About 1,500 expedite emails a week arrived unthreaded from 13 load boards. Three estimators read every one, most out of scope, to quote about 90.
- What we did
- We built an agent that reads every request, from email, portal or PDF, filters out what is out of scope, and alerts estimators by WhatsApp to the best fits.
- The decision it changed
- Where estimator time goes. People now start from about 300 in-scope jobs a week, and the 140 or so that fit the available trucks and lanes come to them.
- What changed
- By the pilot's fourth week average quote response was 1 hour 22 minutes, down from 3–4 hours, and 17 of 25 quoted jobs were won. Measured on the board.
How a request gets quoted
- ~1,500
- Emails a week, unthreaded, every one read by a person before
- ~300
- In-scope requests a week the agent puts on the board
- ~140
- High-priority jobs a week sent to estimators by WhatsApp
- Done by a person
- Done by the agent
Before
People read about 1,500 emails a week to quote about 90, roughly seventeen read for every one priced.
~19 h a weekJust opening email: 1,500 × ~45 s, before anything is priced
~1,500 emails a week
Unthreaded, from 13 load boards and shipper portals
Every one read by a person
Most are out of scope: the wrong lane or the wrong load
Opened one by one
Then the portal or PDF, for pallets, weight and size
About 90 quoted
Whatever the team could reach that week
Good loads missed
In-scope requests buried in out-of-scope email
After
Out-of-scope email never reaches a person. Estimators start from about 300 jobs, and the best 140 come to them.
≤ 4 h a weekReviewing at most 300 in-scope requests at ~45 s; full attention on the ~140 high priority
The same ~1,500 a week
The same 13 load boards and portals
Reads and filters all of it
Email, portal and PDF; out-of-scope requests stop here
~300 in scope, on one board
Pallets, weight and size already filled in
~140 WhatsApp alerts
Loads that fit the available trucks and lanes
Estimator prices it
Inline on the board; a win email closes it
~160 stay on the board
Sorted by time; lost and declined drop out
Priced as time allows
From the same board, no inbox needed
More of the work
Senior care technology
Scaling software agility
- Took over a failed consultancy migration
- Platform now scales with demand
Expense management
Scaling leadership
- Fractional CTO and dev team, immediately
- Unstable platform stabilised
Legal services
Mitigating key-person risk
- Took full ownership of the legacy system
- Key-person risk removed, no rewrite
Where are you standing?
Owners
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David, Victor or TobyOperators
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Michael, John, Justin, Steven or David
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