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Quote Pipeline
Every quote with its revision, status, account manager, customer, machine and control, grouped, filtered and exported however the sales team need
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Eleven-Step Quote Builder
Customer, letter, machine, standard equipment, optional and additional equipment, turnkey, payment terms and delivery, with the standard equipment drawn from the model and its control
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Machine Catalogue
Models, controls, imagery and technical-specification pages held centrally, ready to drop into any quotation
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Proposal PDFs
15–20 page machine tool proposals compiled automatically from the quote: cover, specification, equipment, pricing and terms
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Pricing & Currency
Prices in pounds, euros or US dollars, each tied to the exchange rate it was set at, with landed cost and profit worked out per quote
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Win/Loss Tracking
Quotes won and lost by month, manufacturer and salesperson, with the final agreed price required before a quote can be marked as won
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Order Processing
A won quote becomes an order that moves through cross-check, approval, manufacturer PO, machine arrival, pre-delivery inspection and completion, with parts, ETAs and deposits tracked on the way
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Order Pack
The sales order form, bill of materials, manufacturer PO, pre-commissioning letter and inspection report generated from the order in one click
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Online Order Acknowledgement
The customer receives a secure link, reviews the acknowledgement and signs it online; the signed PDF and its audit trail land back on the order
Precision Engineering Machinery
Dugard
Quotation, Order Processing & Online Signing — Dugard One
- 15–20
- Page proposals, compiled automatically
- 6
- Order stages, cross-check to completion
- 3
- Currencies, each at its own exchange rate
Before and after
What changed
Before
Dugard supplies CNC machine tools — lathes, vertical and horizontal machining centres — to engineering firms across the UK, sold by area sales managers out in the field. Every quotation was built in Excel: the machine, its control, the standard and optional equipment, the pricing in whatever currency the manufacturer billed in, and the terms. It worked, but it gave head office no real-time view of what was being quoted, and it did not scale with the business. When a quote was won, the order acknowledgement the customer signs was assembled by hand in another spreadsheet.
After
A bespoke Windows application, now called Dugard One, on Azure SQL with machine imagery and specification pages on Azure Blob Storage. A quote is built in eleven steps and compiles itself into a finished machine tool proposal; a won quote becomes an order without being retyped; and the order carries the machine from cross-check to completion, generating its own paperwork on the way. The customer signs the order acknowledgement online, through a signing portal on Dugard's own domain. Updates reach every installed copy automatically, and the system has been extended continuously since it went live.
Inside the system
The parts that do the work
Results
What it did for them
Replaced the Excel quotation workbook across the field sales team
Proposal documents of 15–20 pages compiled automatically, with the specification pages for the exact machine and control
Head office sees every quote as it is built, and win rates by month, manufacturer and salesperson
- A won quote becomes an order without retyping, and the order is tracked through six stages from cross-check to completion
- The order acknowledgement, once put together by hand in Excel, is generated from the order and signed online by the customer
- Machine prices held in three currencies, each tied to the exchange rate it was set at, so a stale price shows up as stale
- Updates reach every installed copy automatically, and errors are reported to SWF Consultancy before anyone has to phone
Next step
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