It’s not just a handy coincidence that companies have entire departments dedicated to managing quotes and to handling processes involved in material and service acquisition — it makes perfect sense because it’s incredibly complex!
Infraspeak has worked hard to make these processes simpler. We’ll get onto the finer details in a sec, but first, we’ll give you some clues (or rather, apps to try out! 🤭):
- Quote Requests
- Quotes
- Purchases
- Sales
We’ll walk you through each of these apps (Quote Requests, Quotes, Purchases, Sales) to help you get the most of our platform and manage these crucial processes, before providing a more detailed breakdown.
First, let’s cover the main benefits of using Infraspeak to manage your procurement processes 👇
- You don’t need any other software
All you need is Infraspeak to manage your quotes, purchases and sales.
- Everything is centralised and easily accessible
Link operations to any acquired materials or services or to quote requests or quotes, sales and other items!
- Improve interdepartmental communication to avoid email and document back-and-forth
Integrating Infraspeak with invoicing, accounting and ERP software means all data is automatically synchronised.
- Improve your service quality and client satisfaction
You’ll do this in two ways! Firstly, by speeding up your buying and selling processes and secondly, with Infraspeak Direct™ — a reporting interface that will make communication far more efficient.
- Boost the number of valuable contracts and get more business
Infraspeak makes it a lot easier and faster to request, create and compare quotes. And let’s be clear: this is excellent news! If you are an FM or service provider, you’ll find work much faster and so increase your business volume. If you’re looking for vendors, your deals will be better.
- Your business becomes more transparent
Either through native apps like Analytics or with integrations with other software like Power BI, you can analyse team performance and access data on quotes, purchases and sales. By doing this, you’ll gain valuable insight into how efficient and profitable your operations and business are.
Music to your ears? Time to look how Infraspeak makes all this possible.
Quote management shouldn’t be a headache!
Traditional ways of managing quotes (by phone, email or even in person) are slow and tiresome. If you’re providing a quote to someone, you need to check your stock counts, delivery notes and ensure all values you’ve put in the quote are correct. If you’re signing off on a purchase, it’s not much better! You have to put all options on the table and carefully analyse and compare — even thinking about it all is a nightmare!
Infraspeak is the perfect painkiller.
Whether you’re requesting or responding to quotes, it can all be done using Infraspeak’s native apps:
- To ask for a quote from a supplier, use the Quote Request app.
- To send a quote to a potential customer, use the Quotes app.
Once set up on the apps, all you need to do is create a new quote request/quote and click “Send by email” to send it directly to your potential provider or client — without leaving Infraspeak’s platform!
Imagine if you urgently needed to hire a contractor to complete a maintenance task. You can request a quote directly from the work order you’re working on, all from the same app — there’s no need to jump around the platform from one app to another.
Using Infraspeak to prepare a quote request comes with the advantage of having this all directly associated with the relevant work order or planned job order.
When you decide which quote you want to go ahead with, you can convert it into a purchase and centrally store all related information using just one button! This information consists of the associated work order/planned job order, the approved quote and the completed purchase.
Turning a quote request into a purchase
It’s once you have all your proposals from your providers that you send your quote requests.
All proposals are organised and ready for analysis on Infraspeak, and linked to the relevant quote request.
When you want to go ahead with one of the proposals, you can approve it (automatically turning down any other proposals in the process) and click “Convert into Purchase”, to make your choice official — not bad! All of that in just one click.
In the Purchases app, you can finalise details regarding your purchase and easily follow the next steps of your transaction until it’s “closed”.
The quote request, approved quote, purchase and maintenance works involved in the process are all linked and are available for future access, allowing you to carry out more complete analysis.
Remember — you can always use Infraspeak to make a purchase without requesting quotes. As you would for any purchase stemming from a received quote, you can simply add it to the Purchases app and manage it normally.
Turning a quote into a sale
When using the platform to make a sale, after you’ve created and sent your quote using the Quotes app, you can turn it into a sale that your client can then approve. Once again, it’s as simple as clicking “Convert into Sale”.
We’re now able to move from the Quotes app to the Sales app, where you’ll be able to track and manage all processed sales, including any that didn’t stem from a received quote.
With these 4 Infraspeak apps…
If buying, you can:
- Create quote requests and email them directly, without leaving the Infraspeak platform
- Process all received quotes and associate them to the work order or planned job order that they relate to.
- Compare received quotes and sign off on the best proposal.
- Turn the best proposal into a purchase, which you can then manage on Infraspeak.
If selling, you can:
- Use Infraspeak to create and send quotes
- Associate them to existing work orders and planned job orders
- Centralise all of your sent quotes
- Turn the quote which gets approved into a sale, which you can then manage on Infraspeak.
It’s the little things that count!
These apps have some handy tricks up their sleeve which allow you to manage things extra smoothly👇
- Each app has different states which refer to steps in a process — for example, “Draft”, “Approved”, “Archived”. These allow you to follow transactions as they progress.
- You can toggle different filters, on each state in each app to quickly find what you’re looking for.
- Choose which data appears on each status’ summary lists on each app.
- You can add any relevant documents or folders to any item that needs them.
- You can create and send reports — on quote requests, quotes, purchases and sales.
Infraspeak Direct™
Infraspeak Direct™ allows facility owners and managers to create work orders that, in turn, will be immediately synced to the Facility Service Providers Infraspeak interface. But that’s not all! Infraspeak Direct™ also allows quote management.
Whenever you send a quote, your client will receive a notification letting them know, and using Infraspeak Direct™, they’ll be able approve, reject or amend the quote.
This isn’t just a more agile way of communicating with clients, it has a more concrete benefit: it will help you cut the time between approving a quote, meaning you can close the sale faster too!
And for the grand finale… integrations
We’ve maybe saved the best till last! One of the biggest benefits of using Infraspeak to manage your procurement processes is the fact you can integrate your system with several different types of software. This provides flexibility and, crucially, adds extra levels of synchronicity to your interdepartmental operations using these tools.
With ERPs
Having Infraspeak articulate directly with your ERP provides access to more real time data and takes the risk of human error out of the equation when it comes to interpreting this data. You’ll be able to manage your operation effortlessly and more automatically.
Infraspeak supports integrations with: SAGE, SAP, Primavera, Conta Azul, Odoo, PHC and many more.
With invoicing tools
At the end of each sales process, a pre-invoice is automatically generated which covers all services and materials — this speeds up the invoicing process and ultimately, crucially — your payment!
Infraspeak supports integrations with: Xero, Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Zoho Invoice
With data analytics tools
Use these tools to monitor the ins and outs of your company’s transactions and view all relevant operational analytical data. You’ll receive valuable insights that will help you identify spending and profit trends, allowing you to evaluate how your business is truly operating.
Infraspeak supports integrations with: Power BI.
If you’re already using Infraspeak to manage other parts of your maintenance operations, it’s time to start using it to manage procurement too! And if you still aren’t using Infraspeak… well… we’ve provided you with a fair few good reasons to get started, right? 😊
Visit our site and get in touch with us. We’re here to clear up any doubts you might have and we’d love to give you a tour of our awesome Intelligent Maintenance Management Platform!
If you want to stay tuned with all updates on our platforms, subscribe to our product newsletter by clicking here.
