Inquiry management in the construction industry with ORBIS

The daily flood of inquiries received through a wide variety of channels and with a range of file formats poses a significant challenge for inquiry management. Retailers, manufacturers, and suppliers receive up to 7,000 tenders and bills of quantities, monthly from developers and planners. These RFQs can be hundreds of pages long and often contain more than a thousand items. In addition, there are media disruptions in the RFQ process, as not all parties involved in construction use GAEB or ÖNORM as the standard data format for data exchange. As a result, companies also have to deal with various formats such as continuous text from emails or PDFs in the RFQ process. This entails a lot of valuable time being lost in the quotation process. Does this sound familiar?

What does RFQ stand for?
The term RFQ is the abbreviation Request for Quotation and is a central component of a tender. For a detailed description of requirements, a service description including a bill of quantities is requested with construction costs that are as precise as possible but generally non-binding.

What does GAEB mean?
GAEB files are used to exchange digital information on the construction project. Data exchange via the GAEB format ensures secure project documentation and the content of the files can be read and edited by both the client and the bidder or potential contractor. Our solution covers the GAEB DA XML, GAEB 2000 and GAEB 90 versions.

What is ÖNORM?
ÖNORM is an Austrian standard that regulates, among other things, the structure of bills of quantities. Standards such as ÖNORM B 2063 ensure uniform structures, clear service descriptions and transparent award procedures, making it easier to compare bids and manage projects. ÖNORM also defines standardized data exchange formats, which our solution fully supports.

The graphic below shows the structure of the typical bidding process. For the contractor, this begins with the planning of the construction projects, including planners, architects and investors. The first step is to draw up a bill of quantities to fully record the services as individual items and to precisely describe the construction work of all trades. The tendering process is then carried out on this basis. During the next process step, the GAEB data exchange of the BOS data takes place and thus the creation and exchange of many requests and offers until an order is confirmed by the client as a result. Once the contract has been awarded, the process is initiated again for the next project with a potential new customer.

Until now, these tenders could not be automatically assigned to the provider's available products and services as part of RFQ management and involved a lot of manual work. Although the number of employees in the quotation team is constantly growing, so many incoming requests remain unanswered. There is simply a lack of time and resources. Our AI software ORBIS ConstructionRFQ provides efficient relief for your employees. In the following application example, we will show you how electronic data exchange works with our solution!

A construction supplier for sanitary facilities receives a tender for a hotel chain that needs to be responded to. However, such requests often consist of different formats: from emails with simple continuous text or with PDFs attached through to GAEB files. As there is no automated process, the different file formats and the sheer number of RFQs pose a major challenge and an unpleasant task for employees. All service items have to be manually reconciled with the quotation portfolio, sometimes multiple times in different departments of the company.

RFQs sent to different company branches and across countries are another complicating factor. The team needs a huge amount of time to find the characteristics that are identical for duplicate requests or to compare different country-specific prices. The bottom line? If no appropriate software is available for data exchange, the consequence may be the loss of a potential customer.

As shown in the following illustration, your employees can easily import GAEB, ÖNORM or PDF files with ORBIS ConstructionRFQ and don't have to worry about duplicates. This is because the processes in our smart application automatically recognize duplicates and therefore significantly accelerate the process of creating quotations.

The so-called xPlato system from our partner root-nineanalyzes the imported data and displays a list of all required items. These are immediately recognized and highlighted in comparison to the suppliers' product and service catalogs. Successful recognition is based on a directly matching product reference number or product description. The user then accepts the suggestions in one go or individually. The quotation is then sent directly from xPlato and the sales opportunity or project is exported from the interface to the CRM or ERP system.

With the help of processing mechanisms from our partner root-nine and the correspondingly developed logics, we achieve a high degree of automation. Items in the purchasing process are immediately recognized and matched with the product and service catalogs. Thanks to automatic matching, manual searches will be superfluous in future. Time and media disruptions become a thing of the past and quotation inquiries no longer get left behind. Your sales workflow is optimized, the completion rate is increased and your employees have time for more important tasks thanks to the elimination of tedious routine work. ORBIS ConstructionRFQ not only automates your inquiry management, but also makes a significant contribution to customer satisfaction.

Advantage 1: Increased efficiency through digitalization: Construction project tenders are recorded digitally and managed in a standardized way, resulting in high data quality, enormous time savings and competitive advantages.

Advantage 2: Automating and optimizing the quotation process saves time and resources. As a result, you achieve faster and more accurate quotations and a higher completion rate.

Advantage 3: Scanning and indexing bills of quantities (email, PDF and GAEB or ÖNORM) enables optimum content capture of all files and makes data capture by the user superfluous.

Advantage 4: Manual searches are also replaced, as items are automatically recognized and compared with the product and service catalogs. Products that were previously found by the current user or by colleagues are also suggested.

Advantage 5: Duplicates are immediately recognized by the system and actively avoided to prevent duplicate time being spent on the same request.

Advantage 6: There is seamless integration with your CRM or ERP system.

root-nine: Your experts for preparing quotes in the cloud

The cloud-based xPlato work platform from root-nine enables planners, manufacturers and distributors to quickly and easily process tenders and prepare quotations in a central system. All project participants are informed of the current status at all times and can exchange the documents via the cloud platform or in standardized format. This allows you to easily comply with common industry standards and be future-proof.

ORBIS: Your ideal partner for digitalization in the construction industry

In digitalizing the customer journey, we focused on the relevant trends and challenges in the construction industry. Construction companies and construction suppliers are taking the next step towards digital transformation with our pioneering solutions. Our expertise from numerous customer projects as a Microsoft Partner as well as our extensive network in the industry make us your ideal IT partner!

From object identification and customer focus, to digital construction sites and downstream ObjectManagement activities – you gain process expertise and a whole host of solutions from a single source. The following graphic shows you which solutions we use to provide you with comprehensive support. ORBIS ConstructionRFQ starts at the quotation and order phase and offers optimum processing mechanisms as a cloud-based work platform.

Would you like more detailed information? Get in touch and ask our digitalization experts anything you need to know – with no obligation! We will address your specific case individually and show you how you can create the perfect basis for the digitalization of your construction projects with us. Many satisfied customers from various industries are already relying on the smart tools made by ORBIS.