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Quotes you can inspect: how the workflow works
Short answer
Quoting a request for quotation with AI involves no guessing when the data schema allows only two results for a line: priced with evidence, or passed on for a decision with no price field. Known lines get a price from a precedent or a rule, and unusual machining goes to the process engineer with a specific question. At Syntalith an automation costs from €3,000 net. At 200 RFQs a month of 45 minutes each, it pays back in 0.8 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- analysis with an engineer and a free prototype
- €0
- team in ChatGPT or Claude, up to 10 people
- from €1,150
- automation, agent or application for one process
- from €3,000
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
Quoting and AI: statistics 2026
0.8 mo.
payback of a €3,000 automation at 200 RFQs a month: €5,235 of work today, €1,579 with checking and the model. Scenario.
150
According to the Syntalith demonstrator (2026), the quoting list holds 150 synthetic requests for quotation that can be worked through one by one.
60
According to the Syntalith demonstrator (2026), the archived evaluation of the quoting covered 60 lines of three kinds: with a precedent, with a rule and with no basis for a price.
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU enterprises with at least 10 employees used AI.
55.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 55.0% of large EU enterprises with 250 or more employees used AI.
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
Two lines ready, the third waits for the process engineer
The request covers familiar sheet cutting, a standard operation and unusual machining. Two lines can be priced from existing rules, and the third needs a process engineer. Each line has its own quantity, material and operation and passes its own check, so one gap does not get lost inside a finished total.
In our demonstrator, request ZO/26/0620 is for 120 bushings. Five lines have a calculated cost, nitriding is left without a rate, and an 18% mark-up gives a partial amount. Expanding a line shows the missing basis and the person who decides, and exporting the offer is blocked until the decision. The list lets you go through all 150 requests.
- 01Linequantity, material and operation kept separate
- 02Pricedthe amount and evidence of the precedent or rule type
- 03For decisionthe reason and the data needed, with no price field
- 04Totalcounted only from priced lines
- 05Exportblocked while a line waits for a decision
- An archived evaluation of 60 lines: precedent, rule and no basis
- Synthetic prices and rules, small sets defined in code
- A price's source does not confirm that it is current or profitable
- The demonstrator does not publish offers and does not connect to company systems
What it costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 200 RFQs × 45 min = 150 h (€5,235)
- With the system, a person checks the output in 30% of the time
- €1,571
- Model, 2 calls per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €8
- Cost of one case
- €26.18 today, €7.89 with the system
- Saving
- €3,656 a month
Payback of €3,000
0.8 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 6,000 input tokens and 1,000 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and handing over. What remains is the time to check the result, 30% of today's work in the scenario. Before the quote, we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases the team has already handled, in a free test that takes 5 working days.
The count keeps 30% of today's work, because some lines always go to the process engineer, and a salesperson checks every offer before it is sent.
A data type in place of an instruction in the prompt
The instruction „do not guess the price” in a prompt usually works. A data schema always works: a line passed on for a decision has no price field, so an amount has nowhere to appear. This separation lets you reject an incomplete result before the total is shown. Anthropic, in its guide to evaluating agents, tells an agent's answer apart from the outcome recorded in the environment. Here the outcome is the record of a line with its status. A good pilot also includes requests that must never be priced automatically: a material, machining or tolerance outside the approved range.
Repeated lines from the price list
rules in a spreadsheet or a quoting system
no AI
Requests in different formats, some lines known
pricing from precedents and rules, the rest for decision
from €3,000
Many unusual machining jobs
a queue of questions for the process engineer with sources
priced after the analysis
Where to start
The first trial covers requests from the last quarter together with the offer the salesperson sent. To prepare: price sources with versions, rules for operations and a list of machining jobs that always go to the process engineer. We build this kind of rollout as part of AI automations. For the free analysis, a description of one case from recent weeks and of the tools it passed through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: quoting
We run the same count for your requests for quotation in the free analysis.
€2,094
a month for preparing 120 quotes from customer enquiries by hand
Payback: 1.7 mo.
30 minutes per quote from an enquiry and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 4,000 + 1,500 tokens per draft quote, at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026. The extra margin is a scenario: we assume that 1 in 40 enquiries quoted the same day ends in an order that a slow reply loses today, with a margin of €344. In the review we count it on your sales process.
See the full calculation →
