Streamline Complex B2B Orders With Quoting Automation

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Manual quoting with Excel, AutoCAD, and endless email chains is a real drag on growth. When every order needs pricing updates, custom inputs, and back-and-forth approvals, complex order management automation becomes a must.

But can you really replace Excel quoting without investing in a costly ERP system?

Chances are, you’ve tried a CPQ or product configurator that felt bloated, rigid, or downright overkill for your sales process. And a fully custom platform? That’s a six-month minimum build with a price tag and risk level to match.

There’s a better way. Drawing from our experience helping companies quote and configure everything — including our client who cut estimate times from 7 days to just 10 minutes — we recommend a modular quoting automation strategy. In this post, we discuss what it is and why it’s worth your attention.

Key Takeaways

• Manual quoting slows momentum. Spreadsheets, drawings, and emails might work for now — but they don’t scale with growing sales.
• Modular beats monolithic. Flexible quoting automation software that matches your workflows outperforms one-size-fits-all platforms every time.
• Quoting automation doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Start with one product line, automate the essentials, and build from there.

Why You’re Stuck Between Buying and Building?

So, should you buy SaaS quoting software or build your own?

It’s a classic dilemma for B2B companies that sell configurable or semi-custom products. Off-the-shelf product ordering tools are fast to deploy, but often fall short when your products don’t fit into standard options. On the other hand, building from scratch comes with lengthy timelines, rising costs, and ongoing maintenance.

Here’s why you may be stuck with the decision in particular:

• SaaS tools don’t handle real-world quoting rules. Instead, they’re built for standard SKUs. What about layout-dependent pricing, location-specific regulations, and custom dimensions? This often gets overlooked.
• Custom development takes time, money, and a leap of faith. Even with solid specs, requirements change over time. Scope grows, delays happen, and ROI is hard to prove upfront.
• Sales get stuck in inboxes and spreadsheets. Without an automated order management system, sales reps have to compile pricing data, double-check quotes, and configure orders manually.
• Scaling becomes painful. As order volume grows, so do the bottlenecks — more errors, longer delays, and frustrated teams.

We’ve seen these bottlenecks in real life. One of our clients, for example, used to spend an entire week generating a single quote. By switching to modular, automated quoting with Teamvoy, their sales team now simply enters the measurements in an admin panel and gets a full quote in less than ten minutes.

What Is the Advantage of Using a Modular System?

Most businesses don’t need a bulky, all-in-one quoting platform to get results. What they need is a smarter approach — a modular, focused commercial quoting automation system that handles quoting, drawing, and pricing tasks only where and when you need it.

Opting for modular means building only the necessities and adding components as your sales process expands. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Module	How It Works	How It Scales	How It Scales How We Did It in Our Web-Based 3D Configurator
Admin Panel	Central interface for managing product catalogs, rules, pricing logic, and customer data	Extends with new user roles and dashboards	Our “live block calculations” feature serves as an admin dashboard, ensuring transparent planning and showing accurate pricing
Price Calculator	Automates price generation based on inputs such as dimensions, materials, location	Scales by adding regional pricing rules, bulk discount logic, or multi-currency support	Our “instant quotes” feature calculates costs instantly based on selected product blocks and “automated invoicing” generates invoices based on finalized orders
3D Product Model	Visual builder for modular, custom, or semi-custom products, offering drag-and-drop elements for a real-time design view	Expands with new component libraries, animations, or mobile support	Our “visual design builder” feature lets customers create modular structures by choosing blocks and elements from a predefined library with a full 3D preview
CRM/ERP Sync	Sends customer and order data to your CRM/ERP	Scales by adding reporting, financial forecasting, and marketing tools	Our web-based 3D configurator is integrated with Sendinblue (CRM) and NetSuite (ERP) for optimized workflows

This modular architecture allowed our client to roll out custom product quote automation that serves both their internal team and end customers — all without the costly maintenance, support, and update hustle. Each piece was built to be functional on its own, yet powerful when connected. That’s the impact of thoughtful retail technology consulting.

Must-Have Features of B2B Product Ordering System

Regardless of whether you’re quoting modular walls, outdoor fixtures, or furniture, order processing automation is the difference between efficiency and falling behind. If you’re considering B2B automated quoting, here are the features to look for:

• Admin panel or mobile quoting tool. To generate quotes instantly, you need a clean admin panel or its mobile-friendly version. Using either of these, you can enter data quickly, select products, and get estimates right away.
• Logic engine for complex block/item counts and pricing rules. Sales quote management is way more than pulling prices from a spreadsheet. You also need a logic engine that understands minimum order thresholds, grouped item rules, volume discounts, and so on.
• Microservice architecture for integrations. Your product ordering software should smoothly integrate with other tools. And that’s absolutely possible with a modular backend. It makes it easy to connect to such tools as QuickBooks for invoicing, Revit for drawings, Stripe for payments, or your CRM/ERP.
• White-label UI for dealers or multiple markets. If you work with partners or serve different regions, you may need a customizable front-end. A white-label UI lets you give each partner or market a tailored experience without rebuilding your backend.

Real Example: Faster Sales Without the Bloat

Let’s take a look at how modular quoting software helped one of our clients automate order processing without resorting to a bulky CPQ platform.

Our client is a manufacturer of custom flood control systems. Every system they sell is made to order, and quoting depends on detailed, site-specific measurements. This meant lengthy back-and-forth with customers, manual data entry, and dealing with subcontractors for CAD drawings. Quotes could take up to seven days to deliver.

Their goal? To automate their entire quoting process and optimize the solution for mobile.

Here’s what Teamvoy delivered:

• Quote estimation. Field reps enter measurements into the admin, the automated order processing app calculates a quote instantly. It also integrates with QuickBooks for further eCommerce order automation.
• Auto-generated CAD drawings. A microservice connected to Autodesk Revit generates technical drawings on demand.
• Invoicing and payments. Once a quote is approved, the app generates an invoice with Stripe-powered payment links embedded.
• Automated communication. The automated order fulfillment system sends out PDFs with quotes, drawings, and invoices automatically via email.
• Mobile-optimized experience. Whether in the field or on the road, reps can quote and send CADs right from their phones or tablets.
• White-label support. The quoting app was built to scale, allowing our client to offer it to partners under different brand identities.

The results? You already know them. We made it possible to generate quotes in under ten minutes, instead of seven days. But that’s not all. Our quoting automation solution also cut reliance on external CAD subcontractors and brought quoting, invoicing, and payments into one unified workflow.

How Can You Start Quoting Automation Without a Full Platform?

One of the biggest misconceptions about quoting automation and order processing in supply chain management is that you need to build a full platform from scratch. You don’t.
In fact, the most successful projects start small and scale over time. Here’s how we recommend doing it:

• Start with a single product line or dealer channel. You don’t need to automate your entire catalog at once. Instead, choose one product line or distributor channel where quoting delays are most problematic.
• Build minimal quoting logic first. Focus on the essentials: basic inputs, core pricing rules, and quote generation. Once that works properly, you can expand logic to trickier cases such as tiered pricing or bulk discounts.
• Add integrations once core automation is stable. Make sure your quoting automation is a success. Then, layer in payments, CRM sync, CMS product ordering, or even 3D visualization tools.

“We’ve helped companies go from messy spreadsheets to fully automated quoting with ease. How? We focus on each client’s sales process and come up with future-ready solutions — 3D visualizations, logic-based pricing engines, CRM and ERP integrations, you name it.” — Teamvoy Technology Modernization Team.

Want to learn more about how to approach automation in phases? Our IT modernization services help businesses update their quoting, ordering, and backend workflows, without a huge rebuild.

Conclusion

You don’t need an all-in-one platform to fix your quoting problems. And you definitely don’t need a six-month custom build. A modular quoting engine that matches your real workflows is key.

By starting small and building smart, you can benefit from:

• Faster, more accurate quoting.
• Automation that grows with your sales.
• Lower risk and faster time to value.

We’ve seen how the right approach can cut quoting time from days to minutes — and simplify even the most complex product configurations with 3D visualizations.