Why quoting eats the estimator
Your estimator is probably the busiest person in the building. The drawings come in by email. Some are clean. Some are a phone photo of a print with notes in the margin. Each one needs material, routing, setups, cycle times, outside processes and a price.
The hardest part of the day is the work they will not win. Every shop quotes jobs that go to someone else. The estimator cannot tell which ones in advance, so they give every RFQ the same care. The good jobs wait in the same pile as the long shots.
The owner feels this on the P&L in two places. Quotes go out late, and late quotes lose. And the knowledge of what a job really costs lives in one or two heads. When that person is out, quoting slows or the margins drift.
The goal is more good quotes out the door, priced the way your best estimator would price them. There are three honest ways to go.
The three options
| Option | What it is | When it fits | When it does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy AI quoting software | A product built to read CAD or drawings and price parts | Your work is mostly standard machined parts that the tool prices well, and you want something running soon | Your pricing depends on customer history, machine load or judgment the tool cannot see |
| Claude on your own process | We capture how your best estimator quotes and build it into your existing email, drive and ERP | Quoting is the bottleneck, the logic lives in people, and you want to own the result | You have no one who quotes well yet, or no past quotes to learn from |
| Do nothing for now | Keep quoting as you do | Volume is low and win rate is fine | Quotes are late and your best estimator is the only one who can do it |
Search results for machine shop quoting today are mostly quoting software products. Many of them are good. If one fits your parts and your people, buy it. We would rather tell you that on the first call than sell you a project you do not need.
Questions to ask before you choose
Ask any vendor, and ask us, the same things.
- Will you run it on 20 of our real past RFQs, including the messy ones, and show us the quotes next to what we actually sent?
- What does it do with a drawing it cannot read? Does it say so, or does it guess?
- Where does the price logic live, and can our estimator change it?
- What happens to our drawings and customer data?
- Who approves a quote before a customer sees it?
- How will we know in 60 days that it worked? Agree the number before you start.
If a tool passes those tests on your own work, you have your answer.
Where Claude on your own process fits
Some shops quote in a way no product will match. The estimator knows that one customer always asks for a tighter tolerance after the PO. They know which jobs fit the open time on the five-axis next month. They know which material substitution the customer will accept. That knowledge is the real asset.
In a Build, we sit with that estimator and watch them quote. We write down how they decide. Then we put Claude to work in your own accounts. It reads the RFQ and the print, pulls similar past jobs, drafts routing and hours from them, and flags what is missing. The estimator reviews, changes what needs changing and sends. Claude drafts. A person decides.
The aim is simple. Every estimator quotes like your best one, and your best one spends their time on the jobs worth winning. Our RFQ to quote guide shows the steps in more detail.
Where we do not fit
We are an Anthropic Partner, so we work with Claude. We are not the right call if a quoting product already does the job for you. We are not the right call if you want software with a vendor support line and a roadmap you do not have to think about. And we are not the right call if your quoting has no owner. Someone in the shop has to care about the result and give us time.
We want to be plain about one thing. We do not have a client in this vertical yet. Our approved proof today comes from insurance work with THG, an independent agency in Wilmington, NC. At THG, an independent insurance agency in Wilmington, NC, comparing 150-page policies went from days to minutes, and a client proposal went from 5 days to 5 minutes. That is insurance, and we say so. The method is the same one we would use here: watch the best person, write down how they decide, and put that in every seat.
How to start
Pull 20 recent RFQs. Include a few you won, a few you lost and a few you never quoted because you ran out of time. Note how long each one took. That list is the test for any option above, ours included.
If you want a second opinion, our free Operating Diagnostic looks at how your team quotes today and tells you which path fits. If the answer is a product, we will say so. You can read more about how we work with shops like yours on our heavy manufacturing page.