Summary

Business Challenge
Supplier quotes arrived as PDFs, scans, phone photos, spreadsheets, and email text, often across multiple revisions. The purchasing team had to identify the latest version, extract line items, standardize units, and separate product prices from delivery and tax before any comparison could begin.
Price Differences Needed Context
A price gap did not necessarily mean a supplier was charging too much. The team still had to find a current benchmark and judge whether specifications, quantities, availability, lead times, and other terms made the comparison valid.
Reviews Were Difficult to Track
The purchasing team searched purchase history, distributor lists, and retail sites line by line. Exceptions were not consistently ranked by dollar impact, and the evidence behind each decision was difficult to retrieve or compare over time.
What We Did
1
Centralized Quote Intake in Zoho
WiserBrand connected a dedicated Zoho Mail inbox to Zoho Flow and Zoho CRM. A document-extraction service converted incoming quotes into structured records, with benchmark results and match confidence stored in custom CRM modules. Revisions and duplicates remained linked to the same quote history.
2
Applied a Tiered Benchmark Hierarchy
The agent compared each line against the most reliable available source:
- The client’s own purchase history
- Approved distributor price lists
- Current retail pricing as a final sanity check
Retail pricing was not treated as the target purchase price. Each comparison retained its source, link, and timestamp. Product prices were compared before tax and delivery, with those costs recorded separately.
3
Added Product Matching and Confidence Rules
The agent matched products by UPC or SKU where available, then fell back to brand, model, specifications, and material attributes. Units and pack sizes were normalized before any price variance was calculated.
High-confidence matches were compared automatically, while uncertain or incomplete matches were routed for manual review. Category-specific thresholds sorted lines into in range, requires review, or appears inflated.
4
Prioritized Exceptions for Review
Exceptions were ranked by total dollar impact and delivered to the purchasing team with the benchmark, variance, confidence level, and supporting evidence attached.
The agent did not reject quotes, contact suppliers, or approve purchases. The purchasing team confirmed the validity of each comparison and decided whether to approve the quote, request clarification, or negotiate.


