Swati Srivastava
Decision
Define clear ownership across the commercial workflow
Trade-off
Sales initiated RFQs, Pricing reviewed pricing information, Support prepared Quotes and Sales managed customer-facing review.
← All case studies
Manufacturing & Climate Technologies
Transforming the RFQ-to-Quote Lifecycle
A global manufacturing business needed clearer ownership, review controls, status visibility and exception handling across its RFQ-to-Quote workflow.
My contribution: functional consulting, requirements and lifecycle definition, with cross-functional delivery coordination.
- RoleSenior Salesforce Functional Consultant · Business Analyst
- CollaborationCross-functionalGroups shown below are a role map
- PlatformSalesforce Sales Cloud
- StatusContributedContribution described below
The business challenge
A global manufacturing business needed clearer ownership, review controls, status visibility and exception handling across its RFQ-to-Quote workflow.
My contribution
- Facilitated discovery with commercial stakeholders and delivery teams.
- Mapped RFQ and Quote lifecycles, role ownership and handoffs.
- Documented business rules, user stories and acceptance criteria.
- Clarified line-item mapping, pricing fields and quotation PDF content.
- Reviewed permissions, validations and approval scenarios.
- Supported sprint demos, training feedback, scope decisions and QA.
The stakeholder perspectives
The problem
Hover or tap a group to see what it needed.
- Sales: A quote journey with clear review steps and ownership.
- Pricing: A defined Pricing Review step before a quote is prepared.
- Support: Clear statuses and role handoffs across the process.
- Customers (communications): A quote PDF with the right columns: customer part numbers, minimum release quantity and sales price.
- QA: Defined states and approval behaviour to test against.
- Solution team: Decisions on sync, permissions and list views.
Decisions
Decisions & trade-offs
- Decision
Choose a practical MVP
Trade-off
Quote creation remained manual; RFQ and Quote line items were not automatically synchronised.
- Decision
Clarify controlled approvals and exceptions
Trade-off
Single-approver behaviour, pending-submission protection, rejection, resubmission and expired-Quote rules needed explicit decisions.
- Decision
Evaluate evolving scope deliberately
Trade-off
Later Pricing Review and usability requests were reviewed for impact and phasing.
The solution workflow
RFQ and Quote lifecycle
Follow the teal token along the RFQ track, across the manual hand-off, then through the Quote states. Dashed chips are exits: Cancelled, Rejected and Expired.
RFQ states in order: Draft, Ready for Pricing Review, In Pricing Review, Ready for Quote, Quote in Progress, Accepted. Cancelled is an exit. The quote is created manually from the RFQ. Quote states in order: Draft, In Sales Review, Submitted for Approval, Approved, Sent to Customer, Completed. Rejected, Cancelled and Expired are exits. A single approver handles approval in the MVP, and an expired quote returns to In Sales Review.
Solution approach
The design mapped RFQ initiation, pricing review, Quote preparation, Sales review, optional approval, customer communication and closure, with role-specific responsibilities and supporting rules.
- Discover
- Map the commercial workflow and stakeholder needs.
- Define
- Specify role ownership, states and business rules.
- Validate
- Review permissions, approvals, QA and training feedback.
- Coordinate
- Support sprint demos and scope decisions.
Business value & evidence
My contribution helped establish a clearer commercial workflow with visible handoffs, consistent decisions and more precise alignment between business stakeholders and Salesforce delivery teams.
Historical narrative reconstructed from supplied portfolio material. Role boundaries, disclosure permission and source records require confirmation before publication. No independently audited results are implied.
Reported in source material
- My contribution helped establish a clearer commercial workflow with visible handoffs, consistent decisions and more precise alignment between business stakeholders and Salesforce delivery teams.
Pending
No invented metrics
- Individual contribution and sensitive functional detail remain subject to publication review.
- No additional percentages, ROI, adoption or deployment metrics are claimed.
AI reimagined
Future-State ConceptIntelligent RFQ Assistant
Inputs
RFQCataloguePricing policyPast quotes
Assistant
Drafts brief
Outputs
Missing fieldsSimilar casesPricing brief
Controls
Human approval · cited sources · audit
- An intelligent RFQ assistant could identify missing information, retrieve approved historical quotation context, flag anomalies and prepare review summaries.
- Pricing decisions and commercial commitments would remain under authorised human control.
Conceptual enhancement only. Not a claim of AI functionality deployed in the original engagement.
Context, contribution & lessons
The operating constraints behind the decisions, and what I would carry into the next engagement.
Context
The design mapped RFQ initiation, pricing review, Quote preparation, Sales review, optional approval, customer communication and closure, with role-specific responsibilities and supporting rules.
Challenge & constraints
A global manufacturing business needed clearer ownership, review controls, status visibility and exception handling across its RFQ-to-Quote workflow.
- Sales initiated RFQs, Pricing reviewed pricing information, Support prepared Quotes and Sales managed customer-facing review.
- Quote creation remained manual; RFQ and Quote line items were not automatically synchronised.
- Single-approver behaviour, pending-submission protection, rejection, resubmission and expired-Quote rules needed explicit decisions.
- Later Pricing Review and usability requests were reviewed for impact and phasing.
What I did
- Facilitated discovery with commercial stakeholders and delivery teams.
- Mapped RFQ and Quote lifecycles, role ownership and handoffs.
- Documented business rules, user stories and acceptance criteria.
- Clarified line-item mapping, pricing fields and quotation PDF content.
- Reviewed permissions, validations and approval scenarios.
- Supported sprint demos, training feedback, scope decisions and QA.
Lessons
- Define clear ownership across the commercial workflow.
- Choose a practical MVP.
- Clarify controlled approvals and exceptions.
- Evaluate evolving scope deliberately.
Let’s build what’s next
Have a complex enterprise process, Salesforce transformation or AI adoption challenge? Let’s explore the problem, the constraints and the path to delivery.
