Smarter Quotes From A Smarter Engine

The Challenge

ProtectaPet sells cat-proof fencing for gardens. No two gardens are the same, so for every enquiry the sales team has to estimate the boundary the cat barriers will run along.

Each fence section can be a different height with different post spacing and number of corners, and how one section transitions to the next has to be considered, along with allowances for gates and sheds. From this, the sales team builds a full list of component assemblies for each section, taking into account how each section joins together.

Quotes are revisited often, and that was the problem. There was no easy way to verify how the assemblies on an earlier quote had been calculated, so amending one was slow and prone to error. As well as quotes taking time, the inaccuracies cost time and money, and occasionally lost the order.

Our Approach

We worked with ProtectaPet's directors to formalise the transition rules their sales team had been applying by hand.

Transition rules

Those rules were complicated, so we narrowed the problem. Rather than weigh up the whole boundary at once, we built an engine that only ever considers how the current fence section connects to the previous section. We defined a matrix of fence heights and, for each combination, set which assemblies that transition needs. The sales team no longer has to make that decision for every section.

A form for each fence section

To capture the detail of each section, we built a multi-step form for its height, length, corner count and post spacing. The sales team can reorder the sections, and the quote engine then selects the correct transition rule for each one automatically.

Assemblies costed from live stock

ProtectaPet's management define the contents of each assembly so a quote can be costed. The engine looks up the correct assembly from properties such as height and assembly type. Each assembly is a list of components such as brackets, mesh, screws and labour, synced from Unleashed, the company's stock inventory system, along with their prices. Keeping the components loosely coupled to the assembly means an assembly's makeup can easily be changed over time as the designs improve.

Because both the components and their prices change over time, the system snapshots the full inventory at the moment a customer accepts their quote. That snapshot is then used for order fulfilment further down the line.

The Results

Quotes are now calculated twice as fast and are more accurate.

The complex decisions about assemblies and transitions sit within the quote engine rather than with the sales team, so quotes are quicker to produce and more accurate. Assemblies and their components are easy to break down and check, and because the inventory is saved when the customer accepts, the same quote carries through to order fulfilment.