Sales teams in manufacturing operate across highly coordinated workflows. Every quote, order, and follow-up requires extracting data from ERP systems, validating commercial and technical details, managing supplier and customer communication, and ensuring accurate, timely updates.
In many organisations, these processes remain manual, fragmented, and time-intensive.
From parsing RFQs to validating contracts and tracking order statuses, sales teams often spend a significant portion of their time managing operational tasks rather than driving revenue. The result is a revenue-efficiency gap – where growth is constrained not by demand, but by the ability to respond, execute, and scale sales operations effectively.
The Reality of Sales Workflows Today
A typical sales process in manufacturing looks like this:
- Receive customer request (often via email, PDF, or portal)
- Match request to ERP data
- Build and price the quote
- Send quotation and follow up
- Validate contracts and confirm orders
- Track inventory and coordinate with suppliers
- Monitor orders and identify new opportunities
Each step involves switching systems, chasing information, and manually updating records. It’s slow, error-prone, and hard to scale.
Introducing the Sales Champion
The Sales Champion, part of QAD’s agentic AI suite, is purpose-built for manufacturing sales workflows. It sits across your systems and inbox, managing the end-to-end sales cycle on your behalf – from RFQ intake to order fulfilment.
Instead of acting as a passive tool, it takes action. It’s designed to eliminate repetitive, transactional work so your team can focus on closing deals.
What Jobs the Sales Champion Completes
Here’s how the Sales Champion supports your team day-to-day:
| Capability | What It Does |
|---|---|
| RFQ Structuring & Contract Review | Parses inbound RFQs (email, PDF, Excel, portals) and validates specs, quantities, delivery terms, and compliance before quoting |
| Quote Generation | Generates quotes using historical win rates, margin targets, and pricing logic |
| Order Acceptance & Contract Validation | Validates PO details, flags mismatches, and updates ERP automatically |
| AI Price & Part Recommendations | Suggests optimal pricing and alternative parts based on history, margins, demand, and availability |
| Follow-ups & Reminders | Tracks quote expiry, chases customers, and sends confirmations and delivery updates |
| Two-Way ERP Sync | Syncs order status and updates with ERP/MRP systems in real time |
| Proactive Selling Alerts | Identifies high-value opportunities and flags customers to engage |
| Data-Backed Reporting | Enables natural-language queries for fast insights on orders, customers, and sales trends |
The Business Impact
The Sales Champion directly improves how fast and effectively your team sells. With it in place, sales teams can:
- Respond instantly to every RFQ: No delays, no missed opportunities. RFQs are parsed, structured, and turned into quotes immediately, helping teams increase sales throughput by up to 40%.
- Eliminate missed follow-ups: Automated follow-ups and real-time updates mean fewer dropped deals and less order friction. Every opportunity is tracked, chased, and progressed without manual effort.
- Protect margins with intelligent pricing: Pricing recommendations are based on historical sales, deal context, customer value, and market signals – ensuring quotes are competitive and profitable.
- Increase revenue without adding headcount: By removing admin across quoting, order processing, and customer updates, teams can handle more volume without scaling costs.
- Ensure critical sales knowledge stays in the business: Pricing logic, customer context, and deal patterns are captured and stored, so new hires ramp faster and your team sells consistently without relying on individual experience.
See It in Action
The Sales Champion is part of QAD’s ChampionAI, a suite of agentic AI solutions designed to execute real workflows within manufacturing systems.
Want to Learn More About Our Sales Champion?
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