RFQ and tender response
Answer the buyer's line list, not a blank quote.
A tender arrives as 400 lines in the buyer's own words, in the buyer's spreadsheet, due Thursday at noon. Apex imports it as sent, matches each line to your items, prices it from the book in your ERP, and keeps every version until the response goes out.
From invitation to submission
Four steps between the buyer's spreadsheet and your response.
- 01
Import as sent
Upload the buyer's Excel or CSV, or pull the line list from their sourcing portal. Apex keeps their line numbers, units and descriptions exactly as they wrote them.
- 02
Match to your items
Each buyer line is mapped to an item in your ERP. Lines that match a past response are matched the same way again; new ones are proposed for a person to confirm.
- 03
Price from the book
Prices come from your price lists, customer agreements and volume breaks, with cost and margin beside every line. Lines you will not bid are marked no-bid with a reason.
- 04
Submit and keep
The response is exported in the buyer's own layout, with your terms attached. The submitted version is locked, and a later round starts from it.
What it tracks
Deadlines, rounds and clarifications in one place.
A general contractor bidding a hospital fit-out may answer three rounds over six weeks. Each round is a version, not a new file in someone's inbox.
Deadlines
Submission date and time in the buyer's time zone, with the clarification cut-off before it. Owners see what is due this week.
Versions
Round one, round two, best and final. Every change between them is listed line by line, with who made it.
Clarifications
Questions to the buyer and their answers, attached to the lines they affect.
Alternates
Where you offer an equivalent item, the alternate is priced beside the specified one, so the buyer sees both.
Before and after
The same tender, two ways of answering it.
| Spreadsheet by spreadsheet | Apex | |
|---|---|---|
| Line matching | Someone reads 400 descriptions | Matched from past responses, new lines proposed |
| Pricing | Copied from last year's price file | Read from the ERP price book today |
| Margin | Checked at the end, if at all | Shown on every line before submission |
| Rounds | File names ending in _v3_final | Versions with a line-by-line diff |
| Award | Re-keyed into a sales order | Converted to a quote, then an ERP sales order |
When it is awarded
An award becomes a contract, not a re-key.
When the buyer awards all or part of the tender, the awarded lines become a contract with the prices you submitted. Call-offs against it are priced from that contract, and the sales orders go to your ERP.
- Partial awards
- Award 312 of 400 lines and only those 312 carry into the contract.
- Price holds
- The submitted price is held for the term the tender set, then reviewed.
Agents propose, people approve
The agent drafts. A person decides.
An RFQ agent reads the buyer's line descriptions, proposes the matching item from your catalog with its reasoning, and flags lines it cannot match. Your estimator confirms every match before a price is submitted.
Every agent stops at an approval gate until it has earned its way out of one. Nothing releases cash, commits spend or touches a customer without a person saying so.
Your dataModels that read your data run inside your environment, behind your firewall. No client data reaches a frontier lab.
Start here, keep the foundation
Start with RFQ and tender response. Add the rest without starting over.
Start with tender response alone. Apex brings your customers, items and price lists down from the ERP into your Ferrata foundation, so the first tender is priced from real data. When an award becomes a contract, and the contract becomes invoices, they run on the same records. Nothing is re-implemented.
FAQ
Questions, answered plainly.
What is RFQ response software?
RFQ response software helps a supplier answer a buyer's request for quotation: it imports the buyer's line list, prices each line, tracks the deadline and submits the response. Apex does this against the items and price lists already in your ERP, so the response is priced from the same book your invoices use.
Can Apex import a buyer's Excel file as it is?
Yes. Apex keeps the buyer's own line numbers, descriptions and units, so the response can go back in their layout. You map the columns once per buyer template, and later tenders from that buyer use the same mapping.
Does it work with buyers' sourcing portals?
Apex is built to connect with sourcing portals where the buyer allows a download or an integration. Which portals are connected is decided when your instance is set up. Where no connection exists, the line list comes in as a file and the response goes back the same way.
How does Apex match the buyer's descriptions to our items?
A line that matched an item in a past response is matched the same way again. For new lines, an agent proposes the closest item from your catalog with its reasoning, and a person confirms or corrects it. A confirmed match is remembered for the next tender from that buyer.
Can we track several rounds of the same tender?
Yes. Each round is a version of the response. Apex shows what changed between rounds line by line, including price, quantity, alternates and no-bid decisions, and locks the version that was submitted.
What happens when we win?
The awarded lines become a contract at the prices you submitted. Orders against it are priced from that contract and written to your ERP as sales orders, so nobody re-keys the award.
Related in Apex
- CPQConfigure, price and quote from the items and price lists already in your ERP.View
- Price agreementsCustomer price lists, blanket POs and call-offs that draw down a framework.View
- Product configuratorOptions, rules and bills of materials, priced with lead times from the ERP.View
- Index-linked pricingPrices tied to steel, fuel or CPI, with caps and floors, re-priced on set dates.View
- ConstructionTenders, schedules of values, progress billing and retainage.View
From Ferrata Labs
- Quill, the quoting agentReads every inquiry, prices it against your rules, drafts the quote.
- Ferrata in constructionContractors, tenders and site operations.
- Ferrata in manufacturingProduction, quality and procurement, on SAP, NetSuite or Dynamics.
- Book a discovery callThirty minutes on one workflow, and an honest answer on where to start.
Start with RFQ and tender response, or talk it through first.
Thirty minutes with Ferrata Labs on one workflow. You leave with a view of where Apex fits, and an honest answer if the sequencing is wrong and you should fix something else first.
Your pricing, approval and billing rules are your advantage, and they stay yours. Apex is configured to the way you sell and bill. You are not handing over a playbook or fitting into a template.