Technical RFQ Intake: Automating B2B Procurement at Scale

For MEP firms, construction contractors, and infrastructure operators, the procurement inbox is a constant source of friction. Vendor quotations arrive at 10pm. Technical specifications require verification against project requirements. Lead times change without notice. And your senior engineers are pulled away from billable work to answer basic procurement queries.

The traditional approach—manual triage, email threading, and spreadsheet tracking—fails at scale. When your purchasing team manages 100+ active vendors across 8 countries, every hour of delay risks project timelines.

The Problem: Procurement as a Knowledge Bottleneck

Consider a typical scenario: A project manager requests updated pricing for fire-rated cable trays at 4pm Friday. The procurement team needs to:

1. Locate the relevant vendor quotations (scattered across email, SharePoint, and local drives)
2. Cross-reference against project specifications (SCDF fire codes, BCA requirements)
3. Verify lead times and delivery schedules (which may have changed since last quote)
4. Escalate technical questions to engineering (pulling senior resources from project work)

Without automation, this sequence takes 24-48 hours minimum. With Sovereign RAG, it takes seconds.

The Solution: Oxaide Intake for Procurement Teams

Oxaide Intake transforms the procurement workflow by:

1. Centralizing Vendor Documentation

Every quotation, price list, and supplier contract is indexed in a private knowledge base. When a project manager asks "What's the current lead time for Tyco fire dampers from Supplier A?", the system retrieves the answer instantly—no email searching required.

2. Technical Specification Matching

The system cross-references procurement queries against your technical documentation. If a vendor quotes "Type A cable tray" but your project requires "Type B per SCDF Code 2024", the discrepancy is flagged automatically.

3. 24/7 Query Capture

Vendor inquiries arriving at midnight via WhatsApp are captured, classified, and routed to the appropriate team. When your purchasing manager arrives Monday morning, every weekend query is organized and prioritized.

4. Zero Data Egress

Unlike public AI solutions, Oxaide Intake processes all vendor data within your secure perimeter. Supplier pricing, contract terms, and negotiation history never leave your control—critical for competitive procurement.

Implementation: Purchasing Team Pilot

For most organizations, we recommend starting with the Purchasing Team as the pilot group:

Why Purchasing First?
Measurable ROI: Time saved per query is directly quantifiable
Lower Sensitivity: Vendor pricing is less sensitive than active tenders
High Volume: Procurement teams experience the most repetitive queries
Clear Success Metrics: Query response time, escalation rate, vendor sync gaps

A typical 4-week pilot tracks:

• Baseline: Average time to respond to vendor/PM queries
• Week 1-2: System ingestion of vendor documentation
• Week 3-4: Measurement of automated query resolution rate

Success looks like: 60%+ of procurement queries resolved without senior engineer involvement.

Technical Architecture: How It Works

Oxaide Intake uses a Sovereign RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) architecture:

1. Ingestion Layer: Vendor documents (PDF quotations, Excel price lists, email attachments) are parsed and vectorized
2. Knowledge Engine: Semantic search matches queries to relevant documentation
3. Response Layer: AI generates contextual answers with source citations
4. Audit Trail: Every query and response is logged for compliance

For organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements, the entire stack runs on-premise or in a Singapore-pinned private cloud.

Getting Started

For procurement teams evaluating AI automation, the path forward is straightforward:

1. Define the scope: Start with vendor quotations and price lists
2. Measure the baseline: Track current query response times
3. Pilot with purchasing: Lowest risk, highest daily volume
4. Expand to engineering: Once procurement is stable, extend to technical specs

The goal is not to replace procurement professionals—it's to eliminate the friction that prevents them from focusing on strategic sourcing, vendor negotiations, and relationship management.

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Interested in automating your procurement intake? Schedule an architecture review to see how Sovereign RAG works for B2B operations.