Sales, Quoting & Project Planning AI

A specialist retail and trade services business in New Zealand partnered with ELab to break the bottleneck of manual quoting and key-person dependency in sales. Through structured discovery, we identified six high-value automation opportunities and deployed multiple AI assistants across core operations, CRM and sales, and training - with a roadmap for expanding into project planning and pricing automation.

Industry: Retail / Trade Services | Duration: 2-4 months | Region: New Zealand

Growing trade services businesses often hit a scaling wall: the sales and quoting process depends on experienced individuals who carry pricing knowledge, client history, and project scoping expertise in their heads. Quotes were being prepared manually from spreadsheets and catalogues, limiting the volume the business could handle. Field observations were captured as handwritten notes requiring manual transcription. And quote quality varied significantly depending on who prepared it.

What We Did

Discovery - Mapped the full sales and quoting lifecycle and identified six high-value automation opportunities, prioritised by impact and feasibility.

Core Business AI - A general-purpose assistant for strategy, planning, and daily operations, integrated into Slack for seamless workflow access.

CRM AI (MAISY) - Sales and business development assistant managing client interactions, lead organisation, and follow-up tracking.

Training & SOP AI - Automated SOP creation, onboarding process management, and FAQ handling - reducing key-person dependency for institutional knowledge.

Marketing & Communications AI - Brand-aligned content generation with tone of voice configuration for consistent external communications.

Results

The engagement established a foundation for end-to-end business process transformation, with identified next phases including project planning and pricing AI for automated quote generation, advanced workflow automation, and deeper CRM integration and pipeline analytics.