WORKFLOW AUDIT № 000 · SAMPLE · QUOTE-TO-PROPOSAL
Where 175 minutes go — and which 128 come back.
A complete workflow audit of the quote-to-proposal process at Meridian Catering Co. — a twelve-person corporate caterer: an owner, an ops manager, a chef, and the kitchen and event staff. Around eleven quotes a week leave the building.
A representative company. The numbers are the method's — the client is illustrative.
One week shadowing the quote desk. 23 quotes timed end to end. Calendar, supplier, and proposal systems reviewed. Minutes below are per quote, averaged.
Timeback pegs food service managers at ~90 minutes a day reclaimable.
Timeback is conservative and per person, across the whole role. An audit counts every hand that touches one workflow — at Meridian, quoting crosses three people.
Every minute has a receipt.
Read the inquiry, extract event details
TODAY: OPS MANAGER
12 MIN→12 MIN
Guest count, date, venue, dietary flags — retyped from email into a sheet today. Extraction is a solved problem.
Check the date against calendar and staffing
TODAY: OPS MANAGER
8 MIN→8 MIN
Two calendars and a group text. The answer is deterministic; the lookup isn't the judgment.
Pull comparable past events for pricing
TODAY: OWNER
25 MIN→25 MIN
“What did we charge the pharma lunch last spring?” Twenty-five minutes of folder archaeology, per quote.
Draft the menu against dietary constraints
TODAY: CHEF + OWNER
30 MIN→30 MIN
AI drafts against the constraint list; the chef edits taste, not tables.
Price ingredients at current supplier costs
TODAY: OPS MANAGER
22 MIN→22 MIN
Current supplier sheets, seasonal swings. AI assembles; a human sanity-checks the outliers.
Set the margin
TODAY: OWNER
15 MIN→15 MIN
REMAINS HUMAN — BY DESIGN
Reading the client, the season, the risk. We looked at automating this. Don't.
Assemble, brand, and proof the proposal
TODAY: OPS MANAGER
35 MIN→35 MIN
Thirty-five minutes of template surgery per quote. The most automatable minutes in the whole workflow.
Send, log, and schedule the follow-up
TODAY: OPS MANAGER
10 MIN→10 MIN
Three tools, zero judgment.
Chase the follow-up (avg 2.3 touches)
TODAY: OWNER
18 MIN→18 MIN
Drafted nudges on a schedule the owner approves. The words stay hers; the remembering doesn't.
The arithmetic, worked.
175 min/quote today − 47 min/quote after = 128 min returned per quote
× 11 quotes/week = 1,408 min ≈ 23 hours a week
× 48 weeks ≈ 1,126 hours a year — across the three people who touch this workflow
- Eleven quotes a week on average — Meridian's range runs 8 to 15 with the season.
- 48 delivery weeks a year.
- Three people touch the workflow: the owner, the ops manager, the chef.
- 23 quotes timed end to end during the audit week; minutes are per-quote averages.
≈ 23 hrs/week · 1,126 hrs/year
At 11 quotes a week, the owner's quoting mornings come back — all of them.
What to build. And what not to.
Quote Assembly Engine
Intake to sent proposal with the grind removed: extraction, availability, comparables, assembly, logging, follow-up drafts. Six stations, no judgment touched.
Menu & Pricing Copilot
Drafts menus against dietary constraints and prices them from live supplier sheets. The chef edits; the copilot types.
Auto-negotiating follow-ups
The math works. The relationship risk doesn't. A model adjusting price mid-thread with a repeat client is margin-setting by another name — see Station 6. Revisit after six months of production data.
Build the Assembly Engine first: 96 minutes a quote for one system that touches no judgment. The Copilot second — it assists two people rather than replacing either. And nothing else. The margin stays with the owner, the negotiation stays human, and the workflow keeps its receipts. That's the whole finding: 175 minutes goes in, 47 comes out, and every minute in between has a name on it.
3–4 hrs → 15 min
RFPs for a full tour.
“At this point last year, I remember just being incredibly stressed out, thinking “How am I going to get through everything?” Now I’ve got enough time because I’m not sending out these quotes manually. I get it all back.”
“Instead of just building a CRM, he created an AI-powered system that keeps my business moving forward every day. It prompts me with what needs my attention and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.”
This is the document. Yours takes two weeks.
Questions? Bring them Friday — free working session →