Building a configurator that never keeps a quote waiting.

The situation

Every enquiry waited for someone to be free.

The bottleneck was never the price. It was the sequence in front of it: somebody reads the enquiry, works out what is actually being asked for, checks what it costs today, and writes the answer back by hand.

That sequence runs at office hours and at the pace of whoever is free. A customer comparing suppliers is comparing who answered first — and a quote that takes a day loses to one that takes a minute, before anyone has looked at the number.

A worker in hi-vis clothing guiding a crane-slung bundle of reinforcement bars down onto a laid steel mesh.
A tradesman leaning on a merchant trade counter beside an open box of steel fittings.
Flat steel offcuts laid out in rows on a table, a laptop at the far edge.
A monitor and a docked laptop awake on a desk at night, the lit steel yard behind the window.
A planner running her hand along an aluminium profile section at a workbench by the window.
A buyer at a laptop on the trade counter of a steel stockholder, the counter clerk looking at the same screen.
A site manager taping a large plan to the window of a site cabin, a tablet on the sill below.
Two colleagues at a desk looking at the same monitor in a sales office, a headset around one of their necks.
Hands taping up a box of material samples at a packing bench in a warehouse.
What we settled first

Rules first, screens after.

Rules before interface. A configurator is only ever as good as the logic behind it. The first work was on what may be combined with what, and what that costs — not on what the form looks like.

The common case, end to end. The frequent, well-understood enquiry had to run all the way through without a person in the middle. Anything rarer keeps its route to a colleague, and says so instead of pretending otherwise.

Built to be changed. Prices, options and rules move. They live where the business can maintain them, because a configurator that nobody can update is a configurator that is wrong within a quarter.

A buyer and a counter clerk at the trade counter of a steel stockholder, working through a requirement on a laptop, racked sections and coils behind them.

Enquiry to quote

The path a request takes, from the first field to a priced answer.

Two colleagues laying flat steel offcuts out in rows on a table beside a warehouse, comparing them with what is on a laptop.

Rules in one place

What may be combined, and what it costs, maintained where the business owns it.

A cut-to-length line in a steel service centre running with nobody standing at it, a coil feeding through and finished sheets stacking up.

The common case

The frequent enquiry runs through without waiting for anyone to be free.

A woman with a headset around her neck turning her monitor towards a colleague at her desk in a sales office above a steel yard.

Handover, not dead end

Anything unusual reaches a colleague, with everything already gathered.

An empty sales office in the evening, a monitor and a docked laptop still awake, the lit steel yard outside the window.

Around the clock

The answer no longer depends on the working day an enquiry arrives in.

What we changed

A quote became a process, not an errand.

A configurator, so an enquiry comes back as a priced answer

The customer describes what they need and receives a quote, instead of a promise that somebody will look at it.

Pricing rules in one place, so the logic is maintained rather than remembered

What may be combined and what it costs sits where the business owns it, and changes there without waiting for a release.

Automated handling for the cases that repeat

The frequent enquiry runs end to end, so people spend their time on the ones that are genuinely unusual.

Availability, so an answer does not wait for office hours

An enquiry that arrives at nine in the evening is answered at nine in the evening.

Rows of hot-rolled steel coils standing on end down the aisle of a storage hall.
The outcome

A priced answer in a fraction of the time, at any hour.

An enquiry now comes back as a priced answer, and the time to quote has fallen by 70 %. The customer describes what they need, the configurator applies the rules, and the frequent, well-understood case runs through end to end without waiting for anyone to be free.

What is unusual still reaches a colleague, with everything already gathered. Prices, options and rules live where the business maintains them, so the configurator stays right as they move. And because it does not keep office hours, an enquiry that arrives at nine in the evening is answered at nine in the evening.

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PERI SE
What we do

The Agentic Growth Stack in four phases.

Four phases that build on each other. Each one ends in something usable rather than a presentation — a roadmap you can budget, a platform in production, an operation the team carries, and agents working inside the process.

Plan

We establish where you stand, sharpen the goals and set a roadmap that fits your data, your processes and your organisation.

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A woman with a tablet at a window-side table talking to a colleague standing by the window.

Build

We build the platform: CRM, custom software and the data flows between them, properly integrated instead of side by side.

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Two people at a standing desk, one typing on a laptop, the other turning a monitor on a stand towards her.

Operate

We embed operations, adoption and security in everyday work, so the platform is carried by the team after the rollout.

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A woman at her desk looking up at large wall-mounted monitors.

Automate

Agents take over recurring work, monitored and measurable, with clear rules for governance and compliance.

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An empty desk after dark, a monitor and a docked laptop still awake, the chair pushed aside.
first step

The first step towards an agent-native company.

In the Enterprise Discovery Workshop we develop a clear target picture and a business case that holds up, in a matter of days. Fixed price, no open-ended day rates.

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