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A procurement portal that turns supplier quotes on WhatsApp into comparable prices and purchase orders

Requests for quotes, a supplier catalogue, a standing price book compared like for like, and purchase orders, for every project.

Client
Sunbird Solar
Work
Portals and internal tools
Relationship
Lockhart works inside Sunbird Solar as its systems and operations consultant
Service
Systems & AI
Procurement price book: 364 items, 146 competitive, with counts by category and the supplier cheapest most often

Price book. The 364 items and 146 competitive are real; suppliers and the other counts are sample data.

The problem

Supplier prices arrived by email and WhatsApp, in different formats, and were hard to compare or find again.

Without a single price book, it was difficult to know which supplier was cheapest for an item, or whether a price was months out of date.

What was built

One portal from request for quote to purchase order.

Dashboard
Open requests for quotes, quotes awaited, quotes received and purchase orders issued, with recent activity.
Projects and suppliers
Each request tied to a project; each supplier with its own catalogue.
Price book
Standing supplier price lists compared like for like, with single-source items highlighted and stale prices flagged after 180 days.
Comparison and purchase orders
Quotes compared side by side, then a purchase order issued from the winning quote.
How a purchase moves through the portal
  1. 1Project
  2. 2Request for quote
  3. 3Quotes in
  4. 4Like-for-like comparison
  5. 5Purchase order
  6. 6Handover file
Procurement dashboard with sample projects: open requests for quotes, quotes awaited and received, and purchase orders
Dashboard. Sample data shown.

The result

  • 555 → 364

    Supplier price lines made comparable

  • 146

    Items quoted by two or more suppliers

Staff resend bounced or spam-flagged quote requests themselves, with no developer needed.

A handover builder that produces a client’s installation file from one form

Next case: Handover builder

Previous case: Command CentreAll work

Systems & AI

Starts with a two-week Systems & AI Review, R24,500 · US$1,580, credited against the build. No VAT is added.

See prices and first steps

Start with the free Website Check.

Your site scored out of 100 across speed, mobile, Google, trust, enquiries and email, with the fixes ranked by what they cost you.

Enter a website address, for example yourbusiness.co.za.

Free. Next, add the email the report should go to. Scored out of 100 and graded A to F.

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