Quote Process

Find out how a quote process looks like from start to end.

Very often customers want to negotiate the price regarding the products they want to buy. For such a process, it is important that an ecommerce platform supports a more sophisticated process. Requesting a quote is a common use case especially for B2B business model, but within the Emporix platform, the quotes for B2C customers are also supported.

Below you can see the general, simplified flow:

Not only the customer is able to request quotes, but also the merchant's employee or a sales manager can generate a quote on behalf of the customer. This is described step by step in the 2nd demo scenario - Employee creates quote on behalf of a customer.

Roles included:

• B2B or B2C customer

• Merchant employee who needs to accept or decline a quote request

Demo scenario - a customer (B2B or B2C) requests a quote

This is a step-by-step description of the quoting process within the Emporix Showcase and what to look for in detail.

1. Browse for a product by categories or use the search bar to find the product which you want to add to the cart.

   This search uses Algolia as a search engine for displaying the search results. For a newly created tenant it works out of the box.

1. Choose the product you want to add to the cart and open the product details page.

1. Change the quantity, for example to 5 and add the product to the cart.

Result: The following screen is displayed:

1. Within the cart you can change the quantity and a recalculation of the cart will take place.

2. To create the quote, choose the Request quote button.

Result: the quote page appears.

1. To see the quote overview, choose the Quote overview button. The quote gets the Awaiting status.

1. Open the Management Dashboard and go to Quotes, the quotes overview page is displayed.

   • The created quote is displayed with the awaiting status.

   • The merchant employee is informed by email that a customer created a quote request. The corresponding sales representative or a customer service employee can then work on the quote request quickly.

   
2. Open the quote and check its details, prices and discounts. Go to the Approval tab and choose Approve quote to accept the quote. You can add a comment from a merchant perspective if needed.

   
3. Click Update status and then confirm you want to change the quote status.

Result: The quote request from customer is accepted by the merchant and the quote status changes from Awaiting to Open.

It is possible to work on quotes in Management Dashboard and to update them anytime needed. For details on how to work with quotes in MD, see Quotes documentation.

1. In the Emporix showcase, the customer goes to the My Quotes view under My Account. The Quote should have the open status as well.

After the merchant employee accepts the quote, the customer gets an email with the corresponding PDF. Within the demo the red bubble indicates that a new quote is available for the customer. In this case 2 quotes are new and available.

1. Customer opens the details of the quote and can decide if they want to accept or decline the quote.

In case they request a change or decline the quote, they have to select a change or decline reason with an additional text.

1. In case the customer accepts the quote the status of the quote is updated within the showcase and also within the Management Dashboard.

• Showcase status - quote detail page:

To get the storefront status updated you need to refresh the page.

• Backend status - Management Dashboard:

Result The accepted quote creates an order within CE and within the quote detail the order link is available.

Employee creates quote on behalf of a customer

It is possible for you as an employee to create a quote on behalf of the customer in the Management Dashboard. For example, a customer calls a customer service department and asks for a specific quote. To create the quote on their behalf, you need to be logged in to the Management Dashboard as an employee.

Then, follow the steps described in the Quotes - Creating a quote guide.

Result: After you follow the steps and click the create quote button at the end, the quote is created with Open status and the quote notification is sent to the customer by email, including the PDF. The customer can accept or decline the quote as described under Customer requests.

To learn more about API used in this use case see the Quote Service and for user guides check the Quotes and the Quote Management documentation.