Process automation · Microsoft 365
Offer process automated from inquiry to follow-up
A previously strongly email-based offer process was structured and automated. Incoming inquiries are captured centrally, assigned to the people responsible, taken through defined approvals and followed up automatically.
- Area
- Sales and offer management
- Technologies
- Microsoft Lists, Power Automate, Teams
- Project type
- End-to-end process automation
Starting point
-
01
In one project, customer inquiries and offers were organised to a large extent via email.
-
02
New inquiries landed in different mailboxes and had to be forwarded by hand or captured in separate overviews.
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03
Typical problems followed from that.
-
04
Inquiries could sit untouched.
-
05
Follow-ups depended on individual employees.
-
06
The current status of an offer was not transparent for everyone involved.
-
07
Approvals, for example for larger discounts or offer values, had to be aligned individually.
-
08
For reporting, the sales status had to be gathered from different sources.
Goal
The whole flow from incoming inquiry to completed offer was to be turned into a traceable process.
No extensive new CRM platform was to be introduced in the process.
Instead, existing Microsoft 365 components were to be used to steer the process centrally.
Goals were in particular:
- Capture every inquiry centrally
- Define responsibilities clearly
- request missing information in a structured way
- trigger approvals automatically
- follow up offers reliably
- make open items visible
- evaluate won and lost offers
Architecture
- 01 Email or form
- 02 Power Automate
- 03 Microsoft Lists as the central case store
- 04 Handling and qualification
- 05 Approval via Microsoft Teams
- 06 Sending the offer
- 07 automatic reminder and follow-up
- 08 Status and reporting
Microsoft Lists formed the central data basis for the individual cases.
Power Automate took over the process logic between intake, handling, approval and follow-up.
Microsoft Teams was used for approvals, so the people responsible could take decisions directly in the working environment they already had.
Implementation
Central capture
New inquiries were created automatically as a case.
Each inquiry therefore had a central status, regardless of the channel it had arrived through.
Automatic assignment
Cases could be assigned to the fitting handler based on defined criteria.
Structured qualification
Missing details could be collected through defined follow-up questions and assigned back to the existing case.
Offer approval
An approval logic was built in for certain conditions.
If a discount or offer value exceeded a defined threshold, for example, an approval was requested automatically.
The process could continue only after the approval.
Automatic follow-up
After an offer was sent, a reminder was created automatically.
If no reply came, the staff responsible were reminded or a defined follow-up process was started.
Error handling and logging
Technical error paths were taken into account as well.
Errors inside the automation could be logged and reported to the people responsible.
Result
The offer process was moved from several manual single steps into one continuous digital flow.
Less manual administration
Inquiries no longer had to be tracked in parallel in email inboxes and extra lists.
Binding follow-up
Open offers received a reminder automatically.
Follow-up was therefore no longer dependent only on individual working memory.
Clear approvals
Defined business rules were built directly into the process.
Approvals could therefore be carried out in a traceable and consistent way.
Transparent pipeline
For every case it was clear which status it was in and which action was needed next.
Before and after
Inquiries in different mailboxes
central case management
manual assignment
rule-based assignment
Follow-up via personal reminder
automatic reminder
Approvals via individual messages
structured approval process
Status hard to trace
transparent process status
Reporting from several sources
central data basis
Why this solution
- No new extensive CRM rollout was necessary for the existing process.
- Microsoft 365 was already part of the existing working environment.
- Microsoft Lists, Power Automate and Teams could therefore be used as existing tools and connected into one continuous process.
- The solution did not focus on rebuilding as many functions of a classic CRM system as possible.
- The aim was instead to close exactly the process gaps that made inquiries, approvals and follow-ups unnecessarily manual in day-to-day work.
Commercial effect
The direct effect comes mainly from less administrative effort and more reliable follow-up of offers.
Even a few hours saved per week add up over the year to a substantial amount of time.
The sales effect can be even more relevant, though.
If more structured handling means fewer inquiries are lost and offers are followed up more consistently, a single extra won order can already produce a clearly larger commercial effect than the time saved alone.
Room to grow
AI-supported classification
Incoming inquiries can be classified automatically by topic, urgency or ownership.
Reply drafts
For recurring inquiries, suggested replies can be generated automatically.
CRM integration
If requirements grow, the existing process can be connected to an existing CRM system.
Document generation
Offers or further documents can be generated directly from the existing case data.
Extended reporting
Pipeline, handling times and reasons for lost offers can be evaluated in more detail with Power BI, for example.
A similar use case?
If customer inquiries, offers and approvals are still steered strongly via email and personal reminders today, a clearly more structured process can often already be built with the Microsoft 365 environment you have.