A windows and doors project crosses more systems than almost any other kind of home service work - and much of it depends on document preparation rather than physical labor.
The problem: the quote was the bottleneck
The documented manual process started with a search. When a new customer appeared in the job system, staff had to find the correct quote in the supplier's portal, review its products and prices, and then recreate the estimate in their own system. The same information existed twice, and the copy could drift.
From there the work multiplied: converting the quote into a proposal PDF, attaching product and warranty documents, preparing a service agreement for signature, monitoring permit emails, monitoring manufacturing emails, and finally handling inspection scheduling, finishing information, payment and review requests after installation.
What was deployed
Five systems are connected. A new customer starts the quote-and-proposal path; a completed job starts the customer follow-up path.
- Quote matching - available quotes are searched by customer name. Where more than one match exists, the latest matching quote is selected.
- Estimate creation - products, sizes, quantities and prices are read from the quote and used to build the customer estimate, so the numbers exist in one place rather than two.
- Proposal assembly - the quote becomes a proposal PDF and is combined with two supporting documents, producing a three-attachment package emailed to the customer.
- Contract sending - an electronic service agreement goes out for signature immediately after the proposal.
- Permit and manufacturing updates - incoming mail is checked, and the right customer update goes out when a permit is approved or the units are ready.
- Completed-job follow-up - final inspection, interior finishing, payment request and review request are sent in sequence once the job completes.
- 90-day follow-up - a later service follow-up fires when the job completion date already meets the condition.
Why document assembly is worth automating first
Nothing here is glamorous, which is exactly why it gets done by hand for years. But assembling and attaching three PDFs per proposal, then repeating the same email to every customer, is deterministic, identical and exhausting. It is the ideal candidate for automation and one of the first places a team feels the time back.
