Three Quotes, Levelled

Three suppliers quote the same requirement. None of the quotes lines up.

One prices to last year's revision. One leaves tooling out of the unit price. One makes the price conditional on a volume you have not committed to. One quotes ex-works while the rest quote delivered. None of them is wrong, and the lowest unit price can come third once the offers are levelled.

That levelling is where buyer days go, before anyone has negotiated anything. It is also the part DeepStream's AI does.

What this sample is

This is the Buyer Decision Report that DeepStream's bid comparison produced from three supplier submissions to an RFP for after-hours crisis call management. It is what the tool generates from the offers as they arrive, in seconds. Nobody built it by hand. The buyer is shown as Buyer A.

What the bid comparison does

• Lines every return up against the requirement, side by side, so the buyer compares like with like.
• Flags where suppliers answered different questions, including boilerplate answers, missing documents and contradictions between the questionnaire and the proposal.
• Normalises the commercials, setting out which inputs the buyer needs to supply and how each offer would be calculated once they do.
• Drafts the clarifications for each supplier, ready for the buyer to send or bin.
• Cites the source on every finding, with a link to the supplier's own document so the buyer can confirm it before acting on it.
• Rates its confidence in each finding and in the overall recommendation.

The judgement stays with the buyer. In this sample the report recommends a single clarification round and leaves the decision to exclude, clarify or permit resubmission with the buyer.

What the sample shows

The three suppliers priced on three different bases: per member per month, per call with a monthly platform fee and one-off integration charge, and a hybrid structure with no unit values disclosed. The report shows why the offers cannot yet be compared on price, lists the eight inputs the buyer needs to provide, and sets out the calculation for each supplier once those inputs exist.

It also found that none of the three supplied the evidence documents the RFP asked for, that most questionnaire answers were the same paragraph pasted into question after question, and that two suppliers used a different company name on the questionnaire from the one on their proposal.

Why it matters for manufacturing buyers

Your team already knows how to read a quote. What changes is how long it takes to get three of them onto one page, and how much of the negotiation window is left when they do. Tooling amortised over forecast rather than committed volume, a price quoted to an old drawing revision, ex-works against delivered: each one is flagged, cited and turned into a drafted clarification.

DeepStream works with manufacturers including Ferroglobe, SNF, Abbott, Torqeedo, Forseven and Senior Aerospace BWT on AI bid comparison, drafted clarifications, RFx generation and the record of how each award was reached.

Bring a live RFQ

If you have an RFQ where the quotes will not line up, bring it and watch the comparison build on your own offers. Book 20 minutes →