Vendor Quote Collection (RFQ) with AI agents

When your team needs to compare vendors before a purchase, an agent can run the whole request-for-quote process: sending the RFQ to a defined vendor list, tracking who's responded, chasing the ones who haven't, and normalizing every quote that comes back into one clean comparison instead of five differently-formatted PDFs and emails. The decision-maker gets a single apples-to-apples view — price, terms, lead time — instead of having to manually re-key numbers out of each vendor's response format before they can even start comparing.

How it works today vs. with Neotask

RFQs stall because chasing vendor responses is tedious and low-priority compared to everything else on a procurement lead's plate. One vendor replies same-day, another takes two weeks and needs three follow-up emails, and by the time all the quotes are in, whoever requested them has to manually pull the price, payment terms, and lead time out of each response — which are never formatted the same way twice — into a comparison sheet. Missing terms are the worst part: a vendor quote that omits shipping cost or assumes net-30 when your standard is net-60 looks cheaper than it actually is until someone catches the discrepancy by hand. An agent tracks every RFQ as a single object with a defined vendor list and a completion state, normalizes each response into the same comparison structure the moment it lands, and flags missing or inconsistent terms before the comparison ever reaches the decision-maker.

The agent flow

1. Define the RFQ requirements - Procurement specifies what's being sourced, required terms (payment terms, lead time, SLAs), and the vendor list to send it to.
2. Send the RFQ to each vendor - The agent sends a structured request to every vendor on the list, each with the same requirements so responses are comparable from the start. (gmail)
3. Track responses and chase stragglers - It monitors who's replied and sends polite, time-spaced follow-ups to vendors who haven't responded within the expected window.
4. Normalize each quote - As responses come in, the agent extracts price, terms, and lead time into a consistent comparison format regardless of how the vendor formatted their reply. (google-sheets)
5. Flag missing or inconsistent terms - Any vendor quote missing a required term, or quoting terms outside your standard, is flagged explicitly rather than silently included as if it were complete.
6. Route the comparison for a decision - The finished comparison goes to the decision-maker with the flagged issues called out, ready for a quick go/no-go rather than a re-analysis from scratch. (slack)

Variations

• Sole-source purchases skip the multi-vendor comparison and go straight to a single-vendor quote validation against last known pricing.
• High-value RFQs (above a spend threshold) add a required second-round negotiation step before the comparison is finalized.
• Recurring RFQs (e.g., quarterly re-sourcing) reuse the prior vendor list and requirements automatically rather than starting from a blank template.

Frequently asked questions

How many follow-ups does a non-responsive vendor get before being dropped?

That's configurable, but a typical cadence is two follow-ups over one to two weeks before the vendor is marked non-responsive in the final comparison.

Can it detect if a vendor is quoting worse terms than your standard?

Yes — any deviation from the specified required terms (payment terms, lead time, etc.) is flagged explicitly in the comparison, not silently accepted.

Does the agent negotiate price with vendors?

No, it collects and normalizes quotes; any negotiation is a human-led follow-up conversation the agent can help schedule but not conduct.

Plans

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