Ask any procurement manager at a mid-market manufacturer how they compare vendor quotes, and you’ll usually get the same answer: a spreadsheet, an inbox, and a lot of follow-up calls. Three to five vendors quote in three to five different formats, on three to five different timelines. Someone normalizes the data by hand, builds a side-by-side, walks it up the chain for sign-off, and finally issues a PO. A week or two has gone by. Half the quotes are stale.
The RFQ Quote Comparer app from Advaiya, built natively for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, takes most of that work out of the spreadsheet and puts it inside the ERP where buying actually happens.
Why does vendor quote comparison eat so much procurement time
According to Deloitte, most companies spend 20% to 50% of revenue procuring goods and services. For manufacturers, the share sits at the higher end. Yet the procurement workflow producing that spend often runs the same way at every shop floor: email a few vendors, wait, chase, paste responses into Excel, route for approval, convert to PO.
Three issues consistently slow that loop down:
- Responses arrive in vendor-defined formats, forcing manual normalization on the buyer’s side.
- Comparison criteria live in someone’s head or a shared Excel file, not in the system of record.
- Approval routing happens over email, which is fast for the sender and slow for everyone else.
The cost isn’t only time. Decisions made on stale data lock in higher unit prices and longer lead times than the market actually offered on the day of award. That’s pure margin erosion, and most manufacturers don’t track it because the friction is invisible inside the inbox.
What the RFQ Quote comparer app brings to business central
The RFQ Quote Comparer is a request for quotation software module that sits inside Dynamics 365 Business Central. Built for manufacturing buyers running Business Central as their ERP backbone, the app does three things at a level the standard BC purchasing module does not.
First, the app standardizes vendor quote capture so every response carries the same data structure: item, quantity, unit price, currency, delivery date, payment terms, and applicable discounts.
Second, the comparison view is generated automatically. Vendor A, Vendor B, Vendor C, and so on, ranked on the criteria you actually weight. No copy-paste, no formula reconciliation.
Third, the entire trail stays inside Business Central. From the original purchase requisition through the awarded purchase order, every step lives in the same data layer that finance and operations already use. The point isn’t to replace your buyer’s judgment. The point is to put that judgment on top of better information.
The five-step RFQ management workflow, end-to-end
A typical comparison cycle inside Business Central, once the app is installed, runs through five concrete steps. Each step is a continuation of the one before it, not a new tab or a new tool to switch into.
Step 1: raise a structured purchase requisition
A buyer or requesting department creates a purchase requisition with item codes, quantities, required delivery dates, and budget references. Approval routing follows the standard Business Central workflow. Once approved, the requisition is ready to convert.
Step 2: convert the approved requisition into an RFQ
A single action turns the approved requisition into a request for quotation document. Vendor selection happens against the existing approved vendor master in Business Central, so you’re sourcing only from suppliers already qualified for the category.
Step 3: send the RFQ to multiple vendors simultaneously
The app dispatches the same structured RFQ to every selected vendor at once. Each vendor sees the same specifications, the same response format, and the same deadline. Status tracking shows who has opened it, who has responded, and who needs a nudge.
Step 4: receive and consolidate vendor responses
As vendors respond, quotes load into the consolidated view automatically. No spreadsheet stitching. Procurement teams see line-item pricing, delivery commitments, and discount terms side by side, with native Business Central currency and unit-of-measure handling.
Step 5: compare, decide, and convert to a purchase order
Automated comparison highlights the strongest options on the criteria you set. Buyers retain the override on supplier risk, capacity, or strategic relationship. Once a vendor is selected, conversion to a purchase order is a single action, with all original quote data carried through into the PO record.
Where the cost savings actually land for manufacturing buyers
The dollar impact of this workflow shows up in three places.
- Direct unit-price savings: Disciplined comparison across multiple vendors pulls average award prices down, especially on commodity inputs bought repeatedly.
- Cycle-time savings: Faster RFQ rounds mean fewer stale-quote re-bids, which means less production-line risk from late material.
- Audit and governance savings: Every quote, response, approval, and award decision sits in one place. Compliance reviews stop being archaeology.
For mid-market manufacturers buying direct materials, even a 1% reduction in average award price compounds quickly across hundreds of POs a year, and the same comparison data feeds back into embedded AI workflows for vendor scoring and supplier risk monitoring.
A connected procurement management system, not just another app
Most standalone RFQ management software lives next to the ERP, not inside it. Buyers run quotes in one application, then re-key the winning quote into the ERP. The RFQ Quote Comparer avoids that gap by living inside Business Central from day one.
For manufacturers also running the purchase requisition app for Business Central alongside the Quote Comparer, the full purchase-to-pay loop, from requisition through PO and onward into receiving and invoice matching, runs as one continuous data flow. That is what a connected procurement management system actually means in practice, and the reason this approach belongs to Advaiya’s Peripheral Automation methodology rather than a bolt-on tool.
Time to take the vendor comparison out of the spreadsheet
Your buyers don’t need another open tab. What’s needed is for every step of vendor comparison to happen where the rest of the procurement data already lives. If your team is still pasting quotes into Excel and emailing them around, the gap between today’s workflow and what’s possible inside Business Central is small enough to close in a single implementation cycle. Talk to our team about a scoping conversation tailored to your manufacturing operation.
Frequently asked questions
The RFQ Quote Comparer is a request for quotation software module for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, built by Advaiya and available on Microsoft AppSource. The app lets procurement teams raise RFQs, send them to multiple vendors at once, consolidate responses, and compare quotes on pricing, delivery, and discounts inside Business Central.
The app reduces costs by enabling comparable bidding across multiple vendors on every requisition, shrinking RFQ cycle time so quotes don't go stale before award, and removing the spreadsheet rework that introduces errors into vendor selection.
The app extends Business Central. Once installed from Microsoft AppSource, RFQ and quote comparison workflows run inside the Business Central interface buyers already use, with no second login, no separate database, and no manual re-entry of quote data.
Yes. Once a vendor is selected from the comparison view, the app converts the winning quote into a purchase order in Business Central in a single action, carrying through item, pricing, currency, and delivery data without manual rekeying.
Yes. The RFQ Quote Comparer works alongside Advaiya's Purchase Requisition App so the entire purchase-to-pay sequence runs as one connected workflow inside Business Central.
The app is available on Microsoft AppSource. Implementation and configuration support are available through Advaiya's Microsoft Dynamics 365 services team.
