Our client was an established Australian manufacturer producing packaging and other products. While the business had deep operational expertise, its growth strategy was constrained by a critical bottleneck in the customer quoting process. Quoting was entirely manual, taking about two days per quote and relying on complex spreadsheet-based calculations. The process involved almost 50 calculation steps, significant manual effort from sales and back-office staff — with an estimated 10% error rate. There was no systematic way to optimise material usage, despite a clear opportunity to reduce waste by about 20%.

Buckham & Duffy was engaged as lead delivery partner to analyse the quoting process and deliver an intelligent, automated quoting and visualisation system. We reviewed more than 500 historical quotes which showed recurring errors, rework and waste. While complex, the process was rule-based and well suited to automation. A custom quoting engine was designed and implemented using a Laravel-based backend, capturing the firm’s domain knowledge directly in software. The system generated real-time quotes in seconds, replacing hours of manual calculation.

A WebGL-based 3D visualisation capability allowed customers to preview packaging designs before production. A structured change management program — including our hands-on training and a phased rollout with parallel legacy processes — supported adoption across a workforce with limited prior digital experience.