From Spreadsheet RFQs to Structured Sourcing Events
Procurement leaders discuss why email-and-Excel workflows break down at scale, and how structured sourcing events bring clarity to complex manufacturing requirements.
Show notes
Excel is a fine working file and a weak system of record. Version drift, hidden columns, and “final_v7” packs are how line-item intent gets lost between engineering and the supplier.
Email makes it worse: each vendor gets a slightly different drawing set, and clarifications never land back on the line they belong to. Comparison then becomes a reconstruction project.
Guests walk through how teams move a live multi-line BOQ into a structured event — one pack, one supplier set, one clarification thread per line — without boiling the ocean.
The migration is boring on purpose. Keep the spreadsheet as an export. Put specs and drawings on the event. Standardize commercial fields so quotes can actually sit side by side. If suppliers still reply in free-form email, the form is too heavy or the invite did not explain the path.
What teams get back is speed, and something quieter: defensibility. You can show why a vendor was invited, what they quoted, and how exceptions were handled — without reconstructing a thread from three mailboxes.
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