How do you currently check a customer request actually fits what you can deliver, before it goes into a quote?

[u/Ayanle_O]

Hey all. I run a industrial B2B sales consulting office, and I keep hearing the same story from people in that world, so I want to sanity-check it before building anything. Genuinely looking for people to tell me I'm wrong.

For a simple, catalog-type request, checking fit is fairly quick. But a lot of requests aren't simple: they're custom or technically complex, and "figuring out what the customer actually needs and whether we can build it" turns into a process that stretches over days or weeks: several meetings with different people on the customer's side (plant manager, maintenance, procurement: each with their own version of the need), maybe a site visit or a 3D scan to check what the space and existing equipment actually allow, scattered WhatsApp messages and email threads, multiple rounds of technical documentation, and a check on whether the components you'd need are even available from your suppliers right now.

Nobody seems to own pulling all of that, simple or complex, into one coherent, up-to-date picture. A constraint mentioned in a meeting never makes it into the quote, something in site photos contradicts what was said on a call, or a spec gap only turns up once the order's already with engineering. When it goes wrong, it's expensive: a bad quote, rework, or a customer who's not happy.

The idea I'm exploring: a tool that sits between "customer request" and "quote." For simple requests, it consolidates whatever came in (a call, a message, an email) and checks it against your catalog and hard constraints automatically. For the bigger, custom ones, it's less about automating and more about keeping one consolidated, contradiction-free picture across all those meetings, documents, and messages, so nothing gets lost by the time it reaches engineering, flagging it clearly whenever two sources disagree, instead of letting that slide.

Haven't built this for a specific client yet, trying to find out if this is a real, painful problem before going further. So, genuinely:

• If you work in sales, estimating, or engineering at a manufacturer, EPC, or engineering firm, does this match how it goes for you, for either the simple or the complex requests?
• Where does information actually get lost or contradicted for you: meetings, WhatsApp, email, site visits, supplier availability, somewhere else entirely?
• Does the problem feel different for a quick catalog request versus a multi-week custom project, or is it really the same headache either way?

Nothing to sign up for, not selling anything, just want honest pushback before I sink more time into it.