Case Study
We replaced a shared Google Sheet with an AI-powered bid platform.
A specialty contractor's estimating team was running their entire bid pipeline out of Gmail and a spreadsheet. We built them a custom platform that automated every manual workflow — from the moment a bid hits the inbox to the moment a GC replies.
What we solved
| # | Problem | Solution | Category | Key Metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Estimators digging through 50+ emails/day to find bid invitations | AI-Powered Bid Intake | Email Automation | ~50 emails/day auto-processed |
| 02 | Shared Google Sheet — one accidental delete from chaos | Live Bid Pipeline Dashboard | Bid Management | 100% pipeline visibility |
| 03 | Estimators had no personal view of their own bid workload | Personal Estimator Hub | Estimator Workflow | Per-estimator pipeline stats |
| 04 | Silence after bid submission — no follow-up, no thread tracking | AI Follow-Up Engine | Follow-Up Automation | 15 min reply detection |
| 05 | Owner calling estimators to ask "where are we at?" | Admin Command Center | Admin Intelligence | 0 check-in calls needed |
AI-Powered Bid Intake
Every bid invitation automatically captured, classified, and ready to claim — without an estimator touching their inbox.
"Estimators were spending the first hour of every morning digging through emails to find bid invitations. Forwarded ITBs from drywall contractors were buried in reply chains. Half the time they weren't sure if someone else had already logged the same bid."
- Estimators manually scanning 50+ emails per day for bid invitations
- Forwarded ITBs from drywall contractors buried in reply chains
- Project details copy-pasted into a shared Google Sheet — or forgotten entirely
- No way to know if a bid was already logged by someone else
- AI scans the estimating inbox every 15 minutes and classifies each email
- Project name, GC, bid date, scope, and contact info extracted automatically
- Duplicate detection prevents the same bid from appearing twice
- New bids appear in a live dashboard — estimators claim with one click
Live Bid Pipeline Dashboard
Real-time Kanban board and table views replacing the spreadsheet your team is afraid to touch.
"Everything lived in one shared Google Sheet. No version control, no permissions, no undo. One bad paste and the entire bid pipeline could disappear. Sorting by bid date meant manually clicking column headers and hoping nobody was editing at the same time."
- One shared Google Sheet tracking every active bid across the company
- No version control — edits overwrite each other in real time
- Sorting by bid date or GC requires manual column manipulation
- No role separation — everyone sees and can edit everything
- Kanban board with drag-and-drop status changes across the full bid lifecycle
- Sortable, filterable table view with columns for GC, bid date, assignee, and status
- Role-based access — admins assign any estimator, estimators claim their own bids
- Every change logged in an append-only activity timeline with full audit trail
Personal Estimator Hub
Each estimator gets their own pipeline view with personal stats, task lists, and recent activity — no more digging through a shared board.
"Estimators had no personal view of their workload. They'd open the shared sheet, filter by their name, and hope it was up to date. There was no quick way to see how many bids you had open, what was due this week, or what your win rate looked like."
- No personal dashboard — estimators filtered a shared sheet by their name
- No visibility into personal win rate, submission volume, or pipeline value
- Task tracking done in separate apps or sticky notes
- Recent activity scattered across email, chat, and memory
- Personal hub with pipeline snapshot: undecided, accepted, submitted, won, declined
- Date-filtered stats showing total bids, win rate, dollars submitted, and dollars won
- Built-in task manager linked to specific bids for estimator-level organization
- Recent activity feed showing notes added, files uploaded, and status changes
AI Follow-Up Engine
AI drafts follow-up emails that sound like your estimator wrote them — then monitors every thread for replies.
"After a bid went out, it just disappeared into the void. Nobody tracked whether the GC replied. Follow-up emails were written from scratch every time — and during busy weeks, they didn't get written at all. There was no record of what was sent or when."
- Estimators writing follow-up emails from scratch for every submitted bid
- No standard format — email quality varied by who was sending
- Follow-up emails forgotten during busy bid weeks
- No record of what was sent, when, or whether the GC replied
- AI reads the full conversation history and drafts a follow-up email
- Emails match the tone of a real estimator — not a template
- Estimator reviews and approves in a preview modal before anything sends
- Automated thread monitoring logs GC replies back into the platform every 15 minutes
Admin Command Center
KPI dashboards, deadline alerts, and team workload views — so the owner never has to ask "where are we at?"
"The owner had zero real-time visibility into the bid pipeline. Finding out how many bids were active meant calling each estimator. Deadlines were discovered the day they hit — not the week before. Win rate was tracked in the owner's head, not on a dashboard."
- Owner calling or texting estimators to ask for bid status updates
- No visibility into team workload — some estimators overloaded, others idle
- Upcoming deadlines discovered the day they hit, not the week before
- Win rate and submission volume tracked in the owner's head, not on a dashboard
- Real-time KPI cards: active bids, bids due this week, win rate, active estimators
- Team workload chart showing bid count per estimator at a glance
- Deadline widget color-coded by urgency — red for overdue, amber for this week
- Full user management portal with invite-only accounts and role controls
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