The Tool You Trust Might Be Holding You Back

If you're quoting wire harnesses in your ERP system, you’re not alone. Many manufacturers have extended their ERP into quoting—often believing that keeping everything in one place is the most efficient path forward.

But the reality is: what worked before doesn’t work anymore.

In today’s competitive market, quote speed, accuracy, and scalability are no longer nice-to-haves. They’re the difference between winning and losing new business. This article will help you see why relying on your ERP for quoting might be holding your business back, and how Quoteque gives you an edge.

The Risks of ERP-Based Quoting

1. Slow Turnaround Kills Deals

The average quoting turnaround time in this industry is 1–3 weeks. But we’re in a market where:

• Customers expect same-day or next-day responses

• Competitors are investing in quoting speed

• Quote timing alone can win or lose you the job

ERPs were built for transactional workflows, not rapid quoting. Every manual step, approval flow, and rigid part entry slows you down.

If you can quote in half the time of your competitors, you gain a massive edge in capturing new business.

2. Manual Effort From Your Most Valuable People

ERP quoting locks you into a specific workflow—often requiring:

• Manual part creation before quoting

• BOMs to be entered line by line

• Involvement from your most experienced estimators, engineers, and buyers

And with the average non-automotive win rate for new business being 20%, you’re spending 80% of your quoting time and energy on sunken costs through some of your most expensive people.

3. Accuracy Issues

ERP quoting is only as accurate as the data inside it. That creates risk:

• Historical pricing is assumed current

• Missing customer details are manually filled in

• BOMs can’t easily suggest alternates or substitutions

• UOMs and tribal logic aren’t standardized

Quote too high, and you lose the deal. Quote too low, and you lose your margin.

ERP vs Quoteque

BOM Creation

In an ERP, creating a BOM requires:

• Manually inputting each BOM line into a rigid form

• Manually creating new part numbers when items aren’t in the system

• Dealing with duplicate parts and conflicting naming conventions

• Converting customer part numbers to MPNs (often using tribal knowledge)

• Using calculators to convert UOMs

• No batch quoting or BOM consolidation tools

This takes hours per assembly and creates internal friction every step of the way.

With Quoteque:

• Drag and drop any file such as PDF, Excel, TIFF, even native CAD and get a clean, structured BOM within minutes

• Automatically convert customer part numbers into actual MPNs

• Apply built-in logic for common substitutions, alternates, and tribal shortcuts like “blk tape” = black Tesa ¾”

• Standardize BOMs across all quotes, so anyone on your team can step in and contribute

• Handle batch quoting with built-in size configurations and automated rollups

• Keep all your quoting logic in one shared system, not locked inside someone’s memory or an ERP item master

The result: clean, fast BOM generation that anyone can run, without waiting on approvals or data entry delays.

Engineering

ERP systems are not built to handle the ambiguous nature of early-stage harness quoting. Most customer drawings are incomplete, requiring engineering intervention to:

• Estimate wire lengths

• Determine terminal and seal compatibility

• Calculate protective covering specs

• Account for missing seal plugs and A/R items

• Validate wire gauge and cavity combinations

In the ERP workflow, all of this must happen before quoting can proceed, causing delays and bottlenecks.

With Quoteque:

• Leverage engineering insights from our components database of 2,000,000+ parts

• Given a from-to list, Quoteque autopicks missing terminals, cavity plugs, seals based on connector compatibility and wire gauge

• Calculates protective covering requirements from bundle diameter logic

• Our iHarness topology tool traces drawings and calculates exact wire lengths from the PDF

• Reduces the need for deep, manual engineering intervention on every quote

The result: faster engineering execution, reduced back-and-forth, and more quotes completed without slowing your best people down.

Material Sourcing

ERP-based sourcing often relies on:

• Outdated historical pricing (“we paid this 3 months ago, it should still apply”)

• Static supplier records with no awareness of current lead times or allocations

• A separate supply chain team constantly refreshing price lists

• Lack of visibility into alternate distributors or better offers

• A disconnect between quoting and what’s actually available in the market today

With Quoteque:

• Integrate with your ERP to show live inventory alongside BOM items

• Connect via API to real-time distributor data from Digikey, Mouser, Arrow, IEWC, and more

• Pull in YOUR contract pricing and allocated inventory—not generic catalog data

• Automate RFQs and requotes, all from within the platform

• Surface alternates and substitutions when a part is unavailable

• Know instantly whether you’re quoting from accurate, buyable sources—not yesterday’s prices

The result: smarter sourcing, faster response times, and higher quote win rates without relying on back-and-forth email or manual updates.

Your New “Unfair Quoting Advantage”

The ERP system you’ve customized over the years has served you well. But quoting today is faster, more competitive, and more complex than ever before.

If you’re:

• Tired of long quote cycles

• Struggling to scale your team’s effort

• Losing deals to faster competitors

• Unsure whether your ERP quote reflects reality

…it’s time to switch from systems of record to systems of execution.

Quoteque gives wire harness manufacturers an unfair advantage: faster quoting, smarter sourcing, easier scaling, and standardized processes anyone can run.

Don’t let quoting be the bottleneck that keeps you from growing.

Ready to see how your ERP quoting process compares?
Let us show you what quoting looks like with Quoteque.