Engagement
30 days
Operational Intelligence Sprint
Thirty-day Operational Intelligence Sprint. Seven contracted deliverables. First working dashboard live. Trust authority asset deployed. Below is the record of what was built, where the evidence lives, and what comes next.
The sprint produced the first operating layer for the highest-value workflow in the business: quote turnaround.
The kickoff confirmed the practical problem. CARISAM is not short on demand, judgment, vendor knowledge, or customer trust. The constraint is operating capacity. Too much of the work depends on Lance finding the right email, remembering prior pricing, reconstructing project history, collecting vendor responses, and keeping Jim moving without creating another layer of interruption.
The first working answer is not a full CRM. It is a quote control system that preserves Lance's judgment while reducing manual searching, retyping, follow-up gaps, and quote response drag.
Seven numbered deliverables from the May 6 proposal, plus one bonus trust-authority asset. Every row links to either the live artifact or the in-page section showing the work.
A working prototype around quote turnaround — the highest-leverage workflow in the business. The proposal tied the second payment to this deliverable. It is now live.
The prototype demonstrates intake, supplier RFQ, vendor response capture, comparison view, decision support for Lance, and quote status visibility — built around the CARISAM Excel logic, not against it.
The dashboard is the visible proof. These six sections are the operating foundation underneath it — the maps, structures, playbooks, and roadmaps that make the dashboard usable in the way CARISAM actually works.
The current flow is mapped end-to-end. The map identifies eight stages, each with the question Lance answers, the handoff Jim can prepare, and the place AI workflows attach.
Quote turnaround time, measured three ways:
Do not automate judgment first. Automate collection, formatting, comparison, reminder logic, and handoff. The judgment layer stays with Lance until the workflow has enough history to support more delegation.
Five dashboard views answer the five questions Lance needs answered fast: what is open, who is waiting on CARISAM, which vendors have been asked, which have responded, what needs Lance's decision next.
Built to answer the questions that today require digging:
Core rule: AI may summarize, format, compare, extract, draft, and check. Lance owns understanding, judgment, vendor trust, customer commitments, and final approval.
Record approved conversations, extract action items, commitments, and missing information into the quote tracker.
Produce a timeline across long email chains. Surface contradictions and last-known commitments.
Generate vendor-specific RFQs with required response fields and a deadline. Always routed to Lance before sending.
Normalize vendor replies. Surface lowest cost, fastest lead time, most trusted option. Flag missing data.
Thirteen-point check before a customer quote leaves: descriptions, quantities, costs, margin, terms, expectations.
Beyond search rank — trade associations, niche publications, regional specialists. With reasons to trust or question each.
Guiding rule: Jim can collect, organize, prepare, summarize, and follow up on defined items. Lance approves pricing judgment, vendor choice, customer commitments, margin decisions, and anything that affects trust.
Morning: Jim updates open quotes, new requests, waiting vendor responses, follow-ups due today. Midday: Collection and follow-up work — vendor reminders for Lance approval, new responses logged, comparisons prepared. End of day: Short status report — what moved, what is stuck, what needs Lance decision, what is ready to send, what is at risk tomorrow.
Jim should interrupt Lance only when: (a) a customer is waiting on a time-sensitive answer; (b) a vendor response changes price, lead time, or availability materially; (c) a shipment or payment issue creates risk; (d) a quote is ready and only needs Lance approval; (e) a request is unclear and cannot be prepared without Lance judgment. Everything else goes into the tracker or end-of-day status.
Simple internal quote intake form for Lance and Jim. Capture customer request details, attach source notes, assign owner, set priority, track stage, create next action.
Give vendors a clean way to respond with structured pricing and lead time. Generate supplier RFQ messages, create a per-RFQ response link, route responses into the comparison table.
Convert email, PDF, and structured replies into one comparison format. Manual entry for early use, assisted extraction with human review, source file link for audit.
Export approved quote data into CARISAM's existing Excel and PDF format. Preserve the review step. Keep source data attached.
Turn accepted quotes into order records. Customer PO, vendor PO, deposit status, balance due, vendor payment status, shipping path, booking number, closeout status.
Bring Steve into the next phase to guide architecture and prevent throwaway tooling. The technical brief covers data store (Airtable / Sheets / Supabase / SQLite / custom), vendor response link security, authentication model, file handling, extraction sequencing, and the export path.
The first working dashboard concept has been produced as the Fast Quote Lane prototype. The sprint has also produced the workflow diagnosis, quote-to-invoice operating frame, workbook structure, Jim handoff frame, AI workflow direction, and next-phase roadmap.
The remaining work is no longer discovery. It is implementation depth. That is the next phase.
The main questions: where the data should live, how vendor response links should work, and how approved quote data exports back into the CARISAM quote format. This is the work that turns the prototype into the durable system.