Who Owns the Estimate - Sales or Operations?

Who should be responsible for the estimating process?

One of the issues Navigate often addresses with customer is the estimating process.

Today, our own Steve Riley is joined by Tofiq Indawala, Director of Product Management at Solutions360, to discuss who should be responsible for the estimate.

“This is a conversation I always have with customers during implementation,” Indawala reports.

In terms of process management, who should be creating the estimate, and who should be creating the engineered solution?

“We often see sales reps that have experience in engineering, and they have migrated into a sales role. They are able to create the proposals and create the entire engineered solution and sell it. But this is not always the situation.”

“It’s all about ownership,” says Riley. “It’s about who is going to own that particular part of the process.”

“Salespeople own price, and they own the quote. Operations own cost, and they own the labor side.”

“Salespeople own price, and they own the quote as far as I’m concerned,” Riley continues. “They own the base. They may need help building the quote, but they should definitely own the quote itself, and the final price to the customer.”

“Operations own cost, and they own the labor side,” says Riley. “Because they are the ones that are going to be executing and performing the work.”

“That’s a pretty good rule that I’ve always followed, that each side owns their own side of the equation. They are both fully invested in the project. They both have skin in the game.”

What about from a labor standpoint?

“There are two elements to a project – you have equipment, and labor,” says Riley. “And the labor side of the equation, determining the labor component required to make the solution happen, should always be calculated, by the operations team.”

Watch the video for the full discussion: