Manufacturing has spent decades automating the floor. The front office, where quotes, inquiries, and follow-up live, still runs on inboxes and spreadsheets. That is the hidden automation layer.
The RFQ bottleneck
An inbound RFQ often sits for a day or more before someone gathers specs, qualifies urgency, and routes it to the right specialist. Every hour of delay is a competitor getting their quote in first.
Why ERP doesn't solve it
ERP systems record transactions. They do not reason through an ambiguous inquiry or chase a vendor for a missing spec. That work needs judgment, and until now it needed a person.
Where agents fit
An inquiry agent reads the RFQ, gathers and confirms specs, qualifies buyer urgency, and routes to the right product specialist. Time to quote drops from a day to hours.
The takeaway
The next automation gain in manufacturing is not on the line. It is in the operations that ERP systems cannot reach.