A stalled quote cools the sale; AI was the way out

Mitsubishi Electric Digital Innovation, part of the Mitsubishi Electric group in Japan, receives about 100 quote requests a month. The customer was left waiting, and the technician redid the math when information was missing. In two months, the company built an AI agent in Microsoft Copilot Studio that prepares the draft of each quote.

You just paste the request email: the agent checks the price list, the contract and old quotes and returns service, quantity and price, with the source of each number. This matters for sales: according to Harvard Business Review, whoever responds within an hour is almost 7 times more likely to reach the decision maker.

In your company, the path is similar. Gather the price list, discount rules and quotes already sent, and let AI put the draft together for the salesperson to check and send. Requests outside the standard stay with the specialist, as in the Japanese case. Start with the most requested product or service.

The cost is writing down the rules that today live in the team's heads, because AI only follows what is written. The savings of 400 hours a year are still a projection, users approved about 8 in 10 answers and the Harvard study is from 2011. How long does your customer wait for a quote today?

Sources

Beyont, 21 Oct 2026. https://beyont.jp/news/20261021-110000/

Beyont (PR TIMES), 21 Oct 2026. https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000219.000035215.html

Harvard Business Review, Mar 2011, Oldroyd, McElheran e Elkington. https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads