Argo: from measuring up rooms to a signed quote in one app
How we built the quote maker for Argo Schoonmaakservice. You walk through the building and dictate the rooms, AI produces the room schedule and the calculation, and the client signs digitally.
Argo Schoonmaakservice in Roden regularly puts out quotes to new clients. To do that you need to know exactly which rooms are involved: how big they are, what kind of floor they have, how often they are cleaned and which tasks go with them. A surveyor walked through the building with a tape measure and a notepad.
Then the real work began. Re-keying measurements into Excel, doing the calculations, laying out a quote in Word, printing it, signing it, scanning it back in and emailing it. A process of hours, in which every re-keying step is a chance to introduce an error. And it took up the time of precisely the people who handle client contact. The question was not how to replace the craft knowledge, but how to take the re-keying out of it.
Walking along on site
We started by watching how it really goes. Walking along during a survey, looking over their shoulder at the Excel sheets, talking with the people who produce the quotes and with the people who carry out the work. That brought us to the things that were in no system at all: which tasks are standard and which are additional, how the square metres per floor type feed through into the price, and why a room schedule and a work programme belong with the quote.
Dictating instead of typing
The app we built takes over the survey. You walk through the building and simply say what you see: entrance 3.15 by 2.60, corridor 75 by 10.20, treatment room on the left 3.40 by 4. AI turns that into a complete room schedule with square metres, attaches the right tasks and frequencies to it and works the price through according to Argo's own calculation method. No tape-measure notes to decipher later, no Excel sheet per client.
Quote, approval and signature in one go
From the same data the quote rolls out directly in Argo's house style: summary, approach, investment and additional services. The client goes through the quote digitally, picks the additional services themselves and signs online. Printing and scanning are no longer needed. Argo can see per quote whether it has been sent, opened or signed, and everything sits in one place instead of scattered across folders and mailboxes.
The process of hours is gone. The survey happens on the move, the calculation happens automatically and the quote goes to the client digitally. Every quote uses the same calculation method and the same wording, so differences between colleagues have disappeared. The trip to the printer and scanner has gone entirely.
The most important part is not in the technology. Argo's staff are relieved that they have far less routine work to do and are left with time for personal contact with the client. That is what it comes down to in the end: automate the dull work and give the human work back to people. The quote maker keeps growing along in the meantime. At Argo's request we are working on sending the work programme and the room schedule along with the quote, and on four-weekly prices alongside annual ones.
“They now have more time for personal contact with the client.”