Ambry Hill Technologies says it has begun using artificial intelligence (AI) to process requests for quotes on its VistaQuote software platform. 

VistaQuote is a cloud-based request-for-quote (RFQ) management solution that provides users in the aviation aftermarket—such as companies that offer maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) services—with a consolidated and organized view of all incoming RFQs. Buyers can submit RFQs to potential suppliers in different ways; they might make a phone call in response to an advertisement, send direct messages through an inventory listing service subscription, or send emails directly to suppliers. 

Ambry Hill launched VistaQuote three years ago to help suppliers consolidate and manage RFQs on a single platform, regardless of the marketplace or message source. According to Ambry Hill, this service “eliminated the labor-intensive process of manually copying information from a traditional RFQ email inbox over to a separate quoting system.” 

While VistaQuote has helped to automate and speed up the processing of marketplace and listing service RFQs, it hasn’t been able to understand and process ordinary emails written by people seeking information on availability and pricing—until now. Using AI, VistaQuote now automatically extracts key information from those emails and uses that information to trigger automated tasks, like checking inventory availability, dispatching the request to an appropriate salesperson, or executing an export compliance check using third-party databases, according to Ambry Hill.

“VistaQuote already had the ability to auto-quote RFQs based on a feature-rich selection of customizable parameters,” said Cole Davisson, v-p of software innovation at Ambry Hill Technologies. “Now imagine pairing the auto-quoting with our AI recognition of human-typed RFQ emails. This exciting combination of AI and auto-quoting means that RFQ emails are recognized, interpreted, have the data extracted, are made into an RFQ within VistaQuote, and within seconds the customer will receive a quote without a human shepherding it throughout the entire process.”