In Parts 1(A) and 1(B), we explored the Incoming RFQ—what happens when a customer asks a supplier to quote. In this article, we shift perspective to the Outgoing RFQ—the sequence of sourcing decisions that begins before an OEM decides which suppliers should receive an RFQ and continues until the business is ultimately awarded.
At first glance, this appears to be a much simpler problem. Most OEMs already have approved vendor lists, ERP systems, supplier scorecards and years of purchasing history.
Finding suppliers isn't difficult. Knowing which suppliers are genuinely relevant is.
Three Decisions Every Sourcing Process Demands
Every sourcing decision appears to come down to three questions. Each depends on decades of engineering and commercial knowledge already scattered across the enterprise.
1. Who should receive this RFQ?
Not every supplier is equally capable. Some have manufactured similar parts before. Some have the right machines but not the right tolerances. Others may have delivered similar work successfully—but for a completely different business unit, customer or programme.
The first challenge isn't finding suppliers. It's identifying suppliers with experience that is genuinely relevant to the engineering requirement in front of you.
2. What is a commercially reasonable price?
For decades, procurement teams have relied on historical prices, spreadsheets and should-cost models to answer this question. All are valuable but none tell the complete story.
Historical prices explain the past. Manufacturing physics explains what should happen. Market conditions explain the present. The sourcing challenge isn't choosing one of these. It's determining which evidence is relevant to today's sourcing decision and bringing it together into a commercial position that can be defended—not simply calculated.
3. Which supplier gives us the greatest confidence to award the business?
Most procurement teams try to balance quality and cost. The best sourcing teams go much further. They consider engineering capability, commercial competitiveness, supplier performance, quality history, delivery reliability and business risk together. Every award decision is ultimately an exercise in confidence.
The Human Limit
Experienced buyers remember suppliers they've worked with. Engineers remember difficult jobs. Procurement teams remember negotiations that went well—and those that didn't. That experience is incredibly valuable. But no individual remembers thousands of suppliers, tens of thousands of parts and years of manufacturing history.
Human judgement remains indispensable. It simply doesn't scale.
The System Limit
Enterprise systems remember everything. Purchase Orders. Supplier Scorecards. Inspection Reports. Invoices. Quality Records. Yet every one of these records exists in isolation. One system knows suppliers. Another knows costs. Another knows quality. Another knows production. None understand that they all describe the same engineering problem.
The reason these systems have a limit is surprisingly simple. Every system organises information around part numbers, supplier codes and transactions. None understands engineering similarity. Two near-identical components from different programmes sit under different identifiers, making decades of relevant engineering and commercial history effectively invisible.
Before procurement can connect supplier history, quality records, commercial outcomes and manufacturing knowledge, it first needs a shared engineering identity that links them. Geometry provides that shared identity, connecting every piece of enterprise evidence associated with a part.
The systems don't need replacing. They need a shared engineering identity. Geometry provides the common join key that allows every system to speak about the same component in the same way.
Confidence: The Art and Science of Sourcing
The sourcing challenge isn't about finding more data. It's about connecting the right evidence. Every supplier quotation should be evaluated through multiple independent sources of evidence.
Historical engineering outcomes.
Supplier performance.
Manufacturing capability.
Commercial history.
Manufacturing physics.
Current market conditions.
Each tells only part of the story. Together, they create something far more valuable: Cost Confidence.
Cost Confidence is not another should-cost estimate. It is not a historical price lookup. It is not a supplier ranking. It is a commercially defensible negotiation position built from multiple independent sources of engineering, manufacturing and commercial evidence.
So instead of asking, What should this part cost? the better question becomes, How confident are we that this quotation is commercially reasonable?
That small shift changes the nature of procurement. Negotiations move from opinion to evidence.
This Is Where ShapeSense Fits
ShapeSense doesn't replace procurement expertise. It gives procurement teams access to decades of engineering and commercial learning at the moment sourcing decisions are made.
When an outgoing RFQ is created, the objective isn't simply to identify suppliers. It's to answer better questions:
Which suppliers have successfully manufactured similar engineering families?
What commercial outcomes followed?
How did similar parts perform across quality, cost and delivery?
Where are the strongest negotiation opportunities?
Which supplier gives us the greatest confidence?
Procurement teams don't simply evaluate quotations. They evaluate the confidence that each supplier has earned through previous engineering, quality, delivery and commercial performance.
The best sourcing teams won't simply issue RFQs faster. They'll issue smarter RFQs. Because every supplier interaction, every quotation, every negotiation and every production outcome become evidence that strengthens the next sourcing decision. And when procurement captures not only what was decided, but why, transaction history gradually becomes decision history.
And when the reasoning behind those decisions is captured—not just the outcome—the organisation doesn't simply accumulate transaction history. It begins to accumulate decision history.
That is how commercial intelligence compounds.
In Part 2(B), Aditi explores the technical foundations behind Cost Confidence—why connecting engineering, manufacturing and commercial evidence is far more difficult than it appears, and what it takes to build procurement systems that make sourcing decisions with genuine confidence.