Sanitär Heinze, a leading German HVAC and sanitary wholesaler with more than €367 million in revenue, uses Mercura to automate the processing of bills of quantities and customer inquiries.

The result: 100% of incoming requests can now be processed with the same sales team, while tender processing time has been reduced by more than 50%.

Previously, capacity constraints meant that around 30% of incoming requests had to be declined.

How Sanitär Heinze uses Mercura to process more customer requests

Michael Kania, VP Controlling at Sanitär Heinze, explains the implementation of Mercura and its impact on tender processing in the video below.

The challenge: Manual bill of quantities processing limits sales capacity

Processing bills of quantities is one of the most time consuming workflows in technical wholesale.

Customer requests can contain large numbers of individual positions that need to be reviewed, filtered and matched with the correct products before a quote can be created.

At Sanitär Heinze, this process required substantial manual work and deep product knowledge from experienced employees.

The consequences were significant: the inside sales team was operating at full capacity and around 30% of incoming requests had to be declined.

At the same time, employees had limited capacity to systematically follow up on existing quotes or optimize proposals for individual customers.

The process also relied heavily on product expertise concentrated among experienced team members, making scalability increasingly difficult in an environment of skilled labor shortages.

The solution: AI powered tender processing connected to SAP

Processed tender data can be exported directly to SAP via OData or provided in other formats for downstream processing.

Sanitär Heinze implemented Mercura to automate key steps of its bill of quantities and quotation workflow.

Mercura's AI system was trained using Sanitär Heinze's own product master data and integrated into the existing sales process.

For every incoming bill of quantities, Mercura automatically:

1. analyzes the request and identifies relevant positions

2. filters positions that need to be quoted

3. suggests suitable products for individual positions

4. presents the results to employees for review

5. transfers processed requests into SAP via an OData based ERP integration

6. assigns requests to the relevant construction project so existing work can be reused

Instead of manually researching every position, sales employees can focus on reviewing and validating the AI generated product suggestions.

Reusing quotes across construction projects

A further efficiency gain comes from project based assignment.

Requests are automatically associated with the corresponding construction project. When several customers request quotations for the same project, previously processed information can be reused instead of recreating the quote from scratch.

This reduces repetitive work and makes accumulated product knowledge available across the sales organization.

The results: Every incoming request can now be processed

The impact is measurable: Sanitär Heinze now processes 100% of incoming requests with the same team size.

Previously, capacity limitations meant that roughly 30% of requests could not be processed.

At the same time, tender processing time has been reduced by more than 50%, with quoting time reduced by up to 80% for applicable workflows.

The additional capacity gives the sales team more time for customer consultation, quote follow up and customer specific optimizations instead of repetitive product matching.

Lukas Bock, CEO of Mercura, with Michael Kania, VP Controlling at Sanitär Heinze

What does AI automation mean for HVAC and sanitary wholesalers?

For HVAC and sanitary wholesalers, quotation automation is not simply about generating text with AI.

The core challenge is accurately understanding technical requests and matching individual positions with products from large, company specific assortments while preserving the expertise and control of the sales team.

Mercura combines AI based request analysis and product matching with existing product master data and ERP systems.

Employees remain in control of the final result while repetitive parts of the quotation process are automated.

For Sanitär Heinze, this means that the same 40 person inside sales team can handle substantially more customer requests without sacrificing human review.

Can Mercura integrate with existing ERP systems?

Yes. At Sanitär Heinze, Mercura is connected to SAP through an OData based integration.

Processed requests can therefore move from Mercura into the existing ERP workflow for pricing rather than requiring employees to manually transfer information between systems.

This allows AI automation to become part of the existing quotation process instead of replacing the systems the sales team already uses.

Process more customer requests with your existing sales team

If your sales team spends significant time manually processing bills of quantities, identifying products or transferring quotation data into your ERP system, Mercura can help automate these workflows.