What product should I use for our application?

I work for an engineering firm that is wasting a lot of time in the sales department. As a sales engineer, I am convinced that we can significantly reduce the time spent generating a proposal/quotation for our customers by automating the process using a form input with about 30 questions. What would be the best Microsoft product to build this application? Note that we are currently licensed with Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power BI, and Sharepoint. The quantity of users that would need to use this quotation system would be approximately 6 unique users. I could really use some advice on this before I start building this app. A detailed description of our business problem follows:

Currently our engineering sales quotation data is located in Excel workbooks. Specifically one workbook for each multi-faceted project to be quoted. The sales team uses the workbook to input the cost of materials and estimated labor hours and then applies a gross margin to these costs to arrive at a final selling price. This is a slow, time-consuming process and takes up a lot of time, resources and meetings. But even after the final sell price is approved by management, the team member must write up a 20 page hand-written proposal to the customer, describing the deliverables and services that will be provided.

The data is structured as follows:

Main worksheet with line items, including:
- Materials used to construct control panel,
- Manufacturing labor hours to construct control panel,
- Recommended spare parts package for control panel,
- Engineering hours to program control panel for customer application,
- Project management team hours,
- Services to support installation on-site at customer facility,
- Other engineering services are optional line items, can be added manually
Multiple corresponding worksheets (one per line item from main worksheet)
- Material and labor costs are entered, totaled and calculated
- Data fed back to the main worksheet as line items.

Team members should be able to simply answer 20+ multiple choice questions (with some conditional branching), and 10+ yes/no (binary) questions. These questions would be posed as a form input but would be tied to their Microsoft account to have persistent state, so that they can close and open the form input at a later time. The team member would use this form instead of an Excel workbook and Word document to create PDF proposals tailored to customer application.

BW
(please note that I am using a personal account to ask this question to respect the privacy of our customers who are high-profile, government or infrastructure industries)

@escape.plan@mail.com

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General Questions

Based on the detailed description of your business problem and the Microsoft products you currently have access to, I would recommend using Power Apps and Power Automate (formerly known as Microsoft Flow) to build your quotation system application.

Here's how you can leverage these products to address your needs:

Power Apps: Use Power Apps to create the form input with the 30 questions. Power Apps allows you to design custom forms with various types of controls, including multiple-choice questions and yes/no options. You can easily connect the form to your Microsoft 365 or SharePoint environment to store the form responses.
Power Automate: Utilize Power Automate to automate the process after the form is submitted. You can set up a flow that captures the form responses, performs calculations, applies the gross margin, and generates the final selling price. Power Automate can integrate with Excel, SharePoint, and other systems to handle the data processing and workflows.
SharePoint: Store and manage your quotation data in SharePoint. You can create a SharePoint list or document library to store the information captured from the form, as well as any additional files or documents related to the quotation process. SharePoint provides document versioning, permissions, and collaboration features that can be beneficial for your sales team.
Power BI: Consider using Power BI to create visual dashboards and reports based on the quotation data stored in SharePoint. Power BI allows you to analyze and visualize your sales data, providing insights and analytics to help you make informed decisions.

By leveraging Power Apps and Power Automate, you can automate the manual quotation process, eliminate the need for multiple Excel workbooks, and generate PDF proposals tailored to customer applications. SharePoint can serve as a central repository for your quotation data, and Power BI can provide valuable insights into your sales performance.

With approximately six unique users, your licensing with Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 should be sufficient to support the application.

Before starting the development of the app, it's recommended to map out the workflows and requirements in detail, as well as involve your sales team in the design process to ensure the application meets their needs effectively.

Remember to explore the available documentation, tutorials, and communities for Power Apps and Power Automate to learn more about their capabilities and how to build robust solutions for your quotation system.