Stop Using Spreadsheets—and You Can Quote Me on That

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

Meeting changing business needs and a thriving market sometimes means process efficiencies. Not all those efficiency improvements take place on the shop floor, however. For EMS companies, growth can also mean changing out the business operations software to have one more chance to close a business deal that better aligns with the company’s sweet spot. One of the pressing issues for EMS companies is the great deal of attention on sales and quoting software solutions and how to make them perform better. Chintan Sutaria, the founder and former CEO of CalcuQuote now working on other projects at OpenJar, explains.

Nolan Johnson: With current global trade policy renegotiations and reshoring dynamics, EMS providers have significant potential for growth, with particular attention on quotes and sales. What are you seeing?

Chintan Sutaria: Ten years ago, it was a differentiator to have a solid quoting capability, but today it’s necessary. If you’re manually going through an Excel spreadsheet, you will not likely remain competitive for very long. Customers expect more responsiveness and shorter periods between interactions. The time it takes to do a manual quoting process is not feasible anymore.

Johnson: That's interesting because it would seem that the most common tool for quoting and sales management is an in-house software, likely an Excel spreadsheet.

Sutaria: Don't get me wrong, Excel spreadsheets can be legitimate tools. You can automate a lot of things in Excel. You can even tie it into distribution APIs and get real-time data. There's a lot you can do with a VBA (visual basic application).

To read the entire interview, which originally appeared in the June 2025 SMT007 Magazine, click here.