Start from the inbox, not a new portal
Your clients already email RFQs. Forcing a portal login kills adoption. Connect the mailbox you already use (IMAP/SMTP, or OAuth when available) and normalize inbound mail into one pipeline.
Separate triage from pricing
Most inbox volume is not a freight RFQ. A cheap triage model should drop newsletters and chatter before you spend on full analysis. Only confirmed inquiries go to parsing and lane matching.
Ground prices in your lanes
Generic market indices do not know your last ten Vilnius→Milan moves. Pull historical routes from your TMS, cascade filters when city matches are thin, and show referenced lanes next to the draft.
Keep send human
Draft-only is the control model SMB owners accept. Operators edit tone and margin, then send. Unsent drafts must not train “won price” feedback loops.
- Connect one inbox and verify a test RFQ becomes draft-ready.
- Review the first twenty drafts with a senior forwarder.
- Tune preferences; only then expand to more mailboxes.