From Spreadsheets to Salesforce: A Construction Company Transforms Bid Management with Agentforce, Sales Cloud, and Salesforce Maps

The Challenges

Our client, a specialty contractor in the Construction Industry, delivers a wide range of commercial and industrial fencing solutions — from sound walls and prison fencing to access control and sports systems. Despite their expertise in the field, their internal operations were bogged down by outdated and disconnected systems. 

Before partnering with Kelley Austin, the company managed accounts, contacts, and bid requests using Excel spreadsheets, Outlook, and inconsistent manual processes across team members. This made it difficult to track and prioritize bids across general contractors (GCs), resulting in a lack of visibility, inefficiencies, and the risk of missed revenue opportunities. 

Additionally, without a unified system, customer data was fragmented and inaccessible across teams, leading to poor user experiences and delays in job tracking, quoting, and reporting. Key challenges they faced included:

Manual Bid & GC Management: Teams were burdened with time-consuming and error-prone tracking of RFQs and job opportunities via email and spreadsheets.

Data Silos & Inaccuracy: Without integration between systems, critical customer and bid data lacked consistency and accessibility.

Limited Visibility into Performance: The team had no easy way to track bid statuses, job progress, or revenue performance across projects.

Disconnected Field Teams: Sales reps and estimators lacked tools to efficiently plan site visits or route their day based on opportunity data.

The Solution

To modernize operations and resolve inefficiencies across the bidding lifecycle, Kelley Austin implemented a robust Salesforce solution tailored to the unique needs of our client. The goal was to bring structure, automation, and real-time visibility to processes that were previously manual and inconsistent. 

This transformation unified key business functions — including lead capture, bid management, quoting, and field team coordination — into a single, integrated platform.

By combining the power of Agentforce, Sales Cloud, and Salesforce Maps, our team enabled the company to streamline workflows, improve data accuracy, and gain deeper insights into business performance. The result was a scalable, intuitive solution designed to support both current needs and future growth.

Agentforce

‍

Kelley Austin implemented a custom Agentforce AI agent tailored to the company’s RFQ process. This AI agent automatically processes incoming bid request emails by extracting critical data — such as project names, dates, specs, and contractor contact info — and auto-generating bid records in Salesforce.

Key capabilities included:

Automated Case Creation: Emails forwarded to a shared inbox are converted into pre-populated Salesforce cases, eliminating manual entry.

Smart Matching: Agentforce scans Salesforce for existing opportunities or accounts and matches bids accordingly — preventing duplicates and enabling faster approvals.

Opportunity Scoring: AI uses historical win/loss data to score incoming bids based on GC relationships, helping estimators prioritize high-value work.

Time Savings: By reducing handling time by 75%, managers reclaimed time for strategic tasks and customer engagement.

Sales Cloud

To create a centralized and scalable sales operation, Kelley Austin implemented Salesforce Sales Cloud as the core CRM platform for managing the company’s leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, and quoting processes. 

This allowed the team to move away from siloed spreadsheets and email-based tracking and into a streamlined system with built-in automation and reporting. Sales Cloud provided the foundation for structured workflows, enabling consistent handling of residential and GC bids, automated notifications for internal teams, and accurate quote generation — all while maintaining full visibility across the entire sales cycle.

Key Sales Cloud solutions we implemented for our client include:

Lead to Opportunity Automation: From web-to-lead forms to custom opportunity paths (residential vs. GC), Sales Cloud enables fast, accurate tracking of prospects.

Custom Workflows & Notifications: Sales reps are now guided through tailored sales paths, receive timely reminders, and manage contact roles with ease.

Quote Management: Quotes are created with manual price flexibility, tied to product records, and sent with Docusign. Status changes trigger automated notifications and reporting updates.

Warranty Automation: When jobs are marked complete, automated emails trigger warranty notifications — improving post-sale customer service.

Salesforce Maps

Recognizing the importance of geographic context in construction and field sales, we deployed Salesforce Maps to help the team better plan, prioritize, and execute site visits.

With users relying on location data to manage customer relationships and bid opportunities, Salesforce Maps was configured with custom layers to visualize key segments like open opportunities, current customers, and past clients. 

This functionality gave field reps the tools to optimize their daily routes, reduce travel inefficiencies, and ensure they were spending time where it mattered most — all within the Salesforce interface they were already using. Key solutions included:

Visual Sales Planning: Up to five custom map layers help visualize key data like current customers, accounts with open bids, and past customers.

Route Optimization: Sales reps can plan site visits using live data from Salesforce, increasing efficiency and time on-site.

User Access Controls: Salesforce Maps is fully integrated with role-based permissions, ensuring the right data is shown to the right team members.

Customer Impact

With Salesforce and Agentforce in place, the company dramatically improved how they manage RFQs, bids, and customer relationships. Manual processes were replaced with intelligent automation, enabling faster, more accurate decision-making and reducing bid processing time by 75%.

The company now benefits from:

Unified Customer Data: All customer, bid, and job information is now in a single system, improving collaboration and data accuracy.

Faster Time-to-Bid: AI and automation reduced time spent sorting and responding to bid requests — allowing managers to focus on revenue-generating activities.

Improved Sales Efficiency: With Salesforce Maps, reps can strategically plan their routes and better manage customer visits.

Actionable Insights: Real-time dashboards and opportunity scoring give leadership visibility into what’s working — and where to focus next.

By modernizing their operations with Salesforce and AI, the company is now equipped with a flexible, scalable platform that supports growth and continuous improvement. Teams across sales, estimating, and field operations are no longer bogged down by manual processes or siloed information — instead, they have real-time access to the data they need to make informed decisions and move quickly on high-priority bids. 

Agentforce’s intelligent automation has significantly reduced time spent on repetitive tasks, while Sales Cloud and Salesforce Maps have empowered the team with consistent workflows, accurate quoting, and optimized routing. 

Most importantly, leadership now has full visibility into pipeline performance, job tracking, and revenue forecasting, allowing them to operate with greater agility and confidence in a highly competitive industry. With these tools in place, the company is well-positioned to win more business, strengthen customer relationships, and scale operations with ease.