Manufacturing software · The Netherlands
AI became
everyone's business.
From a few confident early adopters to a team building better ways to do its own work.
Wim DijkgraafCEO, Quotation Factory
Team training throughAI First Academy
The tools were there.
The ownership was not.
Quotation Factory builds quoting software for metalworking manufacturers. Its business is helping other companies turn complex requests into accurate quotations. Inside its own team, the challenge was broader: making AI useful beyond the developers who were already comfortable with it.
CEO Wim Dijkgraaf had been experimenting with AI around leads and sales conversations. He could see the opportunity. But a company does not become AI-first if every useful idea still has to pass through the founder.
Sales, customer success, marketing and finance needed more than access to another tool. They needed the confidence to describe their own processes, connect the right information and build something repeatable.
One foundation.
Different responsibilities.
Bosar introduced the team to AI First Academy. Each employee received their own training account, with a practical path into Claude Code, Claude Cowork and the AI-first framework.
The curriculum connects three pieces: learning the tools, giving them structured company context, and turning recurring work into reusable skills. Instead of treating AI as a blank chat window, the team began treating it as a working environment that knows the business.
After completing the training, Quotation Factory formed an internal AI-first project team. Employees started building skills and agents for their own responsibilities, with weekly meetings to keep the work moving.
Better workflows,
department by department.
The starting point was ordinary work: a CRM update, a customer handover, a billing check, a product announcement. Each department built around the information and decisions it already understood.
From discovery call to a considered follow-up.
A rep finished a demo, reopened their notes, updated the CRM and wrote a follow-up from scratch. Preparing a software proposal meant finding the right product information and checking earlier conversations.
A reusable Claude skill brings the call notes together with the account record and approved product information. It prepares the CRM update, outlines the customer’s requirements and drafts a follow-up with a clear next step. The rep checks it, adds their judgment and sends it.
- Starts with
- Call notes + account history + product context
- Ready to review
- CRM update, follow-up and proposal outline
- Human decision
- The rep confirms scope, pricing and the message.
Turn customer history into a useful next step.
A handover arrived as a mix of messages, spreadsheets and sales notes. Customer success pieced together the manufacturer’s process, outstanding questions and onboarding requirements before every call.
Claude reads the agreed handover materials and prepares a customer brief: what the manufacturer wants to improve, what data is still missing and what the next session needs to cover. After the call, the same workflow updates the action list and prepares the customer recap.
- Starts with
- Sales handover + onboarding files + meeting notes
- Ready to review
- Customer brief, missing inputs and action list
- Human decision
- The account owner validates the plan and advice.
An exception list, instead of another spreadsheet pass.
Checking billing meant comparing agreed commercial terms, invoice records and account details line by line. Missing references and mismatched amounts took attention away from the items that needed a real decision.
A finance workflow compares the supplied account and billing exports, groups the discrepancies and prepares an exception list with links back to the source rows. Claude drafts the questions and follow-ups; finance reviews the amounts and approves every accounting action.
- Starts with
- Approved terms + account export + invoice export
- Ready to review
- Billing exceptions and draft follow-ups
- Human decision
- Finance approves invoices, changes and reminders.
One product update. A coherent set of communications.
Turning a release into a customer email, a LinkedIn post and a sales talking point meant starting three times. The product detail lived with developers and the tone depended on who had time to write.
Marketing gives Claude the release notes, approved positioning and a defined audience. A shared skill prepares the email, post and sales summary together, using the same facts and language. The team checks the claims and edits the message before anything goes out.
- Starts with
- Release notes + audience + company voice
- Ready to review
- Customer email, LinkedIn draft and sales summary
- Human decision
- Marketing checks accuracy and publishes.
The useful part
is what becomes repeatable.
A good result in a chat is helpful once. A skill with clear inputs, company context and a review step is something the team can use again tomorrow.
Product knowledge, customer definitions, tone of voice and operating rules give Claude a consistent foundation. Department skills then specify the task: what to read, what to produce and what must stay with a person.
The same knowledge.
A more consistent first draft.
That distinction matters. Preparing an invoice review is different from approving a financial change. Drafting a sales message is different from making a promise to a customer. The workflow carries the preparation; the team owns the decision.
The transformation
has owners inside the business.
The course gave the team a shared method. The internal project team gave that method somewhere to live. Weekly reviews create a practical rhythm: show what you built, examine the output, improve the instructions and decide what to tackle next.
“All team members are building skills and agents for their own work and processes.”Luc Versmissen · CFO, Quotation Factory
The change is visible in who starts the conversation. The person closest to a process can now bring a working improvement to the team, instead of waiting for a developer or the founder to make time.
AI becomes part of how the company works when the people doing the work can shape it themselves.