OmniBid

Lowe's fastest-growing market required manual searching

The Pro Desk is where Lowe's competes for small and mid-size contractors, the segment it has chosen to prioritize over large enterprise accounts.

Orders usually run $10,000 to $50,000+, so contractors shop around: they bring a competitor's quote, usually Home Depot's, and ask Lowe's to beat it.

Every one of those requests forces a judgment call: is this customer worth winning, and how far can we move on price?

It's not just the cost of materials and margins. It's also understanding the customer: a loyal account that has spent seven figures this year might be offered a bigger discount than a one-time buyer, even on an identical quote.

Both have to be read together, and the reading was done in-store by associates rather than corporate pricing analysts.

What was at stake

Getting this call wrong in either direction has a real cost: discount too deeply on a low-value customer, or hold firm and lose someone worth keeping. Lowe's needed to get it right at scale.

Meet Sarah, a Pro Desk Associate

Sarah is a Pro Desk Associate who works at a Lowe's in upstate New York.

On a busy day she handles five to ten quote requests, each one in the five figures. Right now it's a contractor who just won a roofing job, calling in with a Home Depot quote for a full materials list:

• 150+ shingles

• 12 rolls of underlayment

• 5 cans of roofing cement

• 3 boxes of nails
  
  To answer him, she has to check bulk pricing on every line, confirm store inventory, and know the margin on each item.

  She also has to place the customer: is this a $500K account or a one-time buyer?

  Before Central Quoting, that meant pulling it all from booklets, spreadsheets, and memory, doing the math by hand, and holding it together while the contractor waited.
  Thirty to sixty minutes of work, for a decision that still came down to gut feel.

3 decisions helped me design quicker situations

The data already existed in the system. The real challenge was surfacing it for the associate, rather than having them do it by hand.

Three decisions I made were all about closing that gap.

• I computed the score instead of displaying the inputs. The existing screen showed five separate customer data points. I added a Values section that takes those inputs and returns a single customer value score automatically. The associate sees the answer, not the arithmetic.

• I made value legible at a glance, through color. Green, yellow, red. The associate can see whether to compete hard, hold firm, or let this one go without reading a single number.

• I kept the final call with the associate. The design removes the calculation, not the judgment. The associate still decides what to offer; the tool just makes sure that decision is fast and well informed.