Evidence note: B2B quoting in an SME

Last checked: 19 August 2026. Version française.

This note bounds the synthetic A2 business-agent quoting case. It does not turn large-enterprise or supplier case studies into a promise for an SME.

What can transfer

• The OECD SME report provides SME adoption context, but self-reported improvement is not a measured saving for a quoting workflow.
• The Alibaba field trial is direct evidence that a bounded agent can reduce eligible-case time. Eligibility was only 5.8%, so the whole-flow result was much smaller.
• Ingram Micro InstaQuote is a close functional analogue: email intake, product and attachment extraction, database checks, pricing APIs, and a quote prepared for a seller. It is a supplier case at large-enterprise scale, without a full public control.
• Grupo Elfa, Lexmark, and US Foods show high implementation scenarios. They are not independent SME benchmarks.
• METR measured a 19% slowdown on familiar, complex software tasks, a useful warning that poor task fit can make AI slower.

An 80% reduction on an eligible request is not an 80% reduction in company work. Apply eligibility, then count approval, exceptions, corrections, monitoring, maintenance, and new bottlenecks. The worked 50–75% range is an explicitly ambitious demonstration hypothesis. It must be challenged on a frozen set and replaced with pilot observations.