With potential tender wins bringing in thousands or millions in value to your business, can you afford to rely on a limited understanding of your bidding universe?
In this article we look at the frustrations of obtaining Contract Notices and Awards data for deeper analysis. Plus, delve into the valuable insights that can be gained and highlight a solution to give you easy access to this knowledge.
Data Challenges
Understanding your tendering universe is an essential element of strategic bid management. This encompasses all potential opportunities available to an organisation, plus the broader landscape in which it competes for contracts, including client and competitor activities.
However, many organisations struggle to secure comprehensive data to properly analyse. They may be reliant on ad hoc limited data sources that may not be accurate or up to date.
This can significantly impact the ability of businesses to stay vigilant and agile to new threats or opportunities.
“95% of businesses cite the need to manage unstructured data as a problem for their business, with those able to do so gaining a significant competitive advantage with clearer visibility.” Forbes
Challenges around sourcing and analysing tender data include:
- Fragmented Data Sources: Tender information is often sourced from multiple procurement platforms and databases. This makes it extremely difficult and time consuming to compile and keep a comprehensive database updated.
- Inconsistent Data Quality: Even when data is available, the reality is that quality can vary greatly. Some tenders may include detailed descriptions and clear eligibility criteria, while others may lack critical information. This makes it harder for businesses to accurately assess their bidding environment.
- Volume of Data: Dealing with the sheer volume of tendering information available can also prove challenging. For example, for Europe alone, 832,673 Contract Notices were published in 2023 and around 439,349 for the first 8 months of 2024. Without the right tools and expertise this is a near impossible task. Managing and analysing the data within spreadsheets will not suffice!
- Geographical Factors: Data collection and analysis is even more challenging when your business operates in international markets. Different countries will have varying levels of transparency, access to public data, and regulations that affect tendering processes. Bringing these different sources together, in different formats requires data management expertise.
This makes it extremely difficult for organisations to obtain a holistic view of their tender universe and easily extract intelligence and insight. They may fall back on limited tacit knowledge or past perceptions, such as the state of their market share, customer requirements or competitive landscape.
This can result in companies making less informed, data-driven strategic decisions and undermining their bidding efforts.
Bidding Universe Insights
Let’s now look at the potential insights that Contract Notices and Awards data can bring to an organisation. This is based on analysis of both historic and real-time datasets. This can provide insight into your past, present and future bid universe.
“Businesses which prioritised data analytics could increase their operating margins by up to 60%.” McKinsey
Performance Monitoring
Tracking your bidding performance is an essential element of bid management and strategy development. Relying on past success rates is a dangerous game and can easily put you on the backfoot and behind your competition.
Insights can include identification of:
- Your wins and losses to establish win rates
- Changes in your market share
- Performance gaps and missed tender opportunities.
Competitor Tracking
Being able to differentiate yourselves from your competitors, within your bid submissions is vital to sustaining win rates. Therefore, having an in-depth understanding of your competitor landscape and activities is vital.
Insights can include identification of:
- Your established competitors
- New competitors coming into the marketplace
- The procurement codes and keywords competitor s are pursuing
- New products and services being introduced by competitors
- Competitors ’ win rates, win values and market share.
Change & Trend Identification
The bidding universe will always be changing, offering new opportunities and bringing new threats to your business and tender activities.
There is a great deal of useful information within Contract Notices and Awards which can help you identify new trends and market changes. This gives you a valuable tool for remaining agile and ahead of the game.
Insights can include identification of:
- Changing customer requirements
- New products and innovations coming to market
- Potential end of life for existing products
- Potential direction for new product development.
Future Planning
While being vigilant to changes in your bidding universe is vital, its value is only realised in how your business approaches future planning and strategy development.
Regular reviews are required to stay agile to addressing threats and optimising opportunities. The better data-driven decisions are made, the better the outcomes achieved.
Insights can help steer strategy, including:
- Finetuning targeting strategies (e.g. geographies, procurement codes and keywords)
- Assessing and updating qualifications criteria and pursuit decisions
- Planning sales pipeline with future Contract Renewal (your own and competitors)
- Finding new markets and potential new customers.
The Way Forward
As demonstrated above it is impractical, difficult and costly for individual organisations to secure and maintain a comprehensive database of historic and real-time Contract Notices and Awards. It requires investment in time and expertise to manage, analyse and gain valuable insight.
Hence many businesses continue to struggle to make well-informed, data-driven strategic bid decisions.
However, the new TenderEyes Market Insights tool provides an ideal solution for easy interrogation, visualisation and understanding of your bidding universe.
TenderEyes Market Insights includes:
- Single Source Database: Consisting of 10 plus years of live and expired UK & Europe Public Procurement Contract Notices and Awards. Plus from January 2024 global Public Procurement Contract Notices and Awards. Data can be supplied for your specific regions or countries, industries, procurement codes and keywords.
- Powerful Analysis: Rapid analysis of big volume real-time and historic data. Displayed in easily interpreted dashboards with lists, line and bar charts. With easy interrogation and filter options including title, description, procurement codes, country, and date ranges.
- Valuable Insights: Consisting of a comprehensive set of insights including Tender Triage, Contract Notices, Awards, Future Notices and Competitors. With a potential 90+ datapoints to be explored, additional bespoke dashboards can be created to suit e your individual reporting needs.
- Improved Decision Making: Real-time and historic intelligence to keep you informed and updated on new threats and opportunities. Allowing you to stay agile and continue growing your bid success rates. Including:
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- Future bid forecasting and planning
- Early notification of changing market and customer needs and innovations
- Early warning of new competitor entrants, products or market infiltration.
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The above data and insights will benefit those within your organisations who have a strategic role and responsibility.
This will include Marketing, Product Development, Business Development & Sales, Account Management, Bid Teams, Customer Success and Service Delivery.
Giving all your teams the confidence to make well-informed strategic decisions and achieve bidding success.
