In switching to Tendium, Combitech, a technology and IT company with some 2000 employees, refined and strengthened its public procurement processes and increased its tender bid efficiency. With thousands of procurements published for the IT sector each year, and hundreds of bids submitted, robust processes and decisive decision-making is crucial for success. Using the Tendium platform, Combitech is now able to determine the relevancy of procurements at an earlier stage, freeing up resources to focus on opportunities that are a good fit. The overall result is a more efficient, streamlined and decisive procurement process, where bidding has become simpler.
We spoke with Magnus Andersen, Senior Bid Manager at Combitech, who finds relevant procurements for the company to pursue – a significant process where Combitech uses the Tendium platform.
“It’s faster to read summaries than downloading documents”
Searching broadly to find relevant procurements, Combitech scans through thousands of procurements each year, but only bids on a maximum of 5-10% of these. Screening relevant opportunities is an important part of the procurement process, and something that became easier and more efficient with the Tendium platform.
“It’s faster to read the summaries instead of downloading documents. It means that we have time to look through far more procurements than we did before. As a result, it’s faster to screen procurements, and that’s the most important thing – to quickly screen those that aren’t interesting. Every time we avoid initiating work on irrelevant procurements, we save time,” says Andersen.
For Andersen, the platform has also provided clarity, in part due to how he and his team can change, add and modify procurement monitoring profiles themselves. By tailoring monitoring profiles to fit the company’s intended sector, Combitech has reduced the risk of missing out on relevant procurements, and has gained a better overview of what the market currently has to offer. The team is also better aligned, and to quote Andersen, “this level of transparency is just not available in our CRM system.”
Improved collaboration leads to better decision making
The automated procurement summaries also go beyond simply improving screening efficiency. Combitech uses these to discuss and assess interesting opportunities, and to determine what resources will be required and where. The company has weekly meetings where it discusses 10-12 interesting and relevant procurements, and where decisions are made based on in-depth analyses.
Previously, Combitech found it difficult to ensure that everyone was on the same page, as team members would all be required to read through lengthy, and often multiple, procurement documents. With automatic summaries, the name of the game changed. “We’ve seen an increase in efficiency. With the help of the summaries, more people are informed before we make decisions. We also make better-informed decisions on which procurements to handle,” says Magnus Andersen.
“We have increased efficiency and saved time”
Andersen estimates that Combitech has managed to save between 25-30% of the time it used to take on identifying relevant procurements. Safe to say is that the company has increased their procurement success rate while minimising the number of relevant procurements missed. With grounded and informed decisions early on in the process, Combitech can now devote its resources to efforts that will have the greatest effect and return on investment.
And Andersen is satisfied with the switch to Tendium.
“We have more defined and well-rounded procurement monitoring processes. We’ve achieved greater consistency, increased efficiency, and saved on time while achieving the same effect. Improved efficiency means that we are better prepared for when tenders are released, in that we can free up time and resources to be more proactive. Today, our success rate is more than 50% for bids submitted, but we have even loftier ambitions.”
