K3 Nordic chose Tendium to increase its business with the public sector, and it has worked. The company has saved 90% on the time investment to find relevant public tenders, and has already won some of them. Thanks to Tendium, K3 Nordic won its largest public tender so far, valued at over $1 million. Going forward Tendium is now part of K3 Nordic’s business development toolbox.
The search for the ultimate tool for public procurement
K3 Nordic is a retailer in IT services and specialises in software, licences and cloud services. When the time came to focus more on the public market, K3 Nordic turned to Tendium.
“We haven’t always focused on public procurement , but about a year ago we made a decision to take a bigger leap into the public market to win more public contracts. We started to actively search for a monitoring service as well as a great tool for public procurement that could help us succeed and stay on top of the market,” says Peter Kristoffersson, CEO at K3 Nordic.
Winning a contract for over $1 million with Tendium
K3 Nordic’s work in the Tendium platform has resulted in big wins. The company recently won its largest public procurement to date as a licence partner to a municipal housing company.
“It’s the first time we’ve won this kind of procurement by ourselves. It’s largely due to the fact that we have been able to find the opportunity, organise and collaborate through the collected tools in the platform. Without Tendium, I would be very doubtful that we would have won that deal, which for us is a business value of approximately $1 million over the contract period,” Peter says.
Saving 90% of the time spent finding the right procurements
K3 Nordic is a relatively niche actor in licences and software, making the amount of procurements relevant for the company area quite few. For a company like K3 Nordic, it’s extremely important to easily find the right procurements that match the company.
With Tendium’s smart tools, such as the summary function, K3 Nordic can swiftly find if there’s something in a procurement that makes it extra interesting and if the opportunity is worth investing in. “That assessment takes a tenth of the time compared to before, as we used to read through all the procurement documents in previous procurement tools,” Peter says.
Using Tendium from start (monitoring) to finish (tender)
At least once a week. That’s the minimum amount of time that K3 Nordic uses the platform to monitor published procurements and assess the ones worth investing in. Due to automatically generated summaries, K3 Nordic can quickly scan the information in the procurements.
“We work with licences and cloud services and it’s an area in continuous development. This means that the way you procured ten, five or three years ago is constantly moving forward and changing. By scanning widely and being able to access a lot of information in the Tendium platform, we can pick up many places where licences and cloud services are part of other procurements. After that we can quickly identify if there’s any procurement that’s relevant to us”, Peter says.
Another appreciated functionality within the platform is keyword search in documents. With keyword search, K3 Nordic can choose to display procurements that contain or do not contain special terms and keywords. K3 Nordic can then quickly identify if there’s something in the procurement that could disqualify them.
After identifying relevant procurements, the platform and its function are absolutely essential to K3 Nordic’s workflow. The company uses the platform to compile and centralise documents and questions and Peter especially appreciates that several people can work together on the platform. “I appreciate that there is the function that you can actually collaborate in the same place, which of course saves time compared to if you create project folders in other places and then have to work with documents and updates back and forth.”
An essential tool in K3 Nordic’s business development
K3 Nordic not only uses the Tendium platform to find relevant procurements, but also to develop its business going forward. Peter says:
“We also scan procurements that are not directly relevant to us today. Such procurements are seen as a potential area for the future and helps us to understand what it takes to be there. We search with a fairly large net and then we look at the fish before throwing some back. Then we think about how to develop the business using the information provided in Tendium’s service.”
Peter emphasises that Tendium’s procurement monitoring plays a central role for K3 Nordic’s external monitoring. The company examines which procurements they can and may enter in the future and analyses what comes out on the market. In this way, K3 Nordic can save a lot of time to keep track of procurements. Peter also explains that external monitoring is important from a business development perspective:
“I think the part of monitoring different markets is a very strong feature in the platform, especially when you are a niche actor like us. I would say that the service has helped us to streamline the monitoring work, so that we feel secure that we don’t miss any important opportunities. We receive a lot of help from the tool due to the fact that we get an overview of what’s going on in the market. In addition to assessing whether we should go for a procurement or not, we use the tool to understand which other procurements are underway and what is happening in the area. It’s part of our business development process – how we can create partnerships with the right actors to be able to win more business – and the platform helps us with our external surveillance,” Peter says
K3 Nordic identifies risks and requirements for the future
Peter says the platform is an excellent tool for risk analysis and for identifying qualification requirements:
“Supplier requirements are an important part that we look at a lot, such as requirements for certifications, references, ISO standards, and more. Being able to quickly view the requirements and remove procurements where we cannot meet the requirements and put these procurements in the evaluation box and then look back is an incredibly good business value that the platform generates. This means that we can quickly view large and relevant procurements – information that you otherwise would have to spend a lot of time searching for.”
The platform is self-explanatory – “the need for support is very small”
“First of all, I think that the platform is generally very self-explanatory and that in itself means that we can do a lot on our own. Every time we have had questions or needed help, Tendium is on its toes and quick to respond. Additionally, the support has helped us discover new features and parts of the platform that we haven’t thought about before. Very flexible, fast service, and hospitality,” Peter says. He adds that the need for support on the platform is very small, which is positive.
Highly recommend Tendium – but not to competitors
Peter says that Tendium has created an incredibly smart and modern monitoring service tool, where you receive a lot of help qualifying information, allowing you to minimise time consuming tasks. “I would definitely recommend the platform, but not to my competitors,” Peter says with a wink.
