Efficient tender monitoring is a cornerstone for all suppliers participating in procurements, whether they are private tenders or public sector tenders. Enhancing the efficiency is essential to streamline workflows, reduce costs, and ensure good business opportunities are identified quickly.
In this article, we explore efficient team processes, modern tender monitoring software and utilising AI for optimal tender monitoring. Let’s get started!
Why efficient tender monitoring is key for successful bid proposals
It’s crucial to have an efficient tender monitoring process. But why is it so important? Let’s take a look.
- Time is of the essence. When participating in procurements, you’re working under a tight deadline. Bids need to be submitted on time and creating a good proposal requires a lot of resources. The less time you need to spend on monitoring, and the earlier you identify a good business opportunity, the better.
- Good tender opportunities can be difficult to find. Many tenders are published every day. Some are appropriately named and easy to find, others are less so. To not miss out on good business opportunities, you need effective tender monitoring.
- You don’t want to spend time on bad business opportunities. Sometimes a tender may be a poor fit for your business, due to specific requirements specified in the tender documents. In those cases, it’s important to identify these requirements early, so you don’t start creating a proposal only to realise halfway through you don’t actually meet the requirements.
Efficient team processes for tender monitoring
To implement efficient team processes for tender monitoring, it’s essential to establish a structured approach.
- Clear responsibilities. Make sure everyone knows who’s responsible for monitoring databases for new tender opportunities. If only one person is responsible for monitoring, someone else needs to take over if that person is out sick.
- Timely monitoring. As mentioned above, time is of the essence in the bidding process. You need to identify good tender opportunities as early as possible. This means checking newly published tenders often.
- Structured tender review. Follow a clear checklist to review new tender opportunities to determine if they’re a good fit or not. This should include checking at least your most common blockers and requirements.
- Efficient go/no go decisions. The decision whether to create a proposal or not needs to be well-founded and efficient. You want to implement processes ensuring that the tender is a good business opportunity without spending excessive time on the decision.
Modern tender monitoring software
The best way to efficiently monitor new tenders is to use modern monitoring software. The most basic solutions allow you to set up a search profile and get email notifications when new tenders are published. However, there are more advanced solutions allowing you to significantly improve your tender monitoring.
- Advanced search tools. You want a tender monitoring profile that is as well calibrated as possible, making sure you don’t miss any good business opportunities but also don’t need to sift through unnecessarily many bad fits. Instead of just basic CPV code and keyword search, modern monitoring software includes advanced search tools allowing you to include and exclude matches based on different criteria and find matches based on keywords in the full tender documents.
- All databases in one place. Often, you might want to monitor multiple tender databases. A good tender monitoring solution allows you to monitor multiple databases in one profile. Make sure you review which databases are included in the monitoring solution.
- Good user experience. With a modern monitoring solution, you should also get a well-designed user interface that simplifies tender monitoring. Something as simple as a visual difference between tenders you have reviewed and not can make a big difference.
- Collaboration tools. Modern monitoring software also includes collaboration tools. Some examples are shared profiles where you can see which tenders have been reviewed by colleagues, the ability to leave comments and tag colleagues, and Kanban boards of interesting tenders for review.
Utilising AI in tender monitoring
Like in so many business areas, AI can help improve the efficiency of tender monitoring. Here are three examples of how AI can be applied in the tender monitoring process:
- Monitoring based on keywords in tender documents. Tender documents have traditionally been difficult to search in due to their varying formats. With the help of AI, modern tender monitoring solutions can extract text from documents, allowing you to monitor based on keywords mentioned only in the tender documents.
- Automatic summaries of tender documents. Rather than going through all the documents to review a new tender opportunity, AI allows you to extract the most essential information to quickly evaluate a new tender.
- Identifying requirements quickly. By identifying tailored keywords based on common sections in your industry, you can let AI extract the relevant information from tender documents for speedy assessment of important requirements.
Efficient tender monitoring with Tendium
Tendium provides modern and AI-driven tender monitoring solutions. With efficient workflows, good user experience and new smart tools, Tendium is your partner in levelling up your business with the public sector.
Read more about modern tender monitoring with Tendium, to discover new possibilities to improve your monitoring processes.
Conclusion
Efficient tender monitoring is a critical component of successful suppliers to the public sector. By adopting effective methods, such as enhanced team workflows, optimised monitoring processes, and leveraging AI technologies, organisations can significantly improve their chances of winning bids. Continuously embracing modern technologies will drive better outcomes, ensuring that bid teams remain competitive and effective in the evolving market landscape.
