The power of competition

Sandy Boxall explains how the new competitor analysis tool at Contract Finder Pro can help give the fuel to power a winning procurement 

I’m a sucker for lifelong learning. Although my school days are behind me, that doesn’t mean self-education should cease. On the contrary, to learn is to progress, to move forward anew – a sentiment that seems particularly pertinent at the start of the year. 

The other day, while reading about the experiences of key business leaders, I came across a quote from Bill Gates. Nowadays he is just as renowned for his philanthropy as for his IT acumen but his words resonated strongly with me: “Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.”

He’s quite right.

Competition counters complacency. It drives you forward. It pushes you to the next level. 

And the results benefit organisations and consumers alike – from greater profits and services to increased innovation and efficiency. 

That’s why we at Contract Finder Pro have developed a new competitor analysis tool tailored to the needs of all our customers. Competitor analysis is critical to winning business. Knowing what your competitors are doing, winning and where they are likely to be strong is essential. 

In any procurement, the only winners of bids are those that win and those that save their money by not bidding. Given that there needs to be at least three suppliers bid in any government tender, the last thing you want is to come second. Now while you can never be completely certain of the situation – and indeed who else will bid – it makes sense to find out as much as possible. There is a lot of information in the public domain if you know where to look, much of which is very often ignored. 

And that’s exactly where our tool comes in. 

To give our customers an unfair advantage it enables users to search by category of work – to see which firms are winning the most, by region, time period, CPV code, or a number of other elements. You can inspect the specific awards of each firm and see their overall success – writing competitor lists for bid/no bid decisions has never been easier!

The new tool also now enables visual analysis for at a glance reviews or for supporting internal presentations. By linking this with the buyer analysis it is possible to see which firms do well with specific customers as well as in general categories. 

Don’t you want to know who you need to beat? Let’s get down to business…

Lets suppose we are interested in exploring the world of Engineering. Below are screenshots of when we have used the search term ‘Engineering’ on our Competitor Search, these are the results we have found –

By clicking the Visuals toggle button, you can view the number of tenders, won by which Supplier.

Below this you are provided with a summary of the number of awarded tenders, the estimated value won and a breakdown of the CPV codes.

By clicking “Tender Award Details” you can expand the view to see details of each of the awarded tenders.

These can all be expanded on in another tab, by clicking the View buttons on the right hand side.

So, what are the tender search terms do you want to analyse the market for? and/or who are the competitors you want to see which tenders they have been awarded?

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