Hello, dear colleague! Lately, my support team has often received questions with the following content: “How can I find out the winner of the tender?”, “Where can I find the contacts of the winners of government procurement?” etc. Therefore, in this article we will talk in detail about the winners of tenders and government procurement, namely where and how to find information about such winners and their contact information. And since this topic is so interesting to many, I suggest you look into it in detail.
1. Tender winners. Who are they and what information can you find out about them?
Tender winner - supplier (bidder) who offered the Customer the best conditions for the execution of the contract.
Information about such winners is reflected in the relevant protocols, which in turn are posted by Customers (operators) on websites and electronic platforms. The exception is tenders conducted by closed means, and information about which is a state secret.
If we talk about government (under 44-FZ) and corporate procurement (under 223-FZ), then in the final protocols you can find the following information about the winners:
- Name;
- Mailing address;
Below is a screenshot from the official EIS website.
Here only the name of the winner is publicly available. But the TIN and address of the winner can be found in the summing up protocol itself.
There are more than enough sites on the Internet that provide services for distributing tender winners. However, along with tables, online databases like https://crmbg.su/ are becoming increasingly popular, where it is possible to set up filters, search for additional contacts and combine several convenient functions directly online. For the most part, such databases contain information about the winners of state (under 44-FZ) and corporate (under 223-FZ) tenders. The collection of such data is automated and occurs using special programs - parsers. Parsing (i.e. collecting) information about the winners of commercial tenders is much more difficult. This is due to the fact that there are quite a lot of such resources, they have different interfaces, and the organizer of a commercial purchase is not obliged to publicly disclose information about the winner. Therefore, no one currently provides information about the winners of commercial tenders.
Mailings of tender winners can be either one-time or regular. Most often, such e-mail newsletters are sent in the morning at the beginning of the working day. The subscription period for the newsletter can be for 1, 3, 6 and 12 months.
Some services provide their clients with free mailing of tender winners during a trial period (1-3 days) to enable them to evaluate the relevance of the data and the ease of working with the database.
Also, these services allow you to more precisely configure the database according to parameters such as keywords, industry, region of announcement or delivery, Customers, law, etc.
How much does it cost to send out tender winners?
1 month— from 1500 to 12500 rubles;
3 months— from 3900 to 18500 rubles;
6 months— from 7200 to 24500 rubles;
12 months— from 12,600 to 34,500 rubles;
One-time mailing
- from 300 to 700 rubles.
4. Conclusion
Information about tender winners is useful and necessary. In some cases, this information helps to conduct market analysis, and in others to find new clients or partners. However, you should understand that if you just want to analyze the market and your potential competitors, then you have no need to purchase ready-made databases. All the necessary information is on the website www.zakupki.gov.ru. Of course, this will require some time from you, but it is absolutely free. If you want to speed up the process of collecting and analyzing such information, then you can use any paid search service with a built-in analytics module, for example tender plan.
But if you sell financial services (bank guarantees, loans, credits), or are a manufacturer or distributor of goods, then you simply need a ready-made database of tender winners. Imagine that several thousand purchases are carried out every day and manually monitoring the results of tenders is simply unrealistic. And by subscribing to the newsletter, every morning you will receive an email with a fresh database, with which you can immediately start working (making calls or sending out commercial offers). Some services offer a half-hour service of sending out fresh databases, i.e. You will have the latest information in your hands, which your competitors will receive only the next day. In this case, even a few hours head start is a decisive moment.
That's all for me. If you still have questions, ask them below in the comments to this article.
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It’s no secret to anyone in the digital sphere: to be successful in this business, you either need to be able to sell well or have several key clients with a constant flow of tasks. Usually this flow is provided by people from the agency itself who have switched to the customer’s side. We, the digital agency Colary, had such key clients, but in 2013 we managed to lose them because we focused on one customer. That startup failed, and we didn’t want to follow his example.
Since 2010, we have managed to work with various large clients, such as Rolf, Lada, Invitro, Infotecs, and have learned to deal well with various types of documentation: design, technical, competitive. We decided: since we know how to write and draw up papers so well, shouldn’t we try our hand at state and sub-state tenders? It turned out that our expertise is indeed sufficient, but there are a lot of nuances and various problems in working with specific customers.
I have formulated several rules for those who are ready to suffer in order to make money on government contracts.
What tenders can the agency participate in?
1. Competitions for the development of websites of government agencies.
As a rule, these are line ministries, websites of city halls, regional governments, prefectures, and committees.
2. Competitions for the development / redesign of state and large near-state corporations / companies.
For example, a subsidiary of Russian Railways or Gazprom.
3. Complex integration work.
Competitions in which the customer is looking for contractors to perform integrations, for example with CRM systems and subsystems. Such things are more often dealt with by integrator companies, but, according to our observations, agencies also often participate in such tenders and sometimes win them. There is a little more money in such contracts, and a little less competitors.
Personal experience - the case of the Far East Development Corporation
On July 10, 2017, the Far East Development Corporation, focusing on the president’s order to create a “single window” for all potential resident investors in the Far East, published a tender for work to modernize the official website. Modernization meant a completely complete redesign of the site, or, to be more precise, the development of a new site from scratch.
For us, this was an ordinary tender with a very well-developed technical specification (often, for state-owned companies, technical specifications consist of thousands of sheets of pure water). And now we are already applying for the competition. The starting price was announced at 2,834,125 rubles, we made an assessment and realized that we meet the qualification requirements for participants and the project can be profitable for us, even if we reduce the price by almost a million rubles. We took a deep breath and prepared an impressive amount of documents. Naturally, this was not our first tender; we have been participating in government procurement since 2013. But this case is very indicative; while working on it we encountered a large number of typical difficulties.
So, we set the price at 2,070,000 rubles. As a rule, from three to six companies take part in interesting purchases. The time has come to publish the protocol with the results. There were only two companies in the protocol: us and an agency from the Far East. We were very surprised, because usually - and all companies participating in such tenders know this - at least five companies reach the finals. Moreover, these are the same participants, with whom it is very difficult to compete with at first (to understand: we usually send a thick package with an application, and these guys send an application in several boxes).
As a rule, there are five or six strong market players who constantly participate in tenders on their topic. They are well savvy and difficult to compete with.
The finale - we win, the customer notifies us about this in a letter, emphasizing that the project is a priority and that screw-ups are unacceptable here. We begin to study the history of this procurement item and find out that the customer has already carried out a similar purchase, and one of the strongest integrators won. It became especially scary when we found out that this giant did not fulfill its obligations and was blacklisted from suppliers. This has an extremely bad effect on karma and on future participation in such tenders.
Well, when the respected president once again emphasized the importance of this project at the economic forum, we were not laughing at all.
Homework to do before applying for the competition
See who was the contractor before you, and at what price the contractor won. You can check this through the website zakupki.gov.ru: select an advanced search, find your customer, indicate the subject of the tender, select the status “completed” and “canceled” and see who and how worked or tried to work with the customer on the subject of the tender. Check the database of arbitration cases on the arbitration court website and the reason for their occurrence.
Pay attention to how many times a particular tender has been published. It often happens that a tender is canceled at the very last stage. If you see that the customer has canceled the tender several times in a row, despite several good proposals from the participants, this may indicate that, in addition to the “right” company, left-wing participants with suitable selection criteria entered the tender. This means that if you show up, the situation will repeat itself.
You can view canceled tenders using the same algorithm that I described above, through the procurement website.
How much will participation in the tender cost?
Why is this preliminary work necessary? Participation in a tender usually costs not a penny. Firstly, this is the work of a document preparation specialist, and secondly, this is the work of the team that evaluates the proposal. Plus, you often have to draw concepts and individual presentations in accordance with the approved form. Your documents will need to be delivered to the customer by courier. All of this costs money, and all of this needs to be factored into the assessment.
We spend from 15,000 to 80,000 rubles on the presale of one tender. It all depends on the format of the application, the platform on which the tender is placed, it matters whether concept preparation and pre-project analytics are required.
Often, after analysis, it turns out that the costs of the pre-sale and the costs of fulfilling the subject of the competition itself almost double the maximum price for the competition.
Government contracts are not such easy money
Don’t skimp and purchase a procurement search and analysis system. This will save you time and money in the future. There are many such systems. The companies Kontur, Seldon, and Tenderplan have their own solutions. There are few fundamental differences. We chose the one with which we personally find it more convenient to work. The main function of the system is monitoring and aggregation of tender sites (commercial and government). You can feed the system search parameters and regularly receive reports on suitable tenders.
How much money will it take to start working on the project?
After winning a commercial tender, a contract is usually signed and design work begins. With government tenders, everything happens differently. The responsibilities of the executor, for example, may include ensuring the execution of the contract. The amount of security cannot exceed 90% of the contract price offered by the winner in the procurement procedure. Usually this is about 10% of the contract value, but it can be more. From practice: we once found a tender with a maximum price of 80 million rubles, and the security amounted to 13 million rubles. Of course, we did not participate in that tender.
The term for ensuring the execution of the contract is determined in the draft contract - as a rule, this is the entire period of execution of the contract. That is, you will have to transfer a significant percentage of the order amount to the customer’s account or use the services of a bank to provide a bank guarantee (if the documentation provides for this).
In the banking market, a whole agent network of brokers has formed who know how to interact with banks and correctly formulate applications for the provision of these same bank guarantees. Of course, you will have to pay a commission to the bank and the intermediary. For example, under the tender of the Far East Development Corporation we had two guarantees, the commission for each was 5% of the price of each stage - all together about 8,000 rubles.
Let's add to this full postpayment in stages and a deferred payment of 60 days after signing the act. By the way, this act still needs to be delivered promptly, and the customer may change signatories immediately after you have already sent the act by courier service somewhere to Vladivostok from Ulyanovsk (do you roughly understand what the costs are for official correspondence, without which you can’t go anywhere?).
We spent 9,500 rubles on courier service alone
Due to delays in document approval, we had to pay the bank guarantee twice. Please note that I am not indicating here the work of the person who writes the corresponding official letters for each of our approvals and requests. If this function had been assigned to some piece-work outsource or fashionable online legal support service, we would have reduced the entire margin on the project to nothing.
Isn't it fun? We already treat this as the norm, and we are offended when newcomers are indignant.
Production
Typically, agencies try to reach an agreement in such a way as to communicate with one, maximum two people on the client’s side. This will not work with a state tender; there will be much more people on the other side. When we were working on a corporate project, there were 22 people in the customer’s project team! 22 decision makers who directly set tasks for us, the direct executors of the subject of the contract. Can you imagine how strong nerves the project team must have on the agency side?
Each of these 22 members of the working group had their own vision of the project; persuasion and references to the technical specifications did not work on them. It soon turned out that the TK was not TK at all, but some kind of superficial specification that the customer could interpret as he wished. Please note that it is almost impossible to make any additional agreements or changes to the contract. Overpricing and upselling don’t work here either.
On our part, two project managers, three designers, three content managers, four front-end developers, three back-end developers, and two testers worked on the project. In the process, we had to hire two more content managers in order to deliver the work on time. Total 19 people.
Let me give you some numbers for understanding. At the pre-sale stage, we estimated the project at 1200 hours. In fact, it turned out to be around 1650–1700 hours. And this is not counting the purchase of additional software and overtime for managers leaving work at 8 am to sleep. The meetings ended at 8 a.m., because we have a project for the Far East. The client’s working group sat partly there, partly in Moscow, and our employees were in the Moscow and Ulyanovsk offices.
We did two iterations of the project, although this was not described anywhere. This happens very often. The first iteration of the site was launched a month later, at the start of the Eastern Economic Forum. Everything was going towards successful delivery, but at some point the wind on the client’s side began to blow in one direction, then in the other. We redid the fully laid out layouts three or four times. You must always be prepared for these risks. We implemented the project on December 31, 2017. Such a New Year's gift.
Result of work
To summarize, I would like to say to agencies that are planning to go to state tenders: guys, don’t go to state tenders without weighing all the possible risks. If you decide, here are four simple tips:
1. Workflows within the agencies you are used to will need to change radically. You need to remember this.
2. Use automated tender monitoring systems and search for tenders manually on the websites of state companies, since sometimes the automation does not find everything.
3. Government tenders- the destiny of strong agencies with good financial leverage, which can afford 100% postpayment. Therefore, save money and upgrade your expertise in preparing tender documentation.
4. Participate in price purchases more often, where extensive qualifying experience with executed government contracts is not required (even if they are low-budget). This way, you, as a participant, will be able to gain documented experience in working with government customers and after that you will be able to participate in more serious tenders.
Legislators would like to say: dear ones, change this rotten procurement system, where the customer has the right to everything, but the contractor has no right to anything. : “Law 44-FZ paved a six-lane highway to hell.”
Cover photo: Ilya Pitalev / RIA Novosti
Participation in a tender is a very important experience for each participant. It’s clear that you really want to win it, because time, effort, and money were spent. So the question of how to win a tender remains extremely relevant. Even despite perfect compliance with the customer’s requirements, it is not always possible to win. There are cases when the customer obviously knows the winner of his tender, but still holds the competition “for show.”
If you are tormented by the question of how to win the auction, then the first step to winning is the correct execution of tender documentation. There are cases when a participant paid a lot of attention to the proposal itself (its development, design), but lost sight of the tender documentation, as a result of which the preliminary selection did not come.
Accompanying a tender with a specialist several times increases the likelihood of getting into it and winning. After all, a specialist can deeply and qualitatively assess the situation and do everything possible to win.
Tender documentation
What does it take to win tenders? First of all, correctly compiled and executed documentation, which allows the customer to partially evaluate you and your ability to work. The conditions for submitting an application and the documentation that must be attached to it are usually agreed upon in advance. The concept of “tender documentation” includes a large number of papers, therefore, if you received an invitation to participate in a tender too late, it is better not to deal with paperwork at all - there is a high risk of wasting time and money.
Documentation varies depending on the industry in which the tender is being held and the requirements of the customer. It is important to provide the tender organizer with documents on time and with maximum accuracy.
Be sure to pay attention to the deadlines for submitting documents - not only the date, but also the time. It is advisable to prepare the documentation 3 days earlier than the agreed date, as it will definitely need to be double-checked.
If you know one of the tender organizers, you can try to show him your proposal before the official presentation. This way you will get a chance to show your zeal or receive practical advice.
Provided by companies specializing in the preparation of documentation. These companies work with specialists who can provide truly significant assistance and prevent mistakes during the preparation of documentation.
Basic package of documents required to participate in the auction:
- Application certified by the owner of the enterprise/company.
- Application with accompanying company presentation.
- List of documents provided.
- Copies of the constituent documentation of the legal entity and the charter.
- Certificates of state registration.
- Notarized copies of the research institute.
- Extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (statute of limitations – no more than 15 days).
- List of persons who represent the company.
- A copy of the order assigning duties to the chief accountant.
- Certificate stating that there are no tax debts.
- Financial tax statements of the company, certified by a tax inspector, for the three previous reporting periods.
A specialist providing assistance in a tender provides a range of services: from analyzing documents for submitting an application to monitoring the fulfillment of obligations under the contract.
How to win a tender at the stage of submitting documents?
Considering that the preliminary selection of candidates begins with the submission of an application, you should prepare for the fact that the slightest mistake in the preparation of documentation may deprive you of the chance to participate in the competition. Therefore, pay attention to the tips below:
- Sign documents in blue ink and make sure your signature is legible.
- Use tables and graphs.
- Establish a good relationship with your client - call, clarifying certain points that you do not understand, then, after talking on the phone, send a letter thanking them for the information provided and note that you are waiting for the contract to be signed.
- Customers are usually skeptical, so providing a guarantee is a good idea.
- Show that you are a professional in your field.
- Use clear fonts when preparing documentation.
- In your offer, focus on the low price, quality and conditions of the product or service. It is also necessary to have a good reputation - customers always pay special attention to it.
- Your capabilities must fully meet the requirements presented by the customer. If you win, but are unable to fulfill the terms of the contract, then there can be no talk of any cooperation.
- If you have already won once, then do not be so sure that a win awaits you here too - in the competition, each participant has an equal chance of winning.
How to get a tender: a few rules
And remember that participation plays a big role. Even if you didn’t win, you should know that next time everything will definitely work out. To avoid making another mistake, you can seek help from a person who knows how to win tenders, having had similar experience.
Steps to victory
If you decide to participate in auctions, then do it regularly or not at all, otherwise there will be no return, and you will only waste precious time. Constant participation in tenders provides an opportunity to acquire the necessary skills, which will each time help to prepare all documentation and prepare proposals more efficiently and quickly. The first thing to consider is that experience matters. Try to learn how to bid on so-called “cats” - non-essential orders that are not so important in your career, but can serve as an excellent school.
Tenders: how can you win?
- To begin, select employees who can participate in preparation for the competition independently, without distracting the manager.
- When tender proposals can only be accepted in writing, without the possibility of a face-to-face conversation, be careful - the tender may not be fair.
- What information should you collect? Find out the contact information of those decision makers and those responsible for the tender. Find out the structure of the current competition, the timing of decisions, as well as the pros and cons of the participants. The requirements for tender documentation, important dates of the tender organizers (you can congratulate one of the organizers on their wedding anniversary or the birthday of a child), take into account the previous experience of tender participants.
- How to win a government tender? Such bidding requires a conversation with the decision maker - ordinary employees who can answer the questions posed to them should not interest you, because they play no role in determining the winner.
- If this tender involves several stages, you can set aside a small percentage for bargaining.
- You should not offer a price lower than your usual price - your customers may find out about this.
- Be sure to prepare for “live” participation in the tender - work on your speech, make yourself presentable.
Those who are interested in how to win tenders (that is, secrets of success, tricks, strategies) need to work fruitfully to achieve success, which invariably comes with experience and with creating your own secrets.
Tender support
Tender support is a service aimed at ensuring the process of an enterprise’s participation in a tender. The main goal of tender support is to create all the conditions (at the legal level) for the client-participant to win the competition.
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