Competitive analysis in public procurement, how to do it

Why competitive analysis matters in tenders

In private markets, competitive analysis is standard. In public procurement, it's rarely done systematically. Yet there's a decisive advantage here: procurement data is public. Award criteria, bidder pools and contract amounts are published, you just need to know where to look and how to interpret the data.

Firms understanding their competitive position in procurement can:

• Position bids more strategically, adjust prices and promises to actual competition
• Prioritize procedures better, skip tenders where a dominant competitor almost always wins
• Spot patterns, understand which award criteria actually decide outcomes

What data is available?

Award information (post-award transparency)

After award, contracting authorities publish the decision. Depending on procedure and threshold, notices include:

• Winning contractor name
• Contract amount (not always, but increasingly)
• Number of bids received
• Award criteria and weighting

This data is on TED (EU procedures), service.bund.de and state platforms.

Historical procurement data

Over time, a picture emerges: which firm regularly wins with which contracting authority? In which sectors? At what terms? These patterns are hard to spot in individual notices, aggregated, they yield valuable insights.

Advance notices and planning

Some contracting authorities publish advance notices of planned tenders. These show what's coming, giving you lead time for preparation.

Five steps to systematic competitive analysis

Step 1: Define your competitive landscape

Before analyzing data, know who you consider competitors. In public procurement this isn't always obvious:

• Direct competitors: Companies offering identical services, bidding the same tenders
• Indirect competitors: Adjacent-sector firms competing on specific tenders (e.g., an IT systems integrator also offering consulting)
• Regional competitors: Local suppliers with municipal advantages

Create a list of 5-10 firms you encounter most in procedures.

Step 2: Gather award data

Systematically search procurement platforms for awards in your service area:

Source	What you find	Effort
TED	EU awards with winning firms and amounts	Medium, use search filters
service.bund.de	Federal awards	Low, clear platform
State platforms	State awards, often more detail	High, each platform separately
Tender aggregators	Consolidated data if available	Low

Tip: Collect 6-12 months of data to smooth seasonal variation and spot reliable patterns.

Step 3: Analyze patterns

With gathered data, answer:

On your competitors:

• How often does Competitor X win with Authority Y?
• Which service areas is Competitor X strongest in?
• Are there authorities where one vendor always wins?
• How do contract amounts trend for comparable procedures?

On your own position:

• Which contracting authorities give us highest win rates?
• Where do we lose regularly, and to whom?
• Which service areas are we underrepresented in?

Step 4: Convert insights to bid strategy

Analysis only matters if it changes your behavior. Concrete actions:

For high-competition procedures:

• Bid more aggressively on price or emphasize differentiating quality
• Only bid if you have clear competitive advantage

For dominant-competitor procedures:

• Assess whether bid effort is justified
• Consider consortium bid with complementary partners

For innovation-focused authorities:

• Submit variants exceeding minimum requirements
• Highlight digital or sustainability approaches

Step 5: Set up monitoring

Competitive analysis is ongoing, not one-time:

• Track new awards to key competitors
• Spot new market entrants in your areas
• Detect shifts in award patterns (price priority changing, etc.)

What the data won't tell you

For all their value, procurement data has limits:

• Negotiated procedures and direct contracting often aren't published or only partially
• Losing bidders' prices are typically confidential
• Scoring rationale (why did X win?) is rarely in notices
• Below-threshold tenders have inconsistent publication

Still, available data lets you build a far better competitive picture than most firms have.

Automated competitive analysis

The manual effort for systematic competitive analysis is high: gather data from different sources, unify the format, analyze, keep current. Many firms start motivated and stop after weeks because effort exceeds benefit.

Automated solutions help:

• Automatic capture of new awards from all relevant sources
• Competitor tracking: Alerts when specific competitors win
• Historical analysis: Win rates, contract amounts and patterns on demand
• Market share: How firms divide specific sectors

At Auftrag One, the data gathering already sits inside tender research: the procurement network shows how contracting authorities and contractors are connected, and the market data dashboard shows volumes and how a segment splits up. The judgement stays with you, the collecting does not.

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All procurement data mentioned here is from publicly accessible sources. Systematic analysis of this data faces no special legal restrictions.