Competitors, buyers, winning prices: what you gain from knowing your market

The results are public, but scattered

In Quebec, public tender results are published: who bid, at what price, who won. Since 2004, that adds up to more than 130,000 awarded tenders and hundreds of thousands of bids. Access is not the problem; time is. Rebuilding the history of a buyer or a competitor by hand means opening dozens of notices one by one.

Yet this is the information that separates a bid prepared blind from a bid prepared with the facts in hand.

Knowing who you are bidding against

In the same niche and region, the same companies tend to come back. Knowing their habits changes the way you read a tender:

• How often they bid. A competitor that bids on almost every tender of your type is not picking its contracts. Another that only shows up for large projects shows where it wants to win.
• Their win rate. Some companies win one contract out of two, others one out of ten. They are not the same opponent.
• Their prices. Over several years, you can see whether a company is often the lowest bidder, or whether it wins on other criteria.

In Discer, each competitor's page brings these facts together: bids, wins, tender types and regions, with the source of every number. You also see which companies you run into most often.

Understanding the buyer

Two municipalities publishing the same type of tender do not behave the same way. Before bidding, it helps to know:

• how many companies usually respond to its tenders;
• who won its latest contracts, and what price gap separated the winner from the second-lowest bidder;
• what share of its contracts end up being amended along the way, and by how much.

That last point often surprises people. A buyer whose contracts frequently receive large change orders does not carry the same risk as one whose contracts stay fixed. Discer shows the share of amended contracts and the median amount added, for each buyer.

The historical winning price

It is the question every estimator asks: at what price does this type of contract usually go? The median winning price for a type of tender, at a given buyer or in a region, gives one reference point. The usual price gap between the winner and the second-lowest bidder gives another: when it is small, a few percentage points decide the contract, and every line of your bid counts.

Sector statistics, to choose your battles

Beyond a single tender, the big picture helps you plan. The number of tenders awarded each month in your type of work shows the season: when contracts are published, when to get your team ready. Recurring contracts, such as maintenance or snow removal, come back when they expire: Discer lists those coming due in your niche, so you have time to prepare before they are published.

Finally, your own track record matters as much as anyone else's: your bids, your wins, how far you were from the winner when you lost. That is often where companies discover they nearly always lose to the same two competitors, or always by less than 3%.

From information to decision

These facts support three concrete decisions:

1. Bid or pass. A tender where ten companies fight on price, for a buyer you do not know, is not always worth the hours of preparation.
2. Set your price. The historical winning price and the usual price gap between the winner and the second-lowest bidder frame your margin.
3. Target the right buyers. Some award their contracts to a small group of companies; others change suppliers often.

Discer presents these facts without rankings or recommendations: you make your own call. Feature details are on the Product page, and the plans that include them are on the Pricing page. If you first want to receive the right tenders, start with our article on tenders sorted by AI.