Discer is live: business intelligence for small businesses that bid on tenders

Where Discer comes from

For almost a year, I have been helping small businesses bring artificial intelligence into their operations: spotting quick wins, measuring the return, building a prototype, then deploying it. Several of these projects were in construction, and one topic kept coming up from one client to the next: public tenders.

This market is growing fast. About fifty public tenders are published every business day in Quebec, and the number of tenders awarded on SEAO nearly doubled in five years: about 7,600 in 2020, more than 13,600 in 2025. More contracts to win, but also more notices to read, more documents to analyze and more competitors to watch.

Six steps before a public contract

To win a public contract, a company has to:

1. Find the tender, among dozens of notices a day spread across several platforms.
2. Analyze the documents, often hundreds of pages of specifications and technical documents.
3. Estimate the contract.
4. Find partners when part of the work is subcontracted.
5. Set its price based on the sector, the buyer and the competition.
6. Keep up with addenda, sometimes dozens, that change the contract until closing.

In a large company, an estimating team shares this work. In a small business, the owner often handles it, on top of ongoing projects.

Helping companies one at a time was not enough: a tool was needed at a larger scale. I spent the last few months building Discer, a business intelligence platform to find, analyze, prepare, organize and track tenders.

Built on public results

In Quebec, public tender results are published: who bid, at what price, who won. Discer brings together tenders from SEAO, CanadaBuys and the City of Toronto, along with results published since 2004: more than 133,000 awarded tenders and nearly 400,000 bids with their price. This database grows every day, so the platform keeps improving.

What Discer does at each step

Finding the right tenders

Every morning at 7 a.m., an email lists the new tenders that match your company profile: your specialties, your regions, your exclusions. AI compares the meaning of each tender with your profile, then suggests the relevant ones.

Analyzing documents and addenda

Upload the documents of a tender: AI pulls out the requirements, guarantees, dates and required trades, among other things, based on your company profile, with exact references to the documents. Addenda are analyzed the same way. With the Intelligence and Team plans, you are notified of every new addendum on the tenders you follow.

Knowing the market and setting your price

On the tender page, three indicators help you decide whether to bid, and at what price:

• Tender competitiveness. You know whether the tender attracts many competitors, and which ones, before you put hours into preparing a bid.
• Price range. You see the prices at which similar contracts were awarded, so you can check your estimate before you submit it.
• Price indicator. You see where your price stands compared with your usual prices, to weigh your chances of winning against your margin.

You also see the historical winning price at that buyer, the usual gap between the two lowest submitted prices and the share of its contracts amended by change orders. These features are part of the Intelligence and Team plans.

Finding partners

• Your trade required. Discer spots tenders where your trade appears to be required, even when the title does not say so.
• The winner to contact. Once a tender is awarded, you receive the name of the winner and the contact published for that contract.
• Offers between subscribers. A company preparing a bid can post a subcontracting offer; subscribers in the trade it is looking for receive it and can reply.
• Partners to bid with. To respond to a project as a group, Discer suggests companies drawn from public bid data.

Subcontracting is part of the Intelligence and Team plans.

Posting a private tender

Discer also opens a channel for owners, developers and organizations that run private tenders. Posting costs nothing: the tender is sent to companies whose profile matches and to invited suppliers, and bids stay sealed until closing time. A paid option gives the buyer statistics and the history of the companies that bid. Details are on the Buyers page.

Tracking through to the result

Every tender you follow goes into your pipeline. Discer lets you know about a change of closing date, then files the tender when the result is published. Your track record brings together your bids, your wins and, when you lose, the gap with the winner.

Connecting Discer to your tools

The Team plan includes an API and an MCP connection for your AI agents. Working in the infrastructure you already have is often the simplest: your tender data lands in your own tools. Documentation is on the API page.

Who Discer is for

Discer is built for three kinds of companies:

• Companies that already bid, occasionally or regularly. Their bidding history feeds their track record, the list of their usual competitors and their price gaps.
• Subcontractors, who work on public contracts without bidding under their own name. They see the contracts where their trade is required while prices are being prepared, contact the winner after the award and reply to subcontracting offers posted by subscribers.
• Companies that have not bid yet. They see the tenders in their niche and the companies that win them, before preparing a first bid.

Public beta until December 31, 2026

Discer is available today in French and English, starting at $79 per user per month. During the public beta, until December 31, 2026, prices start at $59 per month, with a limited number of spots. That price stays yours as long as your subscription continues. Taxes extra, no commitment, cancel anytime.

Discer is a brand of Forge Libre, a Sherbrooke company specializing in artificial intelligence applied to small business operations.

Plans are compared on the Pricing page and each feature is described on the Product page. To see how AI sorts tenders by your profile, read our article on tenders sorted by AI. For prices and competitors, see our article on what you gain from knowing your market.