Service 07 · Competitor intelligence
Competitor & history intelligence
Before you submit a bid, see the whole field: which companies compete in similar tenders, what prices they submitted, why they were excluded — and how your own track record compares to theirs.
Note: the percentages and values shown are illustrative samples, grouped around the real scale of our data. The concrete numbers are computed live for your tender.
The edge most bidders don't have
Public procurement is a transparent process — results, decisions and protocols are published in the unified public register (EOP). Yet the vast majority of bidders enter a procedure without having read a single previous decision on a similar tender from the same authority. The reason isn't laziness — it's that manually reading hundreds of protocols and decisions for every niche procedure is practically impossible without automation.
That's where our edge lies. Our database covers 84,532 tracked tenders from 3,387 contracting authorities, over 205,000 decisions and protocols, and approximately 2.88 million documents from EOP, supplemented by ≈2.7 million notices from the European register TED. Participants, their EIKs (company registration numbers), submitted prices and exclusion grounds are extracted and structured into linked databases connected through EOP↔TED cross-referencing. Instead of reading yourself, you receive a structured profile for every significant competitor — complete with history, typical price range and known vulnerabilities.
The result is straightforward: when you sit down at that table with this information, you're not guessing. You know.
What "seeing the whole field" actually means
In public procurement, "the field" is every company that could realistically bid on a given procedure — not just those you've met personally, but also those whose existence you may not even know about. IT maintenance for municipalities, construction and design procedures by region, medical equipment by hospital type — every market niche has its own stable, recurring circle of bidders.
Competitor analysis reveals exactly those recurrences. Which firms bid regularly with a given type of authority? How many times have they won relative to the number of times they've bid? Which price range do they typically fall in? When did they drop out and for what reasons? The answers to these questions build an intelligence picture that turns your next procedure from a lottery into a strategic move.
A significant and rarely discussed aspect of this transparency is that prices submitted by participants are public information — they appear in the evaluation protocols. Where data has been extracted and structured, you can see the amounts your competitors bid in similar procedures. That's rarely valuable information when building a pricing strategy.
Key principle
The public registers contain the answer to "what did others win with." The problem is accessing it — not its existence.
How participant data is extracted
Every evaluation committee decision contains structured information: participant names, EIK numbers, status (admitted / excluded / ranked), grounds for exclusion, and — in final protocols — the submitted prices. Our system reads these documents through automated text recognition and language models calibrated on thousands of Bulgarian procedures, and structures them into a unified database.
EIK extraction accuracy from documents is 99.5% — measured on a benchmark of 500 tender notices. This means we can confidently link every participation to a specific company and build its historical profile. The backfill process for older tenders is ongoing — the data is current and continuously expanding, but not complete across the full historical archive.
When a procedure has also been published in TED (the European register), we connect it through an EOP↔TED cross-reference — so you get a unified picture regardless of whether your competitor was primarily active in EU-funded or in national procedures.
- 99.5% EIK extraction accuracy from procedural documents (500-tender benchmark).
- 84,532 tracked tenders from 3,387 Bulgarian contracting authorities.
- 205,000+ decisions and protocols structured by participant and ground.
- ≈2.88M documents from EOP + ≈2.7M TED notices, linked via EOP↔TED cross-referencing.
- 77,691 recognised BG entries in TED.
- Historical backfill: in progress — coverage is continuously expanding.
The competitor profile: what it contains
For every company identified as a probable competitor for your target procedure, we produce a structured profile. The profile shows the firm's participation history — with which authorities, in which niche procedures, with what success rate. Where data allows, we include the price range — the lowest, average and highest bid value in similar tenders.
A separate and particularly valuable section is the one on exclusion grounds. If a firm has dropped out repeatedly on the same ground — for instance an unmet experience criterion or a missing certificate — that's a signal only visible if you look at the protocols. Such information lets you assess whether a competitor will be a real player or will fall out at the selection stage.
When a firm has participated as the lead partner in a consortium or as a member of a joint venture, we also show the partners — because consortium history is sometimes more revealing than individual history.
Illustrative example
A firm with 12 participations in IT tenders for municipalities, 4 won contracts, prices between €43,000 and €107,000 — and three exclusions on the same ground: unmet minimum turnover. This single piece of information tells you: it's a real price competitor, but vulnerable at the selection stage.
Your own history: the mirror matters too
Competitor intelligence isn't only about others. Equally important is a view of your own track record — how you appear as a participant from the perspective of an evaluation committee or a new contracting authority. We analyse your previous participations: when you won, when you were excluded and for what reasons, and how your price position has evolved relative to other participants.
This "self-assessment" is especially useful when you want to understand why you keep losing a certain type of procedure, or when you are preparing a profile for a new market segment. Sometimes the pattern of exclusions is only visible when you look at the history in aggregate — and it can reveal a systemic problem solvable with a single concrete step: a renewed certificate, added capacity, more precise tendering.
We distinguish formal exclusion grounds from substantive ones. Formal grounds — procedural errors, expired documents, a non-conforming template — are immediately visible and correctable. Substantive ones — a genuine deficit in experience, financial capacity or technical resources — require deeper strategic thinking.
Price positioning: the numbers others don't see
Pricing strategy in public procurement is a balancing act between too low (unprofitable or suspicious) and too high (automatically outside the ranking). To find the optimal range, you need to know the brackets others have submitted — and exactly that information is contained in the public protocols.
Where data is available and extracted, we show the price positioning of each identified competitor in similar procedures: their lowest submitted bid, average and maximum value, and your relative distance from them. These numbers are not a guarantee — market conditions shift, tenders have different scopes — but they provide a far harder starting point than your internal cost calculations alone.
An important caveat: extracting pricing data from procedural documents is technically more complex than extracting identification data and continues to improve. In the platform, it is always clearly marked which specific records contain pricing data and which do not.
| Competitor (EIK) | Bids / wins | Price position | Common exclusion grounds |
|---|---|---|---|
| *****4790 | 18 / 7 | €43,000 – €107,000 | Unmet minimum turnover (3×) |
| *****2314 | 9 / 5 | €61,000 – €100,000 | No frequent exclusions |
| *****8801 | 24 / 2 | €33,000 – €89,000 | Missing ISO certificate (5×), expired insurance (2×) |
| *****6057 | 6 / 3 | €74,000 – €117,000 | Incomplete technical documentation (1×) |
| *****3399 | 11 / 0 | €28,000 – €71,000 | Unmet experience requirement (4×), formal irregularities (3×) |
Illustrative sample with masked EIKs and indicative values — shows result format only. Actual data is drawn from the public register for the specific tender. EIKs masked as a privacy best practice.
EOP↔TED: the European dimension
A significant share of larger public tenders in Bulgaria are published simultaneously in EOP and in TED — the European public procurement register. Our database connects the two registers through automated cross-referencing, enabling us to build profiles of competitors that are operationally active not only in Bulgaria but across Europe.
For bidders participating in EU-funded procedures or in procedures above EU thresholds, this is particularly valuable: you can see whether a given competitor is active in similar procedures in Romania, Poland or Greece — and what values they submitted there. Context does not replace local knowledge, but it broadens the picture considerably.
Our base includes ≈2.7 million TED notices and 77,691 recognised BG entries in TED, linked to EOP data at the procedure level. This connectivity is rare even among specialised platforms at the European level.
What you get
For every target procedure we deliver a compact competitor report — readable by anyone on your team, without specialist procurement knowledge.
- List of probable competitors with EIK and participation history.
- Price positioning per competitor (where data is available).
- Common exclusion grounds per competitor and per procedure type.
- Consortium history: who they partnered with and when.
- Analysis of your own history in similar procedures.
- Indicative price positioning recommendation (orientational, not a guarantee).
Frequently asked questions
Where does competitor data come from — is this legal?
All data comes from the public procurement register (EOP) and from the European register TED. Decisions, protocols and notices are publicly accessible under the Public Procurement Act. We extract and structure public information — we do not use non-public or internal data. EIKs in sample tables are masked as a best practice for public presentation.
Is the historical data complete for every company?
No — and it's important to be clear about this. The backfill process for older tenders is ongoing. For more recent procedures (the last 2–3 years) coverage is significantly better than for older ones. Every competitor profile clearly shows the period for which data is available.
Can I see the actual prices a competitor submitted?
Where that data has been extracted from evaluation protocols — yes. Pricing data is technically more complex to extract than identification data, so coverage is lower than the overall participant coverage. The platform clearly marks which records contain pricing data.
What is EOP↔TED cross-referencing and why does it matter?
A significant share of larger procedures in Bulgaria are published simultaneously in EOP and TED — the European register. Linking the two registers lets us see competitors active in EU-funded procedures or in similar niches across Europe, even when they aren't active in the purely national register.
How quickly can I get a competitor analysis?
For procedures with good historical coverage in the database — typically within one business day. For more niche procedures or older tenders with partial coverage, additional manual verification may be needed.
Does the analysis work for consortia and joint ventures?
Yes. When a firm has participated as a member of a joint venture, we show the partners and its role in the consortium. Consortium history is a separate and valuable section — it sometimes reveals stable partnerships you'll face as a unified force.
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