Most SMEs approach public procurement the same way. They find a tender that looks relevant, download the documents, spend two to three weeks writing a bid, and then wait. If they win, great. If they lose, they move on to the next one.
The problem with this approach is that it treats every tender as equally worth bidding on. They are not.
Some tenders have a strong incumbent who will be very hard to displace. Some buyers have a habit of cancelling tenders after they receive bids. Some contracts are too small to deliver profitably once you account for the cost of winning them. Some buyers have never awarded a contract to an SME of your size.
None of this is hidden information. It is all visible in the procurement data - before you spend a week on a proposal you will not win.
This guide explains what to look for.
Why Buyer Research Is Different from Tender Research
Finding a tender and researching a buyer are two separate tasks, and most SMEs only do the first one.
Tender research means understanding what the buyer wants: the scope of work, evaluation criteria, submission requirements, and deadline. You need this to write a compliant bid.
Buyer research means understanding who the buyer is: their procurement patterns, past spend, typical competition levels, and award behaviour. You need this to decide whether to write a bid at all - and, if you do, how to position it.
The two together are what separate systematic bidders from opportunistic ones.
What to Look for When Researching a Contracting Authority
1. Their Procurement History in Your Area
The first question is whether this buyer has ever procured anything like what you sell.
If the answer is yes, you want to know:
- What CPV codes did they use? (This tells you how they classify what you do)
- What were typical contract values? (This tells you whether your cost structure fits)
- How often do they procure in this category? (Annual, multi-year, sporadic?)
A buyer who regularly procures your type of service is a higher-priority target than one who has done it once. Recurring procurement means recurring opportunity.
2. Award Patterns and Incumbent Suppliers
Look at who has been winning contracts from this buyer in your category.
A buyer who consistently awards to the same two or three suppliers is giving you important information. It does not mean you cannot win - but it means you need to understand why those suppliers keep winning, and what your pitch would need to look like to change that.
Things to look for:
- Is there a dominant incumbent across multiple contract cycles?
- Does the buyer tend to work with large national firms or are SMEs in the mix?
- Are the winning suppliers from a particular geography or with a particular background?
If award data shows the same supplier winning re-let after re-let, your bid needs to do more than offer a competitive price. You need to answer the buyer’s unspoken question: “Why would I bother switching?“
3. Competition Levels
Award notices published on eTenders and TED typically include the number of bids received. Over time, this data gives you a reliable measure of how competitive a particular buyer’s tenders are.
A tender that typically attracts two or three bids is a very different proposition from one that attracts twelve.
High competition is not necessarily a reason not to bid - but it should change your approach. Where competition is low, a competent bid can win on substance. Where competition is high, you need a differentiated angle.
4. Cancellation Rate
Some buyers have a pattern of cancelling tenders after publication. This happens for several reasons: internal priorities shift, the tender was published speculatively before funding was confirmed, or no bid met the minimum requirements.
If a buyer has cancelled a significant proportion of their recent tenders in your category, factor that into your bid/no-bid decision. The time you spend on a cancelled tender is not recoverable.
5. Contract Values and Your Delivery Cost
Check the contract values on previous awards in this category.
If a buyer typically awards contracts at EUR 40,000 for a scope of work that costs you EUR 35,000 to deliver once you account for bid preparation and contract management overhead, the margin is too thin. Move on.
This is not about being too selective - it is about being commercially realistic. Public procurement should be profitable, not just a route to revenue.
6. Time-to-Award
Some buyers run fast, efficient procurement processes. Others take nine months from publication to award. For an SME managing cash flow, the time between bidding and contract start can matter significantly.
Looking at the gap between a buyer’s tender publication dates and their award dates over several years gives you a rough sense of their typical timeline. This helps you plan resource allocation and cash flow.
A Practical Pre-Bid Checklist
Before committing to writing a bid, run through these questions. If you have solid answers to most of them, you are making a reasoned decision rather than a hopeful one.
| Question | Where to Find the Answer |
|---|---|
| Has this buyer procured my type of service before? | Buyer profile - award history by CPV |
| What did they pay last time? | Award notices - contract value |
| Who won last time? | Award notices - supplier name |
| Is that supplier likely bidding again? | Assume yes unless you know otherwise |
| How many bids did they receive last time? | Award notices - number of tenders received |
| Has the buyer cancelled recent tenders in this category? | Award notices - check for cancellation pattern |
| Is this contract value worth my bid preparation cost? | Your own cost model |
| Have they awarded to firms of my size and type before? | Award notices - supplier profile research |
If most of your answers come back as unknowns, that itself is useful. It means you are bidding without information - which is the situation most SMEs are in, and the situation systematic buyer research is designed to fix.
Where to Find This Information
eTenders award notices contain supplier names, contract values, and number of bids received for above-threshold contracts. You can search by buyer name and filter by contract type. The limitation is that you are searching through individual notices rather than a consolidated buyer profile.
TED publishes similar data for EU-threshold contracts. For large Irish buyers with substantial spend, the TED record is often more complete on award detail.
TenderFlare buyer profiles aggregate this data into a single view per contracting authority. For any buyer, you can see their full tender history, award patterns, top suppliers, and procurement volumes without searching through individual notices. The Buyers directory covers every contracting authority in TenderFlare’s database.
Making the Bid/No-Bid Decision
There is no formula that tells you definitively whether to bid. But the research above should get you to one of three positions:
Bid: You have won from this buyer before, or from similar buyers. The competition looks manageable, the contract value works commercially, and you have a clear differentiating angle.
Bid, but position carefully: There is an incumbent or the competition is higher than you would like, but the opportunity is valuable enough to pursue with a clear strategy for how you win.
Do not bid: The commercial case is marginal, the competition looks very strong, or the buyer’s history suggests this tender is unlikely to be awarded. Redirect the time to a better opportunity.
The discipline of saying no to the wrong tenders is what creates the capacity to write genuinely strong bids for the right ones.
Once you have made your decision - and especially after the outcome is known - capture it. Record why you chose to bid or walk away, what you knew about the buyer, and what the result was. Your pipeline in TenderFlare is a good place to keep this alongside the tender itself. Over time, these notes become your organisation’s institutional memory on procurement - a reference that sharpens every future bid/no-bid call and stops your team from repeating the same mistakes or overlooking the same patterns.
Your pipeline data is portable too. Export it to CSV at any time to use in your own reports, share with colleagues, or feed into whatever tools you already use for management summaries and analysis.
Getting Started with Buyer Research on TenderFlare
TenderFlare’s Buyers directory covers every contracting authority in the database. From any buyer profile you can see their tender history, category breakdown, award data, and top suppliers.
From any tender in your pipeline, the buyer name links directly to their profile - so buyer research can become a natural part of your qualification process rather than a separate task.
TenderFlare is free during our beta period. Create an account to save searches, track your pipeline, and access full buyer profiles.
Data sourced from TenderFlare’s database of 107,000+ Irish public procurement notices from eTenders and TED, spanning 2013-2026.
Want to research a specific contracting authority before your next bid? Browse buyer profiles on TenderFlare or search their recent tenders.