The BI Prozorro module helps companies research and understand the public procurement market. This is important not only for companies, but also for procuring entities.

Public procurement is a sector in which business interacts with national and local authorities every day. Whether the government will have everything it needs to provide high-quality services to its citizens depends on the effectiveness of this cooperation. And although the final decision on signing the contract is made by the procurement organizer, it is the business that makes the first choice in tenders—when it decides to bid. And the more suppliers will be ready to work in the public procurement market, the better and cheaper goods and services can be bought for budget funds.

There are a number of factors that influence business decisions to enter this market—for example, the transparency of the public procurement system, the level of legal regulation of the sphere, the commercial attractiveness of the market and so on. To find out how profitable work with public procurement will be and what strategy to choose, you can use the Public BI Prozorro module. We have already talked about its functions overall and benefits for procuring entities in particular. It would be unfair to ignore the participants. So, how important is BI Prozorro to engage business in public procurement?

 

  1. The module helps assess the market size and its average prices

Entrepreneurs want to know the potential benefits before starting to venture into public procurement. Participation in tenders is associated with certain expenditures, especially for newcomers: you need to teach the staff to work with government-owned institutions, study relevant legislation, spend time and other resources to prepare the necessary documentation. Therefore, it is important for businesses to know whether their product or service is in demand now, in what volumes, at what prices. The public BI module helps to assess the necessary figures using various filters and indicators. BI Prozorro groups the data according to the characteristics that the entrepreneur chooses. This can be a regional division by individual products or CPV codes, by type of procuring entity, or the dynamics of procurement volumes (to assess seasonal fluctuations in demand). In addition, since the BI module contains all information on Prozorro procurement, suppliers can check market prices. It is important to assess the potential profitability of participating in public procurement.

 

  1. In BI Prozorro, you can explore both overall competition in a particular field in public procurement, and direct competitors

Another important factor for participants is the assessment of competitors and their own ability to compete with them. BI Prozorro shows the level of competition for different purchases, the amount of transactions for each business in the Prozorro system, their contracting procuring entities. In addition, entrepreneurs can review which companies they are most likely to meet in open bidding, and explore the strengths and weaknesses of major competitors. This will help you build your public procurement strategy so that you win tenders as often as possible. 

 

  1. The BI module helps to evaluate the effectiveness of your work in public procurement

To improve your performance in public procurement, it is useful to identify your own weaknesses. The BI Prozorro module has a special functionality, which provides the overall performance of the bidder, statistics of results in tenders with the stated reasons for losses, and so on, based on the procurement data. Interactive diagrams show, for example, which procuring entity disqualifies the company most frequently, and which one prefers it for agreements. In this way, the public procurement participant can identify the most profitable procuring entities to work with. In addition, the analysis of performance indicators in the module will be especially useful if the company often fails to win tenders. It helps to identify the cause of losses. 

 

  1. The BI Prozorro module is free

This analytical tool is open to anyone, and it is completely free. This makes analytics available even to micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, which often do not have the resources to outsource market analysis or hire specialists. By the way, SMEs received over 90% of the total number of tenders in Prozorro in 2020. This is 78% of the expected value of all successful procurement (we received this data from the module as well).

 

An important role is also played by the fact that the DOZORRO team has developed a lot of text and video instructions that help participants make the most of the analytical tool. What is more, there is a Facebook group of module users, where they can help each other and ask BI Prozorro developers questions.

The public BI Prozorro module is a tool which makes high-quality business intelligence in the public procurement sector available to every participant. This makes the market more transparent and understandable for business. No doubt, this benefits the entrepreneurs themselves and the country in general.

 

This article was prepared by Serhii Pavliuk, BI Prozorro Project Manager with TI Ukraine, and Kateryna Rusina, DOZORRO Communications Manager, within the project “Tackling corruption in public procurement in Ukraine and V4 countries with new approaches.”

The project is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the Fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.