Commercial Tenders

Every year, with the approaching New Year holidays, the demand for various goods and services not only in the B2C segment but also in B2B, is sharply increasing. Accordingly, the number of trades published by commercial organizers is increasing. Some of the customer companies are preparing for large-scale celebrations, while others are planning large-scale purchases for the year ahead. In any case, this is a good reason for every supplier to receive more orders and increase their income.

If you have never participated in a commercial auction before, we suggest you learn how to do it.

Who Can Participate in the Commercial Tender on SmartTender.biz?

All site users registered under the “Participant” role can participate in the commercial auctions published on SmartTender.biz. If you do not have an account on the site, go through the short registration procedure.

How to Find an Interesting Commercial Tender?

To find a potentially interesting commercial purchase, follow these steps:

1. Open the "Commercial Procurement" page.

Commercial Tenders

2. To find exactly the tender that may interest you, enter a keyword in the search line (for example, "candy") or use the search using the unified purchasing dictionary ДК 021:2015 (filter "Classification"). To narrow your search, adjust the filters that are important to you.

Commercial Tenders

3. Open the page of detailed information about the found tender by clicking on its name. Here you can view the tender documents and find information about the organizer.

Commercial Tenders

Each commercial customer conducts tenders according to a convenient algorithm – this is how commercial tenders differ from public ones. The customer can choose one of the types of procedures depending on the purpose of the tender. Common procedures are open procurement tender, procurement market monitoring (when the organizer only collects price offers, without concluding a deal), multi-stage procurement tender (when the tender contains more than one stage of collecting bids from participants). Information on the form of bidding is indicated in the description of the tender.

How to Submit an Offer to a Commercial Tender?

If you are satisfied with the terms of the tender, click the "Submit bid" button.

Commercial Tenders

On the tender offer page, fill in all the required fields. Indicate the price for services or a unit of goods and its quantity, focusing on the customer's need.

Non-price criteria are often used in commercial tenders, for example, the terms of delivery or payment for the goods, the presence of additional service costs, etc. If the customer uses them, you will see the corresponding fields on the proposal submission page. These indicators directly affect the choice of the customer.

Commercial Tenders

If the tender contains several lots, you can submit bids for all or only selected lots. To leave only the required lots on the screen, use the filter at the top of the page.

The site allows you to automatically fill several lots with the same data – to do this, click the "Duplicate criteria value" button.

Commercial Tenders

Open the organizer's tender files and check which documents you must submit as part of your proposal. Prepare all of them and upload them to the site system by clicking the "Select files" button.

Commercial Tenders

In the end, check the offer again, make sure everything is correct, and click the "Submit Offer" button.

If you have questions to the organizer, you can ask them through a special form on the site's page or contact directly the contacts specified in the tender description.

Commercial Tenders

Participation in commercial tenders is free, therefore, you can submit proposals to all interesting tenders in the same way without restrictions.

How Does the Offers Price Change?

In commercial purchases, the customer often uses the rule of prolongation of the tender to get the most advantageous offers. The procedure is as follows:

1. Acceptance of proposals ends at the time specified by the customer (but no later than 18:00 on weekdays). If 30 minutes before this deadline, one of the suppliers submitted a price offer less than the lowest before that, the tender is extended by 15 minutes, and each of its participants receives a notification that the minimum price has been changed. For example, if the tender was supposed to end at 15:00, and at 14:30 one of the participants put a price lower than it was, the tender can be extended until 15:15.
2. If desired, each participant can change their price offer with a better value. If, as a result, the lowest price in the tender changes again, the purchase will be resumed for 15 minutes.

When forming a tender, each customer independently decides whether the following rule will be applied:

1. The renewal rule does not apply.
2. The rule applies without restriction (in this case, sometimes the tender may take several days).
3. The rule is applied for a certain amount of time.

Information about this is indicated in the description of the tender.

Commercial Tenders

How Does the Customer Analyze Offers?

After the completion of the acceptance of proposals, the tender commission of the organizer evaluates the bids of the participants according to predetermined criteria. This procedure can take several business days. Information on the course of consideration and results of the evaluation of bids is confidential.

Who Wins the Tender?

After considering the proposals, the tender committee of the organizer selects the winner. It will not necessarily be the supplier with the lowest price – this is another difference between commercial and public procurement. The customer can be guided by other important criteria for himself: quality of goods, delivery terms, deferred payment, availability of technical support, etc.

If you have been chosen as the winner of the purchase, you will receive a corresponding notification by mail. Then all that remains is to conclude an agreement with the customer and fulfill the terms of the agreement.

Commercial Tenders

The algorithm for conducting a commercial tender may differ from that described, since, unlike public procurement, it is not regulated by law. Each organizer independently determines the rules and selection criteria and chooses which suppliers can participate in the bidding.

Learn more about the differences between commercial and government tenders in our article.

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