How to build tender alerts that actually hit the mark

A good tender alert should make Doffin work easier, not more tiring. (In Norway specifically, Doffin is the national tender database where contracting authorities publish their notices.) Even so, we see many suppliers give up on their alert setup after a few weeks, not because it does not work, but because it alerts on too much. The alerts fill the inbox, and the relevant opportunities drown in the noise.

We have seen many setups over the years, both the ones that work well and the ones that tip over. In this article we share what we see working for the suppliers who have built an alert that is actually useful.

What a good tender alert should actually do for you

In contrast to tender search, where you actively go in and look for relevant notices when you have time, the alert is a passive tool that delivers what you have asked for. It is worth being clear about what you want out of it before you start configuring anything.

A good alert usually combines three or four filters: CPV codes for breadth, keywords for precision, geography where relevant, and some form of relevance scoring based on the company profile. It is the combination that produces accuracy, not any single filter on its own.

Start with the CPV codes, but do not stop there

CPV codes are the foundation in most alert setups, and there is a reason for that. They are standardised, and contracting authorities use them on every contract notice. But they are also coarser than you think.

What we see in the suppliers we talk to is that they start with one or two codes they "think" fit, and then get surprised by what falls outside. There are around ten thousand CPV codes to choose from, and the same service can sit under several quite different branches. An IT security supplier can find their hits both under consulting services (CPV division 72) and business services (division 79).

It is worth spending some time browsing the CPV tree. Look at what sits next to the codes you first thought of, and test whether some of those also produce relevant hits.

Keywords and free text are good precision tools

If CPV codes give you breadth, keywords give you precision. This is where you can catch the specific projects that have not necessarily been given an obvious code.

For example: if you work in "smart building" or "building automation", you can catch notices that are CPV-tagged as pure construction contracts, but where the content is actually about automation. There is nothing wrong with the buyer's coding, but the keyword often hits more precisely than the code alone.

At the same time it is worth warning against making keyword filters too narrow. If you require that both "automation" and "smart" must appear in the text, you lose all the notices that only use one of the words. A combination of broad CPV filters and narrower keyword filters usually gives the best balance: one list with many hits where you pick yourself, and one with few hits that are almost always relevant.

Geography: how much or little should the alert filter?

For many suppliers, county or region matters. If you have to deliver physically on site, it makes little sense to get alerts about municipalities you do not operate in. Then it is fine to set a geographic filter from the start.

For others, geography is almost irrelevant. Digital services, consultant assistance, and framework agreements that cover the whole country should not be filtered out by where the buyer sits. This is one of the most common pitfalls we see: a company sets the geographic filter to Oslo and the surrounding area, and only discovers months later that they missed a national framework agreement with a buyer registered in Tromsø.

A good starting point is to be generous with geography at the start, and tighten it after you have seen what kind of hits you actually get.

What we see as common pitfalls

When we go through alert setups together with suppliers, the same things come up again.

The first is too many CPV codes. When the list becomes very long, the alert becomes so broad that it loses its purpose. You get alerts about everything in the same general category, and the important hits drown.

The second is the opposite: only one or two codes. It feels safe, but it almost always means you miss real opportunities that are coded slightly differently than you assumed.

The third is that the filters are never updated. A supplier who has launched a new service, or expanded into a new geographic area, often has an alert that still reflects where they were quite a while back.

And the fourth, perhaps the most underrated: they never test the filters before they start. It is worth looking at the recent stretch of notices that would have matched, before you let the alert run. Then you quickly see whether the filters are too broad, too narrow, or just a little off.

How alerts get better over time

You will never get the filters perfect on the first attempt, and you should not expect to. What we see working best is treating the alert as something that is fine-tuned over time.

A simple move is to briefly note which hits you open and spend time on, and which you discard immediately. After a period of actual use, you have a small data set that tells you where the filters hit well and where they miss. Then the adjustments become concrete.

For those who want an easier path, the tender alerts in Cobrief are built around a company profile. They give each tender a relevance score based on what the company actually delivers, not just which codes the buyer has chosen. That makes fine-tuning easier because the system learns from what you prioritise.

Similarly, our tender search feature has the same filters as the alert, so you can test setups against historical data before you put the alert into production.

Closing thoughts

A well-built tender alert is one of the few investments in tender work that pays back every single week for a long time. It just takes a bit of work to set up properly, and a bit of fine-tuning along the way. By the way: at Cobrief, tender alerts are completely free. You can read more about how Doffin fits into the wider procurement landscape in our article on Doffin.

We at Cobrief are happy to sit down with you and go through your setup. Just reach out if you have questions.