The consulting executive was sold after 10 minutes: – Now we save a lot of time
Industry:
Services
Interviewed:
Christian Martinsen, Commercial Director
“Cobrief scores 100 out of 100 on usability. We can see it in how quickly our sales team adopted it.”
Today, Cobrief has a solid foothold in the daily work of over 20 people at the consulting firm. Processes that previously could take days and weeks are now done in minutes.
– I was sold after ten minutes. Or actually before that. It was us who first contacted Cobrief, laughs Christian Martinsen.
He is the commercial director at Knowit Norway. One of his many responsibilities is being the product owner for the digital tools used in the sales operations of the Nordic consulting firm.
Martinsen says that Knowit likes to be early adopters and has no hesitation about testing new digital tools – including those from startups.
– I love that they are a startup that has really hit the mark. We test many new tools at Knowit, but Cobrief is one of the few that has truly gained a foothold, he says.
There is a short distance between Knowit and Cobrief. Christian Martinsen and Stine Strandvik frequently share feedback on features and improvements they would like to see. Here together with co-founder and CEO of Cobrief, Jonas Klafstad.
With Cobrief, Knowit got a tool that, according to Martinsen, "speaks our language and understands how we work".
Today, around 20 people at Knowit use Cobrief daily. Although Cobrief offers follow-up, customer support and training, Knowit chose to do everything on their own. Not that there was much to do.
Martinsen says that Knowit has spent "zero time implementing Cobrief".
– Usability is the key to succeeding with any product. Cobrief scores 100 out of 100 on usability. We can see it in how quickly our sales team adopted it, says Martinsen.
Public procurement: – A central part
Knowit is a leading Nordic consulting firm with offices in six countries and around 4,000 employees. The company is organised as a network-based group, consisting of more than 86 autonomous subsidiaries across four business areas: Solutions, Experience, Insight and Connectivity. These four business areas deliver consultants and advisory services in technology, user experience, management and organisational development, and embedded technology.
In Norway, the company has around 1,000 employees. For Knowit, public procurement is an important part of the business. Martinsen cannot say exactly what share this constitutes, but confirms that it is significant.
The Norwegian public sector purchases goods and services for around 800 billion NOK per year. On average, 80 new tenders are published every day. Many of these are related to IT.
See available tenders for IT consultants.
– Public procurement is something we work with every single day. It is a central part of our business, that much I can say, says Martinsen.
Quickly realised there was something worth looking into
As commercial director, Martinsen is a link between the sales teams across Knowit's many companies. His job is to coordinate sales processes and ensure that the various units "don't step on each other's toes". In addition, he is the system owner for all tools used in sales support – including portals and software related to public procurement.
Cobrief's AI features streamline both qualification and responding to tenders, while the insights module gives Knowit data-driven decision support for targeted work on new framework agreements.
He explains that Cobrief was "served on a platter" by a Knowit salesperson one winter night in November 2024. The salesperson thought this was something they should look into. Martinsen quickly realised there was something here.
– We have worked with public procurement for many years and done well. The processes, however, are often heavy, difficult to manage, complicated in terms of access, and complex when applications need to be set up. The user experience has been anything but good.
– It simply takes a lot of time, says Martinsen.
– Now we save a lot of time
Cobrief functions as a sales support tool for public procurement. It makes it easier to find relevant notices, filter out irrelevant competitions and get a full overview of deadlines and requirements.
It has radically improved the search functionality for Knowit. Martinsen says that processes that previously could take days and weeks are now done in minutes.
Having all tender work gathered on one platform ensures better coordination and optimal resource utilisation, so that we can deliver more and better bids, say the Knowit duo Stine Strandvik and Christian Martinsen.
The company quickly gets relevant information, can see who has won previously, and rapidly decide whether to pursue a competition or not.
Cobrief's score function, which assesses the relevance of each notice based on predefined keywords and criteria, has also proven to be very useful.
– The precision in the searches is much better. Now we save a lot of time on screening and qualification, and can spend more time creating quality proposals, says Martinsen.
– A super user-friendly tool for everyone
Christian Martinsen believes Cobrief is suitable for all organisations that in one way or another are involved in public procurement or wish to enter that market.
Martinsen adds that Cobrief is suitable for companies of all sizes that want to compete for public contracts – whether it is large companies like Knowit, or smaller businesses and startups.
– You can have many opinions about it, but the fact is that Norway has a large public sector. There are tender processes every single day, and it is a significant market.
With Cobrief, you get a super user-friendly tool for anyone who wants to compete for public contracts. Martinsen believes the implementation was incredibly easy.
– It is intuitive, requires almost no training, and works "right out of the box", he says.
Co-founder and CEO of Cobrief, Jonas Klafstad, says that Cobrief has a simple vision: to become the tool that gives suppliers the freedom to focus on what they do best – creating outstanding goods and services for their clients.
By gathering all tenders in one place, so they can easily be shared with people across the organisation, Knowit gains good control and saves a great deal of time.
He also highlights the AI screening of tenders with integration to Flowcase, which makes it both faster and easier to assess which cases are worth pursuing.
– Knowit has also emphasised how easy it was to implement the system, since in practice they needed no training at all. That of course also makes it much easier to get it well anchored in the organisation.
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