Lyreco now responds to more tenders than ever: – A tool that gives us a solid advantage

– For us, the tender market is extremely important. That is why we depend on tools that enable us to work even better with tender processes, says Patricia Patoka, bid manager at Lyreco Norway.

With Cobrief on the team, Lyreco can now respond to more tenders than before. With Cobrief, they have also automated up to 50 percent of the item picking.

– We can spend more time on more qualitative assessments and respond to more tenders. We have regular meetings where we go through the status of what we are working on, and new tender requests keep coming in. Now we can work on even more simultaneously, deliver more, work more on meeting customer needs, and win more, says Patricia Patoka.

Patoka is part of the team at Lyreco that works with tender processes. Together with colleague Bjørn Ove Asprem, she explains that it is not uncommon for the team to work on a double-digit number of tenders in parallel, with the public market making up a large share.

– Public organisations are stable clients, and if we win a contract, it can run for four years. That gives us predictability and long-term stability, says Bjørn Ove Asprem.

The bid team at Lyreco aims to be at the forefront when it comes to using AI in tender work. Cobrief is absolutely central to achieving this, say bid managers Patricia Patoka and Bjørn Ove Asprem.

A billion-NOK corporation

Lyreco is one of the world's leading suppliers of products and services for the workplace. In Norway, Lyreco's revenue in 2024 was nearly 2 billion NOK.

With 21 stores across the country, many may associate Lyreco with traditional office supply shops. But the main engine in the company's Norwegian business is the corporate market – and deliveries to the public sector.

At the Norwegian headquarters of the French-owned family corporation, a dedicated team works exclusively with tender processes. Public tenders account for the majority of this.

These are specialists who know both the regulations and the clients – and who have one clear goal: to win as many contracts as possible.

– We deliver to businesses, municipalities and county municipalities across the country. It can be anything from notebooks and pens to cleaning products, office furniture or coffee solutions. Everything needed to make a workplace or organisation function, says Patricia Patoka.

More time for thorough risk analyses

The road to a signed contract is long. Winning tenders is about much more than price.

For each competition, Lyreco must put together comprehensive proposals where they not only showcase products and prices, but also document environmental measures, delivery capacity, quality and service levels.

The advantage of these contracts is that they are stable and long-term – often four years. At the same time, the complexity is greater. Thorough risk analyses must be conducted. A lot can happen with suppliers, price developments and other factors over the course of a multi-year contract period.

At the same time, it is not always easy to free up time in a hectic day-to-day to do this work as thoroughly as they always want. With Cobrief, however, time has been freed up.

– Saves us a great deal of time

Each tender often contains between 150 and 1,000 product lines that need to be matched against Lyreco's products and prices.

– It is an enormous job to select the right products and enter them in the formats required by the contracting authority, says Asprem.

This process was previously manual and time-consuming. Everything had to be matched and documented by hand – and it took valuable time away from more strategic assessments. To streamline the tender process and ensure higher quality, Lyreco adopted Cobrief in the summer of 2024.

Cobrief helps us select the right products automatically, based on previous tenders and our own product data. It can also suggest text responses to the questions in the tender documentation based on our own texts, says Patricia Patoka.

– We no longer have to spend hours recreating work we have done before. It saves us a great deal of time and lets us focus our energy on what really matters: the strategy and how we can win the tender, adds Asprem.

See available tenders for office supplies.

– A tool that gives us a solid advantage

With Cobrief on the team, Lyreco can now respond to more tenders than before. Previously, the team had to make tough prioritisations and often pass on competitions. There may have been tenders they could have won, but the total workload meant they were deprioritised.

With Cobrief, Patricia Patoka, Bjørn Ove Asprem and the rest of the tender team have automated up to 50 percent of the item picking.

– Now we can more quickly make an initial assessment and see whether a tender is relevant or not. We also get a more accurate price indication early in the process, says Patoka.

For Lyreco, technology and innovative solutions – of which Cobrief is an example – are part of a broader strategy to develop the business further.

– Tender contracts are stable and relatively long-term. In addition, we see an increasingly stronger environmental focus in tenders, which suits us well since we work actively with sustainability. With Cobrief, we get both more time and higher quality in our responses – that strengthens us in the competition, says Asprem.

Both he and Patoka are convinced that smart use of AI will be decisive going forward.

– We have to use the tools that are available. If we don't, we will suddenly be two steps behind our competitors. Now we have a tool that gives us a solid advantage, says Patoka.