With 7,500 product lines, Oda saves weeks using Cobrief's item picking feature

Tender submissions used to take enormous amounts of time for Norway's leading online grocery player, home delivery service Oda. Before Cobrief came into the picture, tender work at Oda was characterized by hours of manual work, endless pricing sheets, and spreadsheets circulating back and forth.

-- Previously, one to two people in the commercial department would spend several days just finding the right product at the right price. There could be 350 to 500 product lines, and most of it was done manually, says Torkjel Eriksen, B2B Bid Manager at Oda.

When Cobrief was first tried out, it was the tender alerts that sparked interest. But it was the item picking feature that turned out to be the real game changer.

-- We tested it with a healthy dose of skepticism. It turned out to be an incredibly good tool that has changed the entire way we work, he says.

Oda System picks products in an AI-driven production line. Photo: Oda

80 percent accuracy on the first attempt

Cobrief's item picking feature is the key tool for Oda. By uploading their entire product catalog, they let the AI automatically fill out pricing sheets and match the right product against the requirements specification.

-- On a tender with 350 products, Cobrief hit the mark on 80 percent of the product lines on the first attempt. A colleague and I spent two hours spot-checking and adjusting. 90 percent was the correct product; the remaining ten we swapped out for strategic reasons. Only about ten percent were actual errors. That's absolutely incredible, says Torkjel.

With over 7,500 active product lines in their assortment, the time savings are enormous.

-- Before, we spent two to three weeks on this work. Now we spend two to three days. The more data we feed in, the better it gets, he says.

The right proportion of fish in the fish sticks?

The challenge in the grocery industry is the complexity: large pricing sheets with hundreds of products that must match the requirements specification exactly.

-- We're not talking about five to ten products. Here we need to get the fish content in fish sticks right, the percentage of meat in ground beef and sausage meat, country of origin, freshness and shelf life, halal products, allergy-friendly items, and labeling with certifications like Fairtrade and MSC. The level of detail is enormous, says Torkjel.

From hundreds of product lines to a finished package. Photo: Oda

Still a need for human involvement

Oda has been using Cobrief actively for nearly seven months and finds that the service gets better and better the more data they feed in. The work goes faster, and what used to be manual checks have become simple checkpoints.

For Torkjel, it's also about making the tender process more accessible.

-- Many people think it's daunting to start working with tenders. It's not. With good tools like Cobrief, you get support all the way, and you avoid many of the classic mistakes.

Torkjel Eriksen, B2B Bid Manager at Oda. Photo: Oda

Despite automation and AI, Torkjel believes there should always be a personal touch behind the proposals you write.

-- I don't think AI can solve tenders without human involvement. Cobrief provides an excellent starting point, but you should still tailor the submission. You can tell when a proposal has been written specifically for that particular contracting authority. You need a bit of human touch, he says.

Want to see how Cobrief can save you days of work? You can watch a demo, sign up for our weekly webinar, or try it yourself for free.