Using procurement plans to see tenders coming
How a South African supplier can use the eTenders portal's procurement plans, specifications and past awards to prepare before a tender is advertised.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Running a business businesses in South Africa
Most suppliers meet a government tender for the first time when it is advertised, and from that moment the clock is running. The briefing session is next week, the returnable documents need signatures from people who are travelling, and the pricing has to be built from scratch.
The suppliers who look calm at the closing date have usually seen the tender coming. In South Africa much of what they use to do that is public and free: the procurement plans, specifications and tender history that National Treasury publishes on the eTenders portal. This article explains what is there, how to read it as early warning, and where Achekam fits and where it does not.
What the eTenders portal holds
National Treasury's eTenders portal provides access to tenders by all public sector organisations in all spheres of government. It is searchable by tender number, by organ of state and by province. That last filter is more useful than it sounds: a supplier that can only deliver in two provinces can cut the noise down quickly.
Beyond the live adverts, the portal lets suppliers browse tenders that have been awarded, cancelled or closed, view the published procurement plans of organs of state for the quarter, and consult a library of commodity specifications. Each of those is a different kind of intelligence, and each answers a different question. You will find all of them on National Treasury's eTenders portal, alongside the current adverts.
Quarterly procurement plans: what is coming
The procurement plans published on the portal are the closest thing a supplier has to a forward calendar. They are the plans of organs of state for the quarter, so they tell you which departments and entities intend to buy in the coming months, before any of it is advertised.
A practical way to use them:
- Pick your buyers. List the organs of state that buy what you sell, in the provinces you serve.
- Read their plans each quarter. Note any item that matches your goods or services and the period in which the buyer expects to go to market.
- Start the slow work early. Anything that needs a certificate renewed, a partner agreement signed or a site visit arranged should begin when the plan shows the need, not when the advert appears.
- Check again when the quarter turns. Plans change, and an item that has slipped from one quarter to the next is still a lead.
A plan is a statement of intent, not a promise to buy. Treat it as a reason to prepare, and keep your effort proportionate until the advert is published.
Commodity specifications: what the buyer will ask for
The portal also publishes a library of commodity specifications developed by National Treasury's Office of the Chief Procurement Officer. Institutions may customise these specifications when they procure, so the version in a particular tender can differ from the library version.
That still makes the library a good place to start. Reading the base specification for your product or service months ahead shows you the standards, documents and capabilities buyers are likely to require. If you fall short on one of them, you have time to fix it. If you think a specification is out of date, the portal notes that proposed changes go to National Treasury's Strategic Procurement unit.
Awarded and cancelled tenders: what has already happened
Awarded, cancelled and closed tenders are market information. Looking back over a buyer's past awards in your category tells you how often it buys, how it packages the work, and who has won before. A run of cancellations for the same requirement can be a sign that the specification or the budget was difficult, which is worth knowing before you invest in the next attempt.
None of this needs special access. It needs someone to look regularly and keep notes, which is where most suppliers fall down.
Make sure buyers can find you too
Early warning runs both ways. National Treasury says suppliers must capture their commodities and delivery locations accurately on the Central Supplier Database, because organs of state use them to search for suppliers and send requests for quotations. A supplier listed under the wrong commodity, or without the provinces it actually serves, can miss quotation requests entirely. How to keep that registration in order is covered in the Central Supplier Database explained.
Where Achekam helps, and the entry that does not
Achekam's tender scout reads live adverts from the National Treasury eTenders public data feed and from any public RSS or Atom feed you add, and staff can also enter a tender by hand with its documents. It sits under TENDERS & BIDS, in Tender Intelligence. Other sources, such as CIDB, Transnet and Eskom, are shown as not connected, so a tender from one of those buyers is entered by hand unless it also reaches you through a feed you have added.
Be clear about one limit. Achekam has a menu entry called Procurement Plans, and it is always empty. It does not read the quarterly plans from eTenders. Two neighbouring entries are also misleading: Sources Registry shows the full tender list, and Awaiting Documents shows the same tenders as Submission Due.
So the forward-looking work in this article is done on the portal itself. Achekam picks up the adverts once they are published, and a person reads the plans, specifications and past awards directly on eTenders. How the scout chooses which adverts to put in front of you is explained in the tender scout and its match rules.
A quarterly habit
Put a short review in the diary at the start of each quarter: read the plans for your chosen buyers, check the specifications for anything new, look over recent awards and cancellations, and confirm your Central Supplier Database entry still describes what you sell and where. Then, when the advert does arrive, most of the slow preparation will already be done.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
