Back in time

Tender notification and management company Tendersearch has begun marketing a service that lets companies responding to tenders more accurately forecast when certain tenders are up for renewal.

Under the Tendersearch Research service -- an addition to its notification service -- the company will search on contract archives in order to discover when old contracts are up for renewal, the original supplier/reseller and equipment used.

Matthew Whitehouse, marketing manager at Tendersearch said the company had archives that date back 20 years. 'We can go back and find out who won a contract,' he said.

He said a supplier may want to know when contract refreshes are coming up and which reseller, brand and equipment were used in the original contract.

The service could be used for 'strategic deals' and may influence the specification of a tender and provide some insight on what drove a customer to choose a certain company. 'They could look at the strengths and weaknesses of the IT provider and compare their own,' he said.

Tendersearch would charge for reports on multiple and single tenders, he said. Over the last year, there have been 3,000 IT-related tenders up for grabs, Whitehouse said.