Large companies win public contracts with a team whose only job is finding and screening tenders. Most SMEs have one person who does it on top of a real job. That is the gap ConcursosGov closes for public tenders for SMEs: it does the finding and the first screening every day, so that one person can make the decisions in minutes instead of losing an afternoon to the portal.
No new hire. No bid office. No change to how you write proposals. Just the tenders that suit you, ranked and summarised, waiting when you open the list.
Why public tenders for SMEs are lost before anyone bids
With public tenders for SMEs, it is rarely the proposal that fails. Small companies often write very good proposals. They lose earlier, in three ways that have nothing to do with quality.
What changes with ConcursosGov
The person who handles public tenders stops being a searcher and becomes a decision-maker. The work they used to do by hand now happens before they open the list.
Public tenders for SMEs, in a normal week
This is what a week looks like for a small company once ConcursosGov is running.
-
1Monday morning, ten minutes. The weekend's notices are in the list, ranked. Two score above 70. One is open, in your field and judged mostly on quality.
-
2Monday, five more minutes. The extracted fields show the clarification deadline is next Thursday and the team needs an accessibility specialist. You mark it interested, note the gap, and message your usual partner.
-
3Tuesday. A colleague opens the list, sees your note and the partner's reply, and adds the question you need to send the jury. Nobody forwarded anything.
-
4Wednesday. A tender for hardware supply scored 25. You mark it not interested with one line. Nobody will open it again.
-
5Friday. You export the open shortlist to Excel for the weekly meeting. The meeting talks about which tenders to win, not which ones exist.
Nothing here needs a dedicated bid team. It needs one person who already knows the business and fifteen minutes a day. That is what makes public tenders for SMEs realistic, even for a company of ten people.
Public tenders for SMEs with a partner
Many small companies bid for public contracts together with a partner, because the tender asks for a profile or a capacity they do not have in-house. The hard part is time. Finding the gap, agreeing the arrangement and preparing the documents all have to happen before the deadline.
ConcursosGov helps with the first part. The team requirements extracted from the documents show the gap on the day the tender appears, not on page 40 a week later. That leaves time to contact a partner, to send a clarification question while the window is still open and to decide whether the bid still makes sense.
The notes on each tender keep the conversation in one place. When a colleague picks up the tender, they see which partner was contacted, what was agreed and what is still open.
Bringing colleagues in
Public tenders in a small company rarely stay with one person for long. The commercial lead wants to see the shortlist. The technical lead needs to confirm the team. Someone in finance checks the price.
Every plan includes several users. Colleagues join by email invitation and see the same list, the same scores and the same notes. Nobody has to forward a PDF or rebuild a spreadsheet for them. Each decision shows who made it and when.
On Fridays, the Excel export gives the weekly meeting a single document with the score, estimated effort, deadlines and decision for every open tender.
Built for the way small teams actually work
What the score means for a small team
Every tender in the list gets a score from 0 to 100. By default, the type of procedure is worth 40 points, the match with your capabilities 30, the base value 15, the non-price award criteria 10 and the location 5. Each account can adjust these weights.
For a small team, the adjustment is worth making early. A company that wins on quality rather than price can give more weight to non-price criteria, so tenders judged mostly on price sink in the list. A company that only works in its own region can give more weight to location.
The point is not a perfect number. It is a list ordered the way your company would order it, so that the first five minutes of the day go to the right tenders.
Choosing your first CPV codes
The CPV codes decide which tenders reach your list. They are worth ten minutes of thought before the trial starts.
Start from what you have already won. The contracts your company has won carry CPV codes. Those are the codes buyers have already used to describe your work.
Add what you have been sent. If you receive notices from an alert service, a partner or a client, look at the codes on the ones that turned out to be relevant.
Keep the first list short. A small company usually does better with one or two well-chosen codes than with ten broad ones. A broad code fills the list with tenders you will never bid for, which brings back the screening problem ConcursosGov is there to remove.
During the trial, watch for tenders you would have bid for that did not appear. Each one points to a missing code. After two weeks, most small companies have a list of codes they will keep.
Which plan fits public tenders for SMEs
Most small companies need one of the first two plans. Solo covers one CPV code and three users, which suits a company whose work sits under one dominant code. Starter covers three codes and ten users, the usual setup for a specialist SME with a core service and two adjacent ones. Both include the score, the AI reading of documents, the decision log and Excel export.
The full comparison, with monthly and annual prices, is on the pricing page. The trial shows you which one you need before you pay anything.
What stays with your team
ConcursosGov covers everything up to the decision to bid. The rest is still your work. That is how it should be.
Your team writes the proposal, sets the price and prepares the qualification documents the procedure asks for. Submission happens on the official electronic procurement platforms. ConcursosGov monitors Portal BASE only, so tenders published only on other platforms or on TED still need another route.
What changes is where the time goes. The hours that went into finding and reading now go into the few proposals worth writing. For a small company, that can be the difference between bidding occasionally and bidding regularly.
One practical habit helps. When a tender is marked not interested, write the reason in one line: wrong procedure, team gap, price-only criteria, too far away. After a few months, those lines show which kinds of tender your company should stop looking at. The CPV codes or the weights can then be adjusted to match.
Frequently asked questions
What small companies ask before trying ConcursosGov.
Is ConcursosGov worth it for a small company?
Do we need someone dedicated to public tenders?
Which plan should an SME choose?
Can several colleagues use the same account?
Is there a commitment when we start?
How long does setup take?
Does ConcursosGov cover TED or other procurement platforms?
Is ConcursosGov an official Portal BASE service?
