Euroalert.net launches the new 10ders Product Reports on Public Procurement and helps you exporting to new markets

Last week we announced you the launching of a new set of 10ders Observatory products focused on providing information and data about public procurement and specially adapted to SMEs active on exports. At that moment we already advised you to keep posted as we intended to be launching different Euroalert.net products in the days to come and will be providing you more details.

We are therefore very proud to present you the features of one of the products with a highest demand among those developed by Euroalert.net: the 10ders Customized Product Report on Public Procurement.

In the last two decades the way to internationalise a company and start exporting has changed dramatically and traditional ways of doing it are no longer valid: acting quickly, gathering relevant information, analysing it and directing commercial actions within your Internationalization Plan in the most suitable markets, has become the most necessary elements of a strategy. Although international fairs and commercial missions might still have their role to play, what it is really critical now is to always have more information than your competitors about the characteristics of the market to make the most of any commercial action your export department undergoes.

As export manager in an SME, wouldn't it be interesting to know who's the distributor who has sold the most to governments in your sector in any given market? Wouldn't' you like to know who's your perfect partner to provide the installation or maintenance services for your product? Or maybe knowing the public bodies which have been the most active in purchasing your product or service in any market? What about knowing who's your major competitor in one particular market and analyse whether it is accessible in this moment?

These questions and many more have now answer thanks to 10ders Product Reports on Public Procurement from 10ders Observatory which offer you the information and listings of the most active economic actors and contracting public authorities which have purchased the most your products and services by publishing tender announcements.

Only with a few clicks and for only 35 €, a really very accessible cost for any company no matter its dimension, you will have your own customized report in your e-mail.

They are very simple to request: you only need to follow the indications to buy your 10ders Customized Product Report in Public Procurement from 10ders Observatory at the Euroalert.net on-line store. First, you need to select the country or countries you want to analyse with the report, and then you describe your product or service. If your already know the cpv codes which define your product just indicate them but if you don't, don't worry, with the 10ders Product Reports in Public Procurement special launching offer, you only need to describe them and we will define the codes for you with no extra cost.

And remember that the more reports you ask in one same order, the more you will save in each of them: 10 product reports in public procurement will only cost 290 €, and you will save 15% in each of them.

If you have any question or wish to make any suggestion that will help us to improve this new service, you only need to send us an email to TenderReports@euroalert.net and we will answer all your questions.

Besides, now you can also benefit from the 10ders Product Report Special Launching Offer and get you customized reports in the very best conditions! Aren't you trying?

Euroalert.net universalizes market intelligence in international tendering and brings it closer to SMEs

Over the past months, access of SMEs to public procurement has jumped to the forefront of Government agendas in almost all EU countries. In several occasions the Commission has shown its determination to support smaller companies in their access to public procurement market, many strategies and documents have been drawn up in this regard, a European code of best practices facilitating access by SMEs to Public Procurement Contracts was published in June 2008, Commissioners have made declarations on this issue... All this is fine, but what companies really need are facts, actions and instruments to achieve the real opportunities that public procurement provide to SMEs.

From Euroalert.net team we have gradually reinforced a conviction we already had when started in all this project: the huge amount of data which is available and waiting to be used by companies of any size who aim at having an international presence...

The participation of Euroalert.net in various forums related to EU Public Procurement, as well as company's consulting activities with firms operating in international tendering or our intervention in events organized by our partners in their sectors of interest have confirmed our conviction.

Euroalert.net already provided you with tools to publish in your website or Intranet procurement notices or awards which represent real business opportunities for your business. Now, with 10ders Observatory you will have a full set of information tools on public procurement and the necessary data to plan your strategy on international tendering markets and bid for public contracts, to adapt your plan of internationalization and to analyse the best way to access the opportunities offered by the public sector in the European Union. Our goal is to provide business support organizations as well as companies with the best tools tailored to each of their needs.

One product for each need, so you can pick only what you really need in order to get maximum value at the minimum cost: this is our goal. A purpose which becomes particularly important in the current economic scenario.

• If you want macro statistics to evaluate the performance of your sector in different markets, what you need are the 10ders Trends Statistical Series on Public Procurement adapted to your targeted sectors
• If what you want is the list of the main economic operators in your area of interest, either awarded companies or contracting authorities, then you are looking for 10ders Product Reports on Public Procurement
• If you already know which are the markets you will focus on and you want to be informed about the business opportunities, announcements or awards that are coming up in them, then what you need are the 10ders Alerts on Public Procurement
• But if, before all this, the first thing you need is to know how your product or service is defined in public procurement contracts (cpv), then you will probably need 10ders Code Advice on Public Procurement to help you identify the code your product or service is defined by and take advantage of other information tools

We will be soon presenting you all these products step by step, as well as all those which will be developed to complete the series of 10ders Observatory products. Remember that each one of them is a separate product, so that you can make up your own "à la carte" public procurement information system. Also, like all Euroalert.net products, 10ders Observatory is designed to be accessible to small companies and organizations, with products which are all quite cost-effective.

10ders Observatory is ready to work with you and help you to find the best way to maximize your sales abroad, you just have to send us an email to info@euroalert.net and we will contact you.

Euroalert.net and 10ders Observatory provide you with information and data about international public procurement opportunities, then is your turn to use them to do business and make money.

10ders Observatory: increase in the number of contracts awarded by EuropeAid in the third quarter of 2009, compared to the drop in tender notices

Over the past few weeks, our colleagues of 10ders Observatory have been providing us with a series of data related to the evolution of public procurement in all Member States of the European Union.

In the last occasion 10ders Observatory data referred to the sharp increase in the value of contracts awarded in the EU in the third quarter of 2009, now they bring us a range of data relating to procurement announcements aimed at the conclusion of contracts in the field of External Cooperation Programmes, published by EuropeAid in the OJEU in the third quarter of 2009.

According to the estimates of 10ders Observatory, the number of notices published by EuropeAid in the third quarter of 2009 decreased slightly compared to the previous quarter (- 1.16%), a decrease which is significantly higher when considering data from the same quarter of 2008 (-14.74%).

However, this downward trend is not recorded in all types of public notices published by EuropeAid in the Official Journal of the European Union. The data about the evolution of contracts and procurement opportunities issued by EuropeAid is quite different depending on the successive stages of the procurement process.

For example, in the case of forecasts, the number of notices published in the OJEU has fallen sharply over the previous quarter (-27.90%), a decline which has been less steep in the case of notices (-16.59%). However, EuropeAid contract awards have increased dramatically in the third quarter of 2009, showing an increase of 107.58% over the same data in the previous quarter.

Comparing these data with the same quarter of 2008, there are decreases in all types of announcements issued by EuropeAid, either in the number of forecasts (-2.33%), the number of tender notices (- 23,63%) or the number of the awarded contracts published in the OJEU, which in this case reflects a decline in terms of the award notices published during the same period of the years 2009 and 2008 (-16.97%).

Considering the proportion of notices published by EuropeAid in the OJEU in relation to each type of document issued during the procurement process, whether they are forecasts, procurement notices, additional information or contract awards, it seems that public procurement notices, which in the third quarter of 2009 accounted for 28%, in the second quarter amounted to 39% of total announcements, while in the case of awards, they accounted nearly 11% of the total in the second quarter compared to 23% in the third quarter of 2009.

Tender notices and additional informations in the third quarter of 2009 represented 30% and 18% respectively, and have minor differences with data from the second quarter, which accounted for 36% in the case of tender notices and for 14% in the case of additional informations.



In addition to these data, it is interesting to study 10ders Observatory estimates regarding the distribution of the announcements published by EuropeAid in the OJEU depending on the type of contract. In this case, it should be noted that in all types of announcements, whether forecasts, tender notices or awards, the ones which record higher contracting figures and publication in the OJEU within the procurement procedures issued by EuropeAid are the announcements related to service contracts, since in the third quarter of 2009 they accounted for more than 50% of the announcements in all cases (55.36%, 65.19% and 63.5% respectively).

This seems to be a trend that can be constantly observed throughout all periods, as announcements for contracting services exceeded 50% in all cases, except in the third quarter of 2008, in which they were a little bit less, accounting for 49.37% of the total. Indeed, in the third quarter of 2008 the distribution was balanced between supply and service contracts, representing 44.3% and 49.37% respectively, while the remaining 6.33% corresponded to works contracts.

It was noted at the beginning of this post that a general decline in the data relating to forecasts was observed during this period. However, the breakdown by type of contract shows the opposite trend in one of the three types of contracts, since there has been an increase in the forecasts announcements for works contracts published by EuropeAid for the third quarter of 2009, both in comparison with the previous quarter, registering an increase of 20%, and with the same quarter of 2008, towards which the announcements simply triple.

Once again we hope the data sets our colleagues of 10ders Observatory have prepared have been useful for you, and we remind you that if you are interested in obtaining specific data for your activities, you can contact them via info@euroalert.net.

10ders Observatory: Strong increase in the total value of contracts awarded in the EU during the third quarter of 2009

According to the estimates of "10ders Observatory, when compared to the same quarter of 2008, the European Union countries (EUR27) ended the third quarter of 2009 with an important growth (+35.81%) in the total value of contracts awarded which are above EU procurement thresholds and must be published in the OJEU.

This data reinforces the trend we announced you a few weeks ago regarding the increase of over 13% in the number of contracts issued and awarded at European level in the 27 European Union countries in relation to the third quarter of 2008.

However, as in the map of the evolution of the awarded contracts that 10ders Observatory released a couple of weeks ago, the differences between countries and types of contracts are also very significant and, therefore, so is the variation of public money allocated through competitive bidding in contracts whose value is above EU procurement thresholds.

For example, the strong growth shown in the chart is largely attributable to the high increase of the total value of service contracts awarded (+58.52%), which has been rising throughout 2009, mostly due to public resources channelled to stimulate economic recovery. The total economic value of contracts awarded for supplies (+20.14%) and public works (+12.44%) has also grown over the third quarter of 2008, but much less.

By countries, the situation is very diverse, showing very high increases, such as the experienced by the UK (+77.03%) in all types of contracts, by Belgium (+135.09%) mainly in public works, or by the Netherlands (+85.76%) and Sweden (+93.89%) with an important increase in service contracts awarded.

EUR16 growth has been much lower (+9.96%) than the increase within EUR27 (+35.81%), since neither Sweden nor the UK add their strong growth figures to this group, but also because of the large drop in the economic value of public contracts awarded in countries like Spain (-30.15%), Ireland (-33.06%) and Italy (-14.73%).

When transferring all these data to a map, the increases of public money awarded in contracts whose value is above community thresholds and were published in the OJEU in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008, show an interesting insight into the evolution of public spending directly injected into contracts awarded through competitive bidding with companies, from which you can surely draw interesting conclusions:



As in previous occasions, we hope this article that our colleagues at "10ders Observatory" have prepared for Euroalert.net blog, will give you some valuable information. If you need any more detailed data sets for your own analysis, you can contact them at info@euroalert.net.

PS: Very soon, we will be publishing our estimate compared with the evolution of European Union GDP by 2009.

10ders Observatory: Map of the evolution of procurement notices and contract awards in Europe

One of the best ways to analyse data series is by representing them on a map, as it allows to visualize complex tables and draw conclusions more easily. Today, 10ders observatory wants to offer you two maps to compare the evolution of public procurement announcements published in the OJEU by public administrations across Europe between the second and the third quarter of 2009.


Taking into account that those countries with a higher percentage increase in the number of issued contracts have been represented in green, and that those represented in red are the countries which have published fewer contracts in the third quarter of 2009, it seems that the map on procurement evolution shows some similarities with the one representing the evolution of economic recovery, leaded by France and Germany.

We have used a colour scale based on the percentage change in the announcements published in each country during the 3rd quarter of 2009 over the previous quarter. Thus, green (+30%) represents the maximum increase, which as we said last week, relates to Portugal and Luxembourg, while red (-21%) shows the largest falls, located in the Baltic countries and Slovenia.

When the variation is minimal, the country is coloured in yellow, which, as you can see, is the case of countries such as the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy, where public authorities have published nearly the same number of contracts during the two quarters. Between these data, there is a wide variety of colours illustrating different situations for which we invite you to draw your own conclusions.

To complement the analysis, using the same methodology, we would like to show you this map which represents the evolution of the number of contract awards published in the OJEU in the 27 European Union countries, comparing the third and the fourth quarters of 2009.


Finally, here is an outlook of the distribution by type of contract (public works, supplies and services) of the tender notices issued at European level by public administrations and entities of the 27 EU countries. The highest volume of contract notices relates to service contracts, which, added to the supply ones, represent more than three quarters of the total.


As you can see, there are no large differences between the Union as a whole (EU27) and the 16 Member states within the Euro area (EU16). But beware! the differences between countries are enormous. This is the case, e.g., for data coming from countries such as Spain and Germany which, without even being in the extremes of the series, show volume rates of public works contracts published in the OJEU ranging from 8% to 43.5%.

We hope this new post edited by our colleagues of 10ders Observatory for the Euroalert.net Official blog, has been interesting for you. Those of you wishing to obtain detailed data series for your analysis can contact us at info@euroalert.net. 10ders Observatory already has available data series for the fourth quarter of 2009, so that you can use them in your analysis of the entire year.

PS: Next week we will be posting in 10ders Observatory about the data you're all waiting for, the estimates of the aggregate economic value of EU tenders published in the OJEU.

10ders observatory: Tender announcements grow in the third quarter of 2009, but still less than contract awards figures

In the third quarter of 2009, at the same time that the first statistics showing positive data in terms of economic growth in Europe were published, the amount of calls for tenders announcements published by European public administrations in the OJEU also increased. In the European Union as a whole (EU27), the number of tender announcements published during the 3rd quarter of 2009 increased by 3.73% over the previous quarter, and 2.04% compared to the 3rd quarter of 2008. Furthermore, rates in terms of growth in the number of contracts announced have been significantly higher in the Euro area (UE16): 4.98% towards 2nd quarter of the year, and 5.10% over the same period in 2008.



Luxembourg and Portugal were the two Member states with the highest increase in the number of tender announcements issued by public administrations and entities, showing figures of 42.64% and 34.17% respectively, while the most important drops in EU27 have been registered in Finland (-21.4%) and Slovenia (-18.90%).

There are also some notorious cases depending on the nature of contracts, such as the fall in public works tender announcements in Bulgaria (-77.42%) or the service contracts notices published in the Czech Republic (-26.39%), as well as the growth in the amount of supply contracts announced in Germany (16.72%) during this period.

Compared with the third quarter of 2008, data for the same period in 2009 show a specially significant growth in the number of contracts announced in Hungary (23.02%) and Germany (20.52%), while the most important falls were registered in Ireland (-23.68%) and Romania (-27.14%).

According to 10ders observatory estimations, and considering all Member States, the amount of contract awards published by EU governments and other public entities in the OJEU rose by 10.78% towards the second quarter of 2009 and by 13.12% towards the 3rd quarter of 2008. This growth registered over the previous quarter of the year was much higher in the Euro area (UE16): 17.35%, being mainly driven by the increase in the award of public works contracts (19.23%) in countries such as Germany (22.74%) and France (30.60%) and despite the fall in Belgium (-4.52%), Ireland (-23.08%) and the Netherlands (-11.11%).


The strong growth in the amount of public procurement contracts awarded in Germany during the 3rd quarter of 2009 (25.94%) in relation to the 2nd quarter of the year, and more particularly the growth in supply contracts awarded in Portugal (41.10%) and service contracts awarded in Austria (38.67%), are in contrast with the declines in the number of contracts awarded both for public works and services in Bulgaria (-39.47% and -55.10% respectively), as well as the strong decrease of supply contracts awarded in Denmark (-40.76%).

Compared with the same period in 2008, Poland shows a significant increase in the number of service contracts awarded (114.24%), while Ireland and Greece stand out for their fall in the award of supply contracts (-40.58%) and public works contracts (-60.42%) respectively.

This is the first post of a series of "Tenders Observatory", where we aim to offer to the Euroalert community some of the main statistics about the evolution of public procurement in Europe, which Euroalert.net publishes and distributes. All these data have been elaborated by our colleagues at 10ders, the customized service of data-mining on public procurement and business opportunities which, thanks to its innovative search technology, is able to customize complex data series at very cost-effective prices.

We hope this new initiative that we have launched with the beginning of the decade will be useful and interesting for you. Of course, if you are interested in more specific data sets you can contact us at info@euroalert.net.