Beware, one train can hide another (or the importance of choosing the right CPV)

One of the things we do at Euroalert is making sure that the Competitive Intelligence products and services based on public procurement that we provide for our subscribers are of the highest quality. Much beyond than enhancing their technical features or aggregating new sources of data, Euroalert Team works with our clients to ensure that they get the information about public contracts that really affects their businesses.

One of the most important ingredients to achieve that is to make a good tender profile and choose the right CPV codes which are used in public procurement in the EU. If the codes are accurately identified, then the public procurement widgets implemented by our subscribers in their websites will show the contracts in the sectors and countries that really interest their users. In the same way, choosing the right CPV codes when building up a profile to set an alert on public procurement and government contracts in 10ders Alerts, is really important so that the subscriber gets the right alerts in the mail-box.

It seems easy, but this process can sometimes be a tricky one. Not only the CPV code list contains more than 9 000 codes and turns the process of choosing the right one into a digging experience, but one can also be tempted in some occasions by the first results of the search which are maybe not the right ones. It may happen like in the old railway road-crossings where “one train can hide another”, and a title of a contract which is apparently irrelevant for a business really “hides” one which is really interesting.

It also happens that sometimes the names of the CPV can be somehow misleading. Not leaving the railway environment, we recently found a funny example when solving a query from one of our subscribers. Why does a tender about “disposable non-chemical medical consumables and haematological consumables” in Poland appears in a search about rail transport? Easy, it seems that in publishing the tender someone may have mixed the code for “sleepers” with the one for “sleeping pills”.

With Euroalert you can always rely on the advice of our Team to solve these details and build up the profile which better fits into your needs. This will help you to get the most out of the widgets to publish tenders, the alerts on public procurement, the successful bidders lists or the product reports on public procurement.

Euroalert.net spends one day with SMEs and entrepreneurs at the “Salón Mi Empresa 2012”

Last February 15 we had the opportunity to spend one day at the “Salón Mi Empresa”, My Business Exhibition, an event held in Madrid for the third consecutive year. The forum brought together experts, companies and public bodies aiming to bring solutions for the issues which most concern small businesses and entrepreneurs. As a company dedicated to develop commercial intelligence tools for SMEs based on public procurement and government contracts, knowing at first hand what these kind of businesses expect and which are their needs, is something Euroalert.net is particularly interested in.

At the exhibitors area delegates had access to solutions adapted to their businesses as well as to public institutions which can help them to launch their projects and make them grow, such as the Spanish Directorate General for SME Policy, the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (ICEX), the Spanish High Council of Chambers of Commerce, or Madrid Emprende Economic Development Agency, among other organizations and associations which provide help for businesses and entrepreneurs. Besides these contact points, “Salón Mi Empresa” also consisted of 6 conference rooms, where speakers from different backgrounds addressed topics such as financial aspects for entrepreneurs and small businesses, how social media can be used to increase small businesses' performance, aspects related to franchising or issues related to SMEs internationalisation process, a field where Euroalert.net is working intensively to provide quality services.

It was an intense work day which brought us an occasion to meet companies and organizations we already had the opportunity to collaborate with, as well as a good opportunity to meet new people and greet some old friends, like those from Gestiona Radio with whom Euroalert.net was happy to collaborate a couple of months ago in their programme “Esto es Europa”, This is Europe, and who were making their programme “Primera Hora”, First Hour, at the Salón Mi Empresa.

It was also quite a rewarding experience to see how, despite current difficulties, there are still people willing to start up businesses, sharing innovative ideas and with loads of optimism to move their projects forward. For all of them, Euroalert.net will keep on improving to offer the best available information services and commercial intelligence tools such as our public contracts winners lists or our tender alerts for contracts available in any EU country.

A new review of the functioning of the Common Procurement Vocabulary CPV is on track

Although there is no mandatory frequency, a review of the Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV) is made about every four years. Since the Official Journal of the EU has recently published the award of the contract for the review of the functioning of the CPV Regulation and codes, a new revision seems to be already on track. These process started back in August 2011, when the DG for the Internal Market and Services announced a contract notice to make a study on the review of the functioning of the coding currently applying to public tenders.

The Common Procurement Vocabulary published by Regulation (EC) 2195/2002 aims to provide public authorities with a common base to formulate their procurement needs and for companies to better identify business opportunities in public procurement procedures. Choosing the right codes according to the purpose of a contract notices is, indeed, one of the key elements to match both parts of the procurement process: the contracting authority and the potential bidders.

CPV codes contribute to define the object of the contract in public procurement notices, easing the purchasing process. Furthermore, this common coding system enhances the cross-border element in procurement by facilitating companies to bid for contracts in other Member states, therefore contributing to a better functioning of the EU Single Market.

The Danish company to whom the contract has been awarded will have to assess whether the current CPV coding system meets the objectives it was established for. It will also have to evaluate if these objectives are actually relevant and if they are achieved in an efficient and effective manner. The contractor will have a period of twelve months to deliver the works, while interviews, analysis, questionnaires and all the necessary evaluation processes will be performed.

Whatever the results of the study and the proposed changes to the CPV will be, Euroalert.net will be vigilant and will adapt all the services just as it was done for the 2008 CPV codes review. These commercial intelligence services based on public procurement designed for SMEs are those which allow, e.g., to track the publication of this particular tender for the review of the CPV, and to know afterwards which company has won the contract.

By the way, if you feel curious, these are the CPV codes applied to the tender for the CPV review: 79313000, 79419000, 72330000, 79330000, 72221000. Do you think they meet their objectives? If you want to know which services they describe and know a bit more about the system itself, you can always have a look at the CPV codes lists description page at Euroalert.net website.

New rules on thresholds applicable to EU public procurement already published

Today we want to announce you a new change that will affect public procurement market in the European Union. As we already did in the past by detailing you developments such as the introduction of new CPVs in 2008 or the adaptation to the new features put in place by TED in March 2010, this time it is the matter for the changes introduced by Commission Regulation (EU) nº 1251/2011 of 30 November 2011 which modifies procurement Directives in respect to their application thresholds for the procedures for the awards of contract, and was published in the Official Journal on 2 December.

According to this Regulation, the minimum thresholds applicable to public procurement have been slightly increased. Although these changes will not be quite significant, the new figures will nevertheless have to be taken into account both by contracting authorities when launching procurement procedures, and by those companies interested in taking part in bidding processes for public contracts. The new thresholds will enter into force on 1 January 2012 and be applicable for two years.

Therefore, these new thresholds for the publication of public procurement announcements will change from 125,000 to 130,000 Euro in the case of services and supply contracts issued by central government bodies and from 193,000 to 200,000 Euro in the case of other contracting authorities. For services and supply contracts in the case of utilities and defence threshold will now pass for 387,000 to 400,000 Euro. In the case of work contracts and work concessions these figures will pass from 4,845,000 to 5,000,000 Euro.

On our side we will of course be prepared for any change which should be introduced regarding the tools and services on commercial intelligence based on public procurement that Euroalert.net provides for companies in Europe. We will make sure that you can keep on receiving tender alerts, requesting the lists of tender winners or authorities that you need, or receiving your product reports on public procurement, without being affected by these changes.

We would also like to take this occasion to remind you that if you want to keep track on new legislation published in the OJEU, Euroalert.net Customized Newsletters on EU information can certainly help you. They will allow you to keep up to date, not only about new legal developments, but also about news related to the European Union and funding opportunities for your projects. If you have any questions, you can send us an e-mail us to info@euroalert.net or contact us by any of the means described in our web.

Presenting Euroalert at the workshop Share PSI prior to the Digital Agenda Assembly

As previously announced, Euroalert participated on 9 of May with many members of the European Open Data community at the workshop “Removing Road Blocks to a Pan European Market for PSI Reuse”, organized by the initiative W3C and ETSI: SharePSI.

Our position paper, 'Euroalert.net: Building a pan-European public procurement platform to aggregate data and commercial services for SMEs Deliver powered by open data' was selected to be presented, along with other interesting examples of services feeded by public sector information, on the table "Use Cases I" moderated by Margot Dor from ETSI.

In our intervention, we explained Euroalert experience in building the 10ders Information Services platform, throughout reusing public information data. With this platform, we intend to add data procurement from all over the EU and of course, the added-value services that we provide primarily to SMEs based on tender data.

10ders IS is a simple idea but at the same time it supposes a challenge as EU public procurement represents about 18% of the aggregate GDP of all member countries.

Of course, we try to contribute to the workshop explaining the obstacles that we are finding at every step, but also the satisfaction that is providing services to organizations and companies from 15 different countries. Especially considering that we are still at the beginning of our way and therefore we have a long way to create services and information to process.

As usually, we put at your disposal the presentation used in the workshop and we recommend you visiting the excellent collection of resources on the sessions that ETSI platform has conducted, and the article that our director has posted on his blog with a summary of his impressions.

Building a pan-European platform to aggregate public procurement data and deliver commercial services for SMEs powered by open data

We will continue working hard in order to provide you the best information services and that Euroalert keeps be considered a leading company in the emerging market for information-based services in the public sector, a company powered by OpenData. Thank you all for helping us getting there.

Come and take a 7-day FREE TRIAL for Euroalert.net 10ders Alerts

In our first post of this year we already mentioned you a new product we had included in Euroalert.net's on-line Store to close the year on a high note: the Alerts on public procurement contracts from all EU countries which we called 10ders Alerts. To make a good start of this new year, Euroalert.net offers you the possibility to enjoy a 7 days free trial by only making a very simple registration and to setting up your profile. During 7 days you will receive in your e-mail public procurement announcements marching your business needs.

As it has been the case for all 10ders products, we have created 10ders Alerts thinking very specially about what SMEs from all over Europe actually need and which are their difficulties in accessing public procurement market. For that reason, our main purpose was to create a service very easy to use, which can be bought at a very competitive price (only 20€/month or 192€/year), but, above all, a service including all the new features we have developed to enhance search power and filtering so you will only receive public contracts, procurement announcements and awards which are relevant for your business.


You are welcome to try it for FREE and give us your opinion, which will certainly help us to improve the product for all Euroalert.net Community. As always, for any question, just don't hesitate to contact us, you can do so in our e-mail TenderAlerts@euroalert.net.

Just like the 10ders Product Reports in public procurement, that you can also buy in Euroalert.net on-line store, this is one more excellent tool for exporting SMEs. Using 10ders Alerts they will be able to explore new business opportunities with the Public Sector in different countries, or to improve their commercial market intelligence and know what their competitors are doing, find new partners or distributors, or knowing whether their product is competitive outside their country.

10ders Alerts is the first of a series of important announcements we will be making in the coming weeks, and is one more step in our goal to build a pan-European platform which will aggregate all public procurement and tender announcements in the European Union (which represent more that 2155 billion euro!).

As we progress in this objective, we will be able to develop new cost-effective information services which will be accessible for any SME and will help them to be more competitive in public procurement markets.

For example, very soon we will be announcing you something we are really looking forward to making public: the entry of a new member of Euroalert.net Team, who will take the position as Editor in Chief and will therefore be in charge of offering you an even better selection of the most relevant news from the European Union and its institutions.