We created and deployed a service making the process of bid documents preparation faster. We considered all customer requests and put its ideas into practice.
About the customer:
Leading software developer, CSoft Group.
The customer regularly participates in bids, so he has to read and then fill out large packages of complex documents. He was looking for ways to speed up this process and turned to us to:
Find a way to automate the filling of documents process.
Get bid documents by the hundreds from the aggregators.
Automatically calculate the profit for each bid.
Generate commercial offers.
The task was complicated by the fact that each author of tender documents executed them in its own manner as this field is poorly standardized.
We discussed the situation together with a customer, selected technologies and planned the development process. After that we:
Recorded the goals in the project charter and terms of reference.
Worked out algorithms with experts in computer linguistics.
Trained customer personnel and increased the accuracy of the service.
Connected the aggregators and developed a generator of commercial proposals.
After each stage, we presented the project to the customer to adjust the service if necessary, add features or fix the interface.
As a result, we were able to create a system that greatly simplifies the work of the customer with bids:
Bidding documents can be downloaded from 7,000+ sites.
More than 1 million products and prices are used to calculate profitability.
Typical documents are pre-filled up to 80% in 2 minutes.
Commercial offers are generated automatically.
The service determines whether the customer's legal entities meet the requirements for participation.
The system works with hundreds of entities and parts of documentation.
The system is trainable, and its accuracy increases over time.
The operator sees all uploaded document packages as a general list with key attributes. Its items are color-coded: if the company does not meet the requirements of the bid, the system will mark it in red.
It is possible to work with several legal entities at a time: an individual document package will be generated for each legal entity
Bids consist of lots. Each lot can be submitted. However, this is still one large tender with its requirements. It is more convenient for an operator to work with such lots as with a single project. In this way, no detail escapes him, and all important data will be visible on one screen at the same time.
The most important entities of the bid for the operator are shown in the "first window" as in the image below.
The system is designed to help a company to process hundreds of bids, quickly understand participation prospects and prepare documents:
Operator can set up the filter of which bids he wants to import from sites every day.
Operator can add any desired entity or part of documentation to be found and processed.
Operator can refine the system by specifying what must be taken from the documentation.
Operator may set categories of goods which prices and stock should be updated. Data is taken from 27 aggregators.
System supports uploading documents in the old .doc format and in new .docx and .xlsx formats.
Documents known to the system are filled automatically; an operator is not required to enter data (for example, prices of goods) manually.
The system automatically parses and fills up to 80% of the data in the bid documentation. Operator sees both processed and initial materials on the screen and thus controls the preparation completely.
You can download the pre-filled documents on the project page before submitting them to the bidder's site. The map below shows how the relationships between the underlying entities of the bid are built.
Commercial offer and automatically pregenerated parts of bid documents use the same parsed data. The cheapest goods are selected from the base of goods. The indication that in the base of goods there are Customer's own goods having the priority over other goods was considered. Discount and markup policy can be adjusted.
The cheapest item of the most relevant product is selected by default upon commercial offer generation but you may manually select any other related item. This may be useful, for example, in case that any supplier is not ready to deliver goods right now. Profitability will be recalculated upon each such change. You have only to press one button to generate the commercial offer from a legal entity selected.
Customer's requests related to the service interface and design were considered.
The accuracy of service operation enhances over the time.
The first working version was presented in 45 days.
The system is capable of pre-processing hundreds of documents.
Alexander Baranov
director
I had just a vision. Now I have the product that provides me what I want.
The product is functioning well, and it has a positive impact on internal operations. Shvetsov Technologies required minimal supervision, yet kept internal stakeholders informed with consistent updates.
If you need to develop and implement a high-tech project, please, contact us. We will consult you on how to make it optimal.
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