Learn how NoA Ignite, a leading Nordic consultancy, uses Cobrief to streamline tendering. Discover how AI technology helps bid managers save time, qualify bids faster and increase their chances of winning.
NoA Ignite was one of the first to adopt Cobrief. Almost two years later, the tool is a matter of course in everyday work — and the key to both applying for and winning more tenders.
Just being able to quickly see who has submitted to the tender in the past, gives a good picture of the competition. This saves us a lot of time,” says Øyvind Aak, Senior Bid Manager and Partner Manager at NoA Ignite.
He says that in the past it could take hours to find out who has delivered before. Now it's done in minutes, if not seconds, in Cobrief.
As NoA Ignite has a “lean” sales apparatus, it is important to properly prioritize resources. Each round of tenders must be carefully considered: Is this worth delivering on? How big is your chance of winning? “Cobrief helps us succeed in this.
We save a lot of time in the initial stages — time we can spend on what actually counts: drafting and delivering a winning tender,” says Aak.
NoA Ignite was one of the first to start with Cobrief. Since the start of 2024, the company has been providing regular feedback on functionality and improvement opportunities. The Cobrief team has welcomed the input with open arms.
“It has been fun to follow the development and see how much better it has become in a short period of time,” says Henriette Vien, Client Operations Manager at NoA Ignite.
Øyvind Aak nods and adds: “A lot has happened — and it has gone fast. The tool has evolved faster than we have been able to adopt all its functions,” he says with a smile.
NoA Ignite is a Nordic consulting house with around 400 employees in Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Wroclaw.The company is part of The North Alliance (NoA). NoA Ignite specializes in user-oriented digital products and services.
Among the solutions NoA Ignite has delivered are the Ruter app, new websites, new housing travel and a digital service platform for the Student Samskipsnaden in Oslo (SiO), and the AMK project for Vestre Viken Health Enterprises, which allows 113 operators to view emergencies in real time via mobile camera.
NoA Ignite has also delivered heavy projects for websites such as Regjeringen.no and Banenor.no — with advanced CMS solutions, content models and complex integrations.— Regjeringen.no is actually one of the world's largest information portals, and there we work with both technology and content structure,” says Vien.
Before Cobrief became part of the everyday work of the sales team at NoA Ignite, tendering work was characterized by time-consuming and manual processes: Documents had to be downloaded, forwarded, uploaded and made available to more people.
The sales apparatus ended up becoming a form of “gatekeepers” for all information related to public tender. They spent a lot of time sharing various documents and files and the like across departments all the time.
---- Now everything is shared in Slack via the Cobrief integration, so anyone who wants to can follow along,” Aak says contentedly. The fact that more people can now consider tenders quickly and independently means that potential opportunities are always caught up.
It's not always the sales team that discovers everything. Now a professional can quickly see the potential of a tender we might have overlooked. This allows us, in practice, to apply for several relevant tenders,” he says.
There are two features in particular that the duo in NoA Ignite highlights. ---- The landing page for each tender has become a key tool. There we get assessment criteria, key information and contract value quickly — without having to open and read the entire tender package,” says Vien.
The KI functions also provide tangible gain in terms of time saved. The chatbot is used to find details that could previously take a long time to find — such as local presence requirements, contract type, deadlines and dates, or special terms.
“We use KI to ask specific questions. In a busy everyday life, it is incredibly effective. Now we can quickly consider a tender. Little time is wasted assessing whether this is for us or not,” says Vien.
Although NoA Ignite currently uses Cobrief primarily for qualification and information retrieval, they see greater opportunities on the horizon — particularly in the field of AI and reuse of previous responses.
---- We are now testing out KI-based text proposals, based on previous tenders. It's an exciting road ahead — but the quality has to be top notch. You don't win with something that's “good enough,” Aak says.
For him, it's not about saving time in the writing phase, but about using the time smarter. It's about cutting out everything unnecessary at the start, and rather spending the energy where it matters: Writing a tender that hits the blink of an eye.
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Tellef Tveit
NoA Ignite is an example of a company choosing to use its time in a smart way, according to Tellef Tveit, Cobrief's commercial manager.
They are far ahead in their shoes. Public tenders are often a time-consuming and complicated process, and Noa Ignite is using Cobrief to turn this process around in a way that gives them a major competitive advantage.
The result is a process that creates opportunities, not obstacles, in everyday life.
“It will be easier to discover opportunities and faster to decide which public tenders to participate in. In a hectic everyday life and in an industry where development occurs quickly, this is an important advantage.