Manual tender monitoring versus automated tender monitoring: real gains, limits and trade-offs

‍

Tender monitoring has become a strategic lever for companies, for example, positioned in the energy, infrastructure, mobility or environmental markets. Faced with the multiplication of publication sources and the increasing complexity of projects, two approaches now coexist: manual monitoring and automated monitoring.
Contrary to some common misconceptions, manual monitoring is not absurd. It even offers real advantages, particularly for small structures or for very targeted scopes. However, it quickly reaches its limits as soon as one seeks to broaden the field of vision, save time or finely analyze opportunities.
This article offers an objective analysis of the advantages and limits of manual monitoring, compared with automated tender monitoring, with a particular focus on the energy sector.

‍

1. Manual tender monitoring: definition, operation and initial use cases

‍

The main advantage of manual monitoring is obvious: it requires no subscription. It relies on the use of free platforms and direct consultation of publication sources. For some companies, particularly those in a start-up phase, this aspect can be decisive.
In practical terms, manual monitoring consists of identifying the main publication platforms, such as BOAMP or TED, subscribing to free alerts when they exist, and regularly consulting sites that do not offer automatic notifications. This approach requires regular discipline and time, but it can work when the volume of tenders monitored remains limited.

‍

2. Advantages of manual tender monitoring: a free but time-consuming solution

‍

The first structural difficulty of manual monitoring lies in identifying and tracking relevant sources. To set up even a minimally serious monitoring system, it is not enough to consult one or two national platforms. It is also necessary to monitor regional platforms, buyer profiles of local authorities, certain public company websites, as well as specialized portals or legal announcement journals.
At the national level, this quickly represents several hundred sources. Even at the regional level, the volume becomes difficult to manage manually. This is precisely what makes exhaustive monitoring unrealistic without a dedicated tool. On this subject, the Deepbloo article explaining how to use BOAMP to identify public procurement notices in France helps to clearly understand the central role of this platform, but also its limits when used alone.

‍

3. Structural limits of manual public tender monitoring

‍

It is important to be pragmatic. Manual monitoring can work when the scope is very restricted, for example at the level of a single department or for a limited number of well-identified local authorities. In this case, it is conceivable to regularly consult the relevant sources and remain up to date.
However, as soon as one seeks to cover a regional, national, European or international scope, the workload becomes disproportionate to the benefits. The multiplication of platforms and formats makes the approach extremely fragile and time-consuming.

‍

4. Duplicates, dispersion of sources and lack of aggregation of tenders

‍

Another recurring problem of manual monitoring is the management of duplicates. The same tender may be published simultaneously on BOAMP, on TED, on a regional platform and on the buyer profile of the relevant local authority.
Without an automated tool, it is very difficult to identify that it is one and the same contract. This leads to wasted time, confusion and sometimes even analysis errors. Conversely, automated monitoring solutions natively integrate deduplication mechanisms that allow each opportunity to be processed only once.

In manual monitoring, each source remains isolated. There is no centralized database allowing a keyword search across all monitored tenders, filtering by geographic area, by buyer or by type of service, or easily retrieving a tender analyzed several weeks earlier.
To address this difficulty, some companies attempt to create internal aggregation tools, for example using spreadsheets or in-house databases. But this approach quickly requires technical skills, development time and maintenance. In practice, this amounts to partially rebuilding a monitoring platform, without benefiting from the robustness of a professional solution.

‍

5. Tender analysis in manual monitoring: a heavy and poorly scalable workload

‍

Manual monitoring also implies a significant cognitive load when analyzing tenders. Each tender must be opened, read, understood, and often accompanied by downloading additional documents such as the consultation regulations or the tender consultation file.
One solution sometimes considered is to use general-purpose artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, Claude or Mistral, to analyze documents. But this approach assumes that relevant tenders have already been identified and that the operation is repeated for each contract. It quickly becomes time-consuming as volume increases.
Conversely, automated monitoring enables native analysis of content and documents, as explained in the article “How AI is revolutionizing tender monitoring in France and internationally?”.

‍

‍

6. Automated tender monitoring: scaling up to national and international levels

‍

Automated monitoring makes it possible to take a step forward in terms of coverage and efficiency. It relies on the ability to simultaneously track hundreds or even thousands of sources, aggregate information into a single point, deduplicate notices and offer advanced search engines.
This is what makes effective monitoring possible in complex and cross-cutting markets, whether urban mobility and transport services, biodiversity and the environment, or energy efficiency and building performance.

‍

7. Upstream project detection: the decisive advantage of automated monitoring

‍

A fundamental point distinguishes manual monitoring from automated monitoring. The former is almost always limited to tenders that have already been published. The latter also makes it possible to track upstream information, such as local authority deliberations, administrative authorizations, opinions of environmental authorities or investment projects.
These weak signals are extremely difficult to monitor manually in a reliable way, while they constitute a major competitive advantage for anticipating future tenders.

‍

8. CPV codes and tender monitoring: the limits of a manual approach

‍

In manual monitoring, companies often rely almost exclusively on CPV codes to filter tenders. However, as detailed in the article “CPV codes: how to use them to effectively identify relevant tenders?”, this approach presents numerous limitations. Codes may be poorly assigned, too generic or used very differently depending on the country.
Automated monitoring makes it possible to overcome this constraint through semantic analysis of content and real understanding of the projects described in the documents.

‍

9. Manual or automated tender monitoring: a question of scale and strategy

‍

Manual monitoring can be relevant in very targeted contexts, with low volume and strong human investment. However, as soon as one wishes to increase the volume of tenders monitored, expand the geographic area, combine several sectors or anticipate projects, automation becomes not only more efficient, but also more cost-effective.

Automated tender monitoring takes on its full meaning in highly technical and transversal sectors such as digital services, software and information systems. Public buyers increasingly launch complex tenders covering IT infrastructure, business software, data platforms, cybersecurity, cloud services or smart public services. In these contexts, relying on manual monitoring quickly becomes unrealistic due to the diversity of sources, technical vocabulary and overlapping scopes. A structured and automated approach makes it possible to efficiently track opportunities across the Digital, Software and Information Systems segment, while maintaining a consistent and searchable overview of published tenders.

This change of scale is even more critical for sectors such as telecommunications, data networks and smart cities, where projects often span multiple domains, from connectivity and sensors to urban platforms and video protection systems. Automated monitoring enables companies to follow tenders related to telecommunications, data and smart cities, as well as more specific markets such as video protection, which are frequently embedded within broader digital or urban infrastructure projects. It also facilitates a clearer distinction between what can realistically be monitored locally and what requires a broader approach, as detailed in our article on the key differences between tender monitoring in France and international markets.

‍

Conclusion – Manual versus automated tender monitoring: complementary uses but clear limits

‍

Manual tender monitoring remains a viable option in very localized contexts. Its main advantage is its zero cost, but its limits are structural: dispersion of sources, lack of aggregation, lack of analysis and difficulty in anticipating projects.
As companies grow, their ambitions expand, and markets become more complex, automated tender monitoring becomes a strategic lever. In this context, relying on a tender monitoring platform makes it possible to centralize information, analyze markets, and more effectively anticipate opportunities in France.

‍