Finding Opportunities: A Step-by-Step Guide

This guide walks you through the process of finding relevant tender opportunities using Zen AI. You'll learn how to set up search preferences, find public tenders, and upload your own tender documents for analysis.

Understanding the Opportunity Discovery Process

Finding the right opportunities is the first step in a successful tender strategy. Zen AI provides multiple ways to discover and add opportunities to your dashboard, helping you focus on those that align with your business capabilities and goals.

The opportunity discovery process in Zen AI includes:

1. Setting up your company profile and search preferences
2. Finding public tenders that match your criteria
3. Uploading tender documents you've received from other sources
4. Preliminary analysis to determine if opportunities are worth pursuing
5. Saving relevant opportunities to your dashboard for further analysis

This systematic approach helps you efficiently identify opportunities that are worth your time and resources, avoiding wasted effort on tenders that don't align with your capabilities or business goals.

Prerequisites for Opportunity Discovery

Before starting your opportunity search, ensure you have:

1. Set up your company profile

   Your company profile provides the foundation for Zen AI's matching capabilities. Navigate to the Company section and ensure you've entered:

   • Basic company information (name, size, location)
   • Core competencies and expertise areas
   • Industries and sectors you serve
   • Geographic focus areas
   • Key technologies and methodologies

   A complete profile improves the relevance of opportunity matches and helps you find tenders that align with your capabilities.

2. Configure search preferences

   Customize your search preferences to focus on opportunities that match your business interests:

   • Navigate to Settings > Search Preferences
   • Set industry and sector preferences
   • Specify geographic regions of interest
   • Set value ranges for opportunity size | - Configure notification preferences for new opportunities

With these prerequisites in place, you're ready to start finding opportunities that match your business profile.

Accessing the Opportunities Dashboard

The Opportunities dashboard is your central hub for managing all tender opportunities:

1. Log in to your Zen AI account using your credentials
2. Navigate to the "Opportunities" section from the main navigation menu
3. You'll see your Opportunities dashboard with several key elements:
   • Summary statistics showing new tenders and active opportunities
   • Quick action buttons for finding or uploading tenders
   • List of your current opportunities with key information
   • Filters and search options to help you find specific opportunities

The dashboard provides a comprehensive view of your opportunity pipeline, helping you track and manage tenders at various stages of the process.

From this dashboard, you can find new opportunities, manage existing ones, and track your tender pipeline effectively.

Finding Public Tenders

Zen AI provides powerful search capabilities to help you find relevant public tenders:

Basic Search

To perform a basic search for public tenders:

1. From the Opportunities dashboard, click the "Find Public Tender" button
2. Enter keywords related to your business in the search field
3. Click "Search" to see results that match your keywords
4. Browse through the results to find opportunities of interest
5. Click on any tender to view more details
6. Click "Add to My Opportunities" to save it to your dashboard

This simple search process allows you to quickly find opportunities based on keywords relevant to your business.

Advanced Search and Filtering

For more targeted results, use the advanced search and filtering options:

1. Click "Advanced Search" to access additional search parameters

2. Filter results by:

   • Industry or sector (e.g., construction, IT services, healthcare)
   • Geographic location (country, region, city)
   • Value range (minimum and maximum contract value)
   • Publication date (to find recent opportunities)
   • Submission deadline (to find opportunities with sufficient time to respond)
   • Procurement procedure (open, restricted, negotiated, etc.)

3. Combine multiple filters to narrow down results to the most relevant opportunities

4. Save your search criteria for future use by clicking "Save Search"

These advanced search capabilities help you find opportunities that precisely match your business focus and capabilities, saving time by filtering out irrelevant tenders.

Understanding Search Results

The search results provide key information to help you evaluate opportunities at a glance:

1. Each result includes:

   • Tender title and reference number
   • Issuing organization
   • Location
   • Estimated value (when available)
   • Publication date
   • Submission deadline
   • Brief description of the scope
   • Relevance score based on your company profile

2. Results are sorted by relevance by default, with the best matches at the top | 3. You can re-sort results by other criteria such as deadline or value | 4. Color-coded indicators highlight approaching deadlines or high-relevance opportunities

Take time to review the search results carefully, focusing on opportunities that have both high relevance to your business and sufficient time remaining before the submission deadline.

Saving Opportunities

When you find an interesting opportunity, save it to your dashboard for further analysis:

1. Click on the opportunity to view more details
2. Review the full information to confirm it's relevant to your business
3. Click "Add to My Opportunities" to save it
4. Assign a status (typically "Pre-check" for new opportunities)
5. Add any initial comments or notes about the opportunity
6. The opportunity will now appear in your Opportunities dashboard

Saved opportunities can be analyzed in detail using Zen AI's analysis tools, helping you make informed bid/no-bid decisions.

Uploading Your Own Tender Documents

If you've received tender documents directly or downloaded them from procurement portals, you can upload them to Zen AI for analysis:

Preparing Your Documents

Before uploading, organize your tender documents for optimal processing:

1. Ensure you have all relevant documents for the tender, including:

   • Main tender document or RFP
   • Technical specifications
   • Terms and conditions
   • Evaluation criteria
   • Any appendices or supporting materials

2. Check that documents are in supported formats:

   • PDF files (most common)
   • Microsoft Word documents (DOCX)
   • Text files (TXT)
   • HTML files

3. Consider organizing complex document sets into folders to maintain their structure

Proper preparation ensures that Zen AI can process all relevant information for comprehensive analysis.

Uploading Documents

To upload tender documents:

1. From the Opportunities dashboard, click the "Upload Tender Files" button

2. Choose your upload method:

   • Select individual files
   • Select multiple files
   • Upload a folder (to maintain document structure)

3. Wait for the files to upload (progress will be displayed)

4. Give the opportunity a clear, descriptive name | 5. Add any initial notes or context about the opportunity | 6. Click "Process Documents" to create the opportunity

The system will process the documents and create a new opportunity in your dashboard. Processing time depends on the number and size of documents but typically takes a few minutes.

Understanding Document Processing

When you upload documents, Zen AI processes them in several stages:

1. Document Conversion: Files are converted to a format suitable for analysis
2. Text Extraction: Text is extracted from the documents, including from images using OCR when necessary
3. Initial Analysis: Basic information is extracted to create the opportunity record
4. Indexing: Documents are indexed for future analysis and searching

This processing happens in the background, and you'll be notified when it's complete. Once processing is finished, the opportunity will appear in your dashboard with the status "Pre-check."

Working with New Opportunities

After finding or uploading opportunities, you'll want to review them in more detail:

Viewing Opportunity Details

To access comprehensive information about an opportunity:

1. Click on the opportunity name in your dashboard
2. The opportunity details page shows:
   • Basic information (name, description, deadline)
   • Key information (issuer, location, procurement procedure, estimated value)
   • Dates and deadlines
   • Technical details
   • Bidder requirements
   • Document links

This detailed view helps you understand the opportunity better and provides access to all related documents and analyses.

Preliminary Analysis

Before investing significant time in a full analysis, conduct a preliminary assessment:

1. Review the basic information to confirm the opportunity aligns with your business
2. Check the submission deadline to ensure you have sufficient time to respond
3. Review the key requirements to identify any potential showstoppers
4. Consider running a quick Bid/No-Bid analysis to get an initial recommendation

The Bid/No-Bid analysis provides a structured evaluation of the opportunity based on multiple factors:

1. Navigate to the "Bid/No-Bid" section in the opportunity details
2. Click "Analyze Document Requirements" to initiate the analysis
3. Review the results, which include:
   • Executive summary of the tender
   • Important dates and deadlines
   • Technical summary and keywords
   • Strengths and weaknesses analysis
   • Competitive positioning assessment
   • Risk evaluation
   • Opportunity score and recommendation

Based on this preliminary analysis, you can decide whether to:

• Proceed with a full analysis (if the opportunity looks promising)
• Mark the opportunity as "No-Bid" (if it's clearly not a good fit)
• Gather more information before making a decision

This early assessment helps you focus your resources on the most promising opportunities.

Managing Your Opportunity Pipeline

As you find and evaluate opportunities, it's important to maintain an organized pipeline:

Updating Opportunity Status

Track the progress of each opportunity by updating its status:

1. From the opportunities list, find the status column
2. Click on the current status to open the dropdown menu
3. Select the new status:
   • Pre-check: Initial evaluation stage
   • In Progress: Currently working on the proposal
   • Bid: Decision to submit a proposal
   • No-Bid: Decision not to pursue
   • Won: Successfully won the tender
   • Lost: Unsuccessful bid

Regular status updates help you maintain an accurate view of your pipeline and focus on active opportunities.

Organizing Opportunities

Keep your opportunities organized to maintain clarity and focus:

1. Use the search bar to find specific opportunities by name, client, or other keywords
2. Sort the list by clicking on column headers (Name, Deadline, Status) to organize by different criteria
3. Filter opportunities by status to focus on specific stages (e.g., only view "In Progress" opportunities)
4. Archive completed opportunities to keep your active list manageable
5. Use comments to add notes or reminders about specific opportunities

Good organization helps you focus on the most relevant opportunities and maintain a clean dashboard.

Next Steps

Once you've found and saved relevant opportunities, you can proceed with more detailed analysis and proposal development:

1. Analyzing Tenders: Learn how to extract requirements, match references, and evaluate opportunities in detail.
2. Tender Summary: Understand how to make informed decisions about which opportunities to pursue.
3. Opportunity Management: Learn more about managing your opportunity pipeline effectively.

By following this structured approach to finding opportunities, you can ensure that you're focusing your resources on tenders that align with your capabilities and business goals, increasing your chances of success.