Public procurement is full of metrics: number of tenders discovered, number of bids submitted, win rates, proposal quality scores, evaluation feedback, and more.

But there’s one metric that shapes all the others and yet almost no supplier tracks it, time-to-opportunity.

How long it takes between the moment a tender is published and the moment your team actually sees it.

It sounds simple, but this single measure determines how much time you have to:

• analyse documents
• coordinate with internal teams
• refine pricing
• prepare a stronger proposal
• avoid last-minute stress or rushed submissions

For SMEs, who already operate with limited time and resources, time-to-opportunity isn’t just an efficiency metric, it’s a competitive advantage.

Slow discovery means reduced preparation time, weaker bids, and missed opportunities. The European Court of Auditors has observed that delays and fragmented systems directly reduce supplier participation across Europe. Faster discovery, on the other hand, creates space for strategy instead of reaction.

In this article, we look at why time-to-opportunity is emerging as the real benchmark for procurement efficiency, and why improving it may be the fastest way to improve your tender outcomes.

Why procurement needs a better efficiency metric?

For years, procurement teams (especially SMEs) have relied on familiar KPIs: number of tenders found, number of bids submitted, and win rate. These metrics tell part of the story, but they don’t explain why some teams consistently perform better than others.

Traditional KPIs measure outcomes.

Time-to-opportunity measures conditions for success.

And that’s why it matters.

Traditional KPIs don’t capture the full picture

Most procurement teams track:

• how many tenders they see
• how many bids they submit
• how many of those they win

But these indicators don’t address the underlying efficiency of the tendering process.

For example:

A team might lose several bids not because the offers were weak, but because they discovered the tenders too late to prepare properly.

Or a team might appear “unproductive” because they’re submitting fewer bids, even though they’re winning a higher percentage by focusing on opportunities they had time to prepare well.

Without understanding timing, win rate alone can be misleading.

Why time matters most

Tendering is a deadline-driven sport.

Every hour counts.

A difference of 12 or 24 hours in discovering a tender can determine whether:

• you have time to read the documents properly
• your finance team can review viability
• technical teams can confirm capability
• leadership can approve a bid
• your proposal is strategic instead of rushed

Yet few SMEs measure how long it takes between publication and discovery, even though this is the factor that most directly affects success downstream.

The European Court of Auditors has highlighted that poor information flow and slow communication reduce participation and weaken competition in EU procurement markets.

Put simply:

If you don’t see opportunities early, nothing else in your process matters as much.

What time-to-opportunity actually measures?

Time-to-opportunity is a simple metric with outsized impact. It tells you exactly how long it takes for your team to become aware of a tender after it has been published.

Unlike other procurement KPIs, it doesn’t measure effort or outcome it measures visibility.

And visibility is the foundation of every successful bid.

Time-to-opportunity answers one question: How fast can your organisation react to a new opportunity?

A simple definition with strategic implications

In practical terms, time-to-opportunity is the time between when a tender is published and when your team first sees it.

This can be:

• minutes (real-time alerts)
• hours (portal checks once or twice a day)
• or days (batch email notifications or manual weekly reviews)

The shorter the delay, the stronger the position your team is in.

Long delays compress your preparation window and in public procurement, less preparation almost always means lower quality.

Even a 12-hour delay can reduce your ability to:

• understand the tender’s complexity
• consult technical or delivery teams
• perform financial viability checks
• ask clarification questions before deadlines
• prepare a compliant proposal

A tender you discover early is simply a different tender (with more potential) than one you discover late.

Why it’s the KPI that predicts success?

Time-to-opportunity influences every other performance metric:

• Win rate: more time to prepare leads to stronger proposals.
• Bid/no-bid ratio: earlier discovery allows thoughtful qualification instead of rushed decisions.
• Team stress levels: fewer compressed deadlines and last-minute sprints.
• Proposal quality: more room for collaboration and refinement.

The European Court of Auditors has repeatedly shown that delayed or inconsistent access to tenders reduces participation, especially among SMEs.

Fewer suppliers seeing tenders in time means fewer bids and poorer outcomes for everyone.

Time-to-Opportunity is not just a measure of speed.

It’s a measure of strategic readiness.

The cost of slow discovery: How delays hurt SMEs?

Slow tender discovery isn’t a minor inconvenience, it’s a structural disadvantage for SMEs.

Large companies can afford dedicated monitoring teams. SMEs cannot.

That means every hour of delay disproportionately affects smaller suppliers, who already operate with limited time, people, and resources.

Time-to-opportunity is the invisible factor behind many poor outcomes: rushed bids, missed details, and “we had no chance” submissions.

Lost preparation time

Tendering is essentially a preparation game.

The earlier you see a tender, the more time you have to:

• read documents properly
• run internal feasibility checks
• coordinate with finance, delivery, or compliance teams
• shape a stronger narrative and pricing strategy
• request clarifications before deadlines

When discovery is slow, these tasks compress.

Preparation becomes a sprint, not a process.

Rushed proposals often look rushed and evaluators notice.

Higher stress and less strategy

Late discovery pushes Bid Managers into reactive mode: checking portals constantly, chasing documents, and firefighting internal questions.

This leads to:

• more errors
• more late nights
• more tasks done “just to submit”
• less time available for high-quality writing or competitive pricing
• very little room for strategy

Instead of deciding which tenders should be pursued, teams end up pursuing whatever was discovered on time.

This cycle is one of the leading causes of Bid Manager burnout and the reason many SMEs struggle to increase their win rates.

Reduced participation → Lower competition

Delayed discovery doesn’t only harm suppliers. It harms the market.

The European Court of Auditors reports a steady rise in single-bid tenders across Europe, reaching 41.8% in 2021.

One of the contributing factors?

Suppliers either never saw the opportunity or saw it too late to prepare.

Slow discovery leads to:

• fewer bids per tender
• reduced price competition
• less innovation in proposals
• higher risk of awarding to incumbents by default

When SMEs miss tenders due to slow visibility, the entire ecosystem loses.

Fast discovery isn’t a luxury… it’s a public value driver.

What good time-to-opportunity looks like?

To improve time-to-opportunity, teams first need to know what “good” actually means.

In procurement, discovery speed isn’t theoretical… it can be benchmarked, tracked, and improved.

Here’s what competitive organisations aim for, and what SMEs should consider as practical targets.

Benchmarks to aim for

Time-to-opportunity varies by sector and country, but the logic is universal:

the faster you see a tender, the more prepared you can be.

Clear benchmarks:

• Real-time (0 minutes): Ideal
  
  • You see tenders as soon as they appear — the gold standard.
  • Gives your team full preparation runway.
• Under 1 hour: Highly competitive
  
  • Provides ample time for qualification, planning, and early coordination.
• Under 12 hours: Acceptable, but risky
  
  • You can still compete effectively, but may lose the chance to analyse deeply or ask clarifications early.
• Over 24 hours: A market disadvantage
  
  • You are almost always reacting rather than planning.

For short-deadline tenders or complex bids, 24+ hours can be the difference between a strong submission and a rushed one, or no submission at all.

Bid managers rarely track these metrics, yet they shape every downstream outcome.

What influences the metric?

Several operational factors directly affect time-to-opportunity:

• Portal batching - many portals send updates once or twice per day instead of real time.
• Fragmentation of sources - if you rely on checking multiple portals, delays are inevitable.
• Keyword-based filtering - when search depends on exact words, relevant tenders often remain hidden.
• Manual discovery habits - checking portals manually once/day or once/week significantly extends Time-to-Opportunity.
• Alert noise - when alerts contain too many irrelevant tenders, users begin to ignore them → increasing the time between publication and discovery.
• Lack of aggregation - without a central view, discovery is as slow as the slowest portal you monitor.

Understanding why delays happen is the first step in reducing them and unlocking a more competitive, predictable tendering process.

The future of procurement efficiency: From speed to strategy

Improving Time-to-Opportunity isn’t just about being faster.

It’s about transforming how suppliers work and how procurement markets function.

When discovery speed increases, everything downstream improves: qualification, planning, internal alignment, proposal quality, and ultimately, win rates. This shift doesn’t require bigger teams. It requires smarter systems.

Systems that reduce time-to-opportunity

Modern procurement workflows are moving toward automation that removes friction for suppliers.

Key enablers include:

• tender aggregation across national, regional, sectoral, and EU platforms
• AI-based relevance scoring that understands supplier profiles beyond keywords
• real-time alerts with context, not batch notifications
• centralised dashboards that reduce portal-hopping
• standardised metadata and APIs that allow machine-readable procurement data

These systems turn opportunity discovery from a manual task into an automated layer that quietly runs in the background.

Suppliers shouldn’t have to hunt for tenders.

Opportunities should come to them.

Why faster = Fairer

Speed is not just a competitive advantage… it’s a fairness mechanism.

When SMEs discover tenders as quickly as large suppliers:

• participation increases
• more bids reach buyers
• competition strengthens
• innovation grows
• public money achieves better value

The European Commission has repeatedly identified improved access and reduced administrative burdens as essential for SME inclusion. Faster discovery is one of the most direct ways to support that mission.

Turning efficiency into growth

Once time-to-opportunity improves, tendering becomes less chaotic and more strategic.

Teams gain:

• predictability
• better internal alignment
• higher-quality submissions
• energy to refine, not just react
• clarity on which opportunities truly fit

Efficiency doesn’t just relieve pressure, it creates momentum.

This is what modern procurement looks like: not more work, but better-timed work.

A system where visibility is no longer a barrier, and where strategy finally has room to breathe.