Most suppliers search simap.ch with keywords and wonder how little they find. The problem is rarely the platform. It is that an awarding body publishes in its own professional language, not the supplier’s.
This article describes how to set up the search so that it works reliably — and what else sits on the platform besides the tenders and is routinely overlooked. The wider context is in the guide to public procurement in Switzerland.
Why keywords fail
The core of the problem is vocabulary. An IT provider searches for software development and does not find the procedure tendered as a specialist application programme, as application maintenance, or as further development of a departmental system. A construction firm misses a lot because it runs under a trade designation absent from its own vocabulary. A consultancy does not see the framework procedure because the awarding body published it as support services in organisational development.
These divergences are neither accidental nor a mistake. The awarding body describes what it needs in the language of its own field. A keyword list built on your own terms systematically finds only the part where both vocabularies overlap.
Search profiles instead of keyword lists
The better approach is to describe your service profile rather than list your own terms. Instead of five keywords there is then a description of what the company actually does, for whom, and at what scale. A semantic match then also finds tenders that name the same service differently.
Where that is not available, a pragmatic intermediate step helps: over a few weeks, review publications in your field broadly and collect the wordings awarding bodies actually use for your service. That list is, after a short time, considerably more valuable than your own formulations.
Cutting the search field properly
A profile that is too broad is as useless as one that is too narrow. Watching everything produces many hits and no decisions; after two weeks nobody reads the notifications. At the start a narrow cut therefore pays: your own canton, your own field, a realistic contract size.
Widening comes later, along your own hit history. If procedures in a neighbouring canton regularly turn out to fit, it belongs in. That expansion follows data rather than the wish to miss nothing.
The language boundary is self-imposed
Publication is in the awarding body’s official language. A tender from Vaud appears in French, one from Ticino in Italian. Restricting search and work to German blanks out a substantial share of the market — not because access is barred but out of habit.
For suppliers whose service can be delivered irrespective of language, that is one of the simplest ways to enlarge the addressable field. The hurdle is real but smaller than assumed: the procedural structure is the same and the formal requirements are comparable.
Awards are the underrated data source
simap carries not only tenders but also the awards made. Almost all suppliers ignore that part entirely. Yet over a few months the published awards answer questions that otherwise remain pure speculation: which suppliers regularly win with which awarding body? At what magnitudes are contracts awarded in your segment? How many bidders typically compete?
That analysis is the basis for a defensible go/no-go decision. It shows in which segments the effort of a submission pays off and in which it does not — economically the most important decision in the whole process.
The checking must not depend on one person
The last and most common error is organisational. Where the daily review of simap depends on one person, the company’s market access depends on their discipline and presence. Holidays, illness or an intense project phase suffice to miss a deadline — and deadlines in procurement cannot be made up.
That is particularly consequential on selective procedures and framework agreements. The application deadline of a selective procedure sits well before the bid deadline. A framework appears rarely and binds for years. Missing either shuts you out for that period, regardless of your capability.
What follows
Four points make the difference. Think the search field beyond your own terminology. Start narrow and widen along your hit history. Cross the language boundary deliberately where the service allows. And set up monitoring so that it does not depend on one person. A supplier doing those four things gets considerably more out of a free public platform than the average — before any tooling is discussed at all.
How a platform covers this flow is shown by Submira; which tool categories exist at all and when each is worth it is set out in the overview of tender software for Switzerland.