Most vendors only write about the projects they win. We believe a lost tender often teaches you more — and that is exactly what we are sharing openly here.
The starting point
Through a public procurement portal, we were made aware of a tender from a federal authority in the environmental sector. Professionally, the requirements fitted our portfolio well — until we read the mandatory criteria in detail.
The mandatory criterion that took us out of the race
The tender required specific personal certifications in Kubernetes and VMware — not as “desirable”, but as a hard exclusion criterion. We run our infrastructure reliably and securely, but without these specific individual certificates, which tend to be more relevant to classic on-premise infrastructure projects. The result: a solution that was a good professional fit could not even be offered because of a purely formal criterion.
What this means for public-sector procurement practice
Mandatory criteria in tenders are often modelled on classic infrastructure projects rather than modern SaaS operating models. For cloud-native vendors, this can be a structural disadvantage — regardless of the actual security or quality of the solution. Contracting authorities that want to procure modern software should regularly check their mandatory criteria for exactly this blind spot.
What we have done differently since
We now check mandatory criteria as the very first step before every bid decision, not only after the professional assessment — this saves everyone unnecessary effort when a criterion simply cannot be met for structural reasons.
Frequently asked questions
Are certification requirements common in tenders?
Yes, especially with public authorities and larger organisations that have their own IT governance — although whether they are phrased as mandatory or merely optional criteria varies widely.
Can you object to such a criterion?
Formally, this is possible in certain procurement procedures, but in practice it is laborious and rarely successful if the criterion was correctly published in advance.
How can you spot such criteria early on?
Ideally through a structured initial check of the mandatory criteria before preparing the content of the bid — exactly what we have built into our process since.
Are you putting together tender documents and want to know how SaaS vendors respond to classic infrastructure criteria? We are happy to share our experience — even outside of a specific procedure.
Are you drawing up a requirements specification yourself? Ask us for our free requirements specification checklist (PDF) — 7 topic blocks that no tender should be without.
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