Helping suppliers find the tenders that matter

Tender alerts were central to how suppliers discovered work. But the alerts were often broad, leaving users to filter opportunities that were not relevant.

There was a reason they tolerated the noise.

Missing an irrelevant tender cost time. Missing the right tender could mean losing business.

Noise was part of the safety net

For established users, paid email alerts were embedded in the way they monitored the market.

Research showed that the alerts were not always specific enough. It also showed a fear of missing opportunities. Some users had already experienced this.

That fear shaped behaviour.

Filtering more aggressively could save time, but it also introduced uncertainty: what if the system filtered out the tender that mattered?

Broad alerts therefore provided something beyond information. They gave suppliers a sense of coverage.

More coverage → more opportunities surfaced → more noise → more time spent filtering

More precision → less noise → greater uncertainty about what might be missed

Fewer alerts were not necessarily a better experience

The obvious response was to reduce the noise.

But a quieter inbox would not solve the problem if suppliers trusted the discovery service less as a result.

The design tension was between relevance and coverage.

Suppliers needed enough precision to focus their attention, but enough coverage to feel confident that important opportunities were still reaching them.

That shifted the problem from notification volume to tender discovery itself.

Suppliers did not all discover work in the same way

The research also showed different discovery behaviours.

Some experienced users relied heavily on alerts and established routines.

Others searched more actively across tender platforms, direct customer relationships and other channels.

Newer proactive users expected digital tools to do more of the work of finding and organising relevant opportunities.

This mattered because improving discovery could not mean replacing one fixed model with another.

The product needed to support both monitoring and active search.

From alerts to more relevant discovery

The research informed a broader product direction.

Better search and filtering could give suppliers more control.

Relevant and suggested tenders could reduce dependence on broad email alerts.

Personalised content could reflect the difference between what matters to an individual user and what matters to the company.

Marketplace data could also help surface similar opportunities, market patterns and possible areas for business development.

These were different responses to the same underlying problem: helping suppliers focus without increasing the risk of missing business.

Reframing the problem

What initially looked like an email problem was really a discovery problem.

The noise existed partly because suppliers valued coverage and feared the consequence of missing the wrong opportunity.

Once we understood that behaviour, simply reducing notifications was no longer a sufficient design response.

The question became how Mercell could help suppliers find what mattered, while maintaining enough confidence in the system to stop monitoring everything.

That was the shift: from distributing more opportunities to helping users decide where to pay attention.