Northgate Logistics reads every Alberta tender without opening the portal
A freight and moving company in Edmonton relied on a weekly look at the Alberta Purchasing Connection. Captivaq reads it every day, along with CanadaBuys, and sends only the tenders that score.
Owen GrantDirector of Operations, Northgate Logistics
Key results
Alberta Purchasing Connection and CanadaBuys read daily
The weekly portal scroll is gone
Four tenders a month shortlisted instead of sixteen hundred scrolled
“The portal has sixteen hundred open notices. We used to scroll it. Now the four that matter show up on their own.”
Owen GrantDirector of Operations, Northgate LogisticsMeet Northgate Logistics
Northgate Logistics moves freight and office contents for government departments across Alberta. Owen Grant runs operations for forty drivers and a warehouse on the north side of Edmonton.
Provincial work is the backbone. Ministries move offices, schools move furniture, and every one of those moves is tendered on the Alberta Purchasing Connection.
“The provincial portal is where our work lives. It is also the worst place to look for it.”
Scrolling sixteen hundred notices
The portal lists well over a thousand open opportunities at any time, most of them award notices and intents that nobody can bid on. Owen scrolled it on Friday afternoons and searched for the word moving.
Tenders that used other words were missed. Relocation, transport, warehousing and storage all turned up moves that Northgate would have bid on, if anybody had seen them.
“We searched for moving. The government does not always call it moving.”
The profile knew the words
Captivaq read the company website and drafted a profile that listed the services in plain words: freight, office relocation, records storage, warehousing. Owen added the regions the trucks run and the fleet size.
“It listed our services better than our own website does. I added the fleet and saved it.”
Every tender on the Alberta portal and on CanadaBuys is now scored against that profile the day it posts. Notices that are only awards or intents never reach the list.
Four a month, on their own
Owen gets a short list, usually four or five tenders a month, each with the reason it fit and the closing date. The Friday scroll is gone, and so is the search for one word.
“The four that matter show up on their own. I have not opened the portal since March.”
Northgate has bid on two relocations it would have missed under the old search, and won one. The other is still open, which is more than the Friday scroll ever gave them.
