While Bid Banana's Open and Closed Bid searches help you find previous and current information about potential opportunities, our Award Data search filter is your secret weapon for learning about previous winners and, potentially, the dollar amounts of their contracts.
What is Award Data?
Award data is the ultimate tool for competitor research, helping you turn raw data into a winning strategy. Savvy bidders use that contract data to forecast industry trends, refine their response process, and adapt their approach to improve their chances of winning future bids and competitive contract opportunities.
Finding an up-to-date open solicitation opportunity is only half the battle. To truly master the art of submitting a competitive bid, you need to know more than just what is available now. You need to do a bit of research: who won before? How did they win? What's the ”going rate” for a successful bid in the industry or location for the work or services described in the solicitation? Often, the answers to these questions are in the awarded contract data.
How Can Researching Award Data Improve My Bid Responses?
Whether you're looking to unseat an incumbent or find a new prime contractor to partner with, researching contract awards can help reveal unexpected paths to strategy growth. Here are three ways awarded contract data can improve bid and RFP responses:
Learn From Your Competitors - Ever wonder why a specific competitor seems to win every time? With Award Data, you can see their tracks. By searching award data in your industry, you can identify which vendors are currently dominating the market.
Price Your Proposal to Win - One of the most complex parts of an RFP is the budget. Award data often includes the Total Estimated Value or the winning bid amount. This allows you to see precisely what the agency is willing to pay, helping you price your services competitively without leaving money on the table.
Find Your Next Partnership - Many large prime contractors are required to partner with small, women-owned, or minority-owned businesses as subcontractors. So, if you see a massive contract awarded to a large firm, then that's not necessarily a lost opportunity-- it's a lead! Use this information to offer your specialized services for the project.
How Do I Search for Award Data in Bid Banana?
Bid Banana's search page offers a dropdown filter for award data. three dropdown search filters: one for open bids, one for closed bids, and one for award data.
Open Bids: Active opportunities that are open to responses by interested bidders; after the deadlines have passed, open bids become closed bids.
Closed Bids: Search results for closed bid data often include a solicitation's issued and closed dates; these results help identify recurring trends in bids issued by industry solicitors.
Award Data: An award data result usually includes the specific vendor selected by an agency for a previously awarded bid. These results may reveal the total dollar value of that award. Use this filter to conduct research about which vendors won the contract opportunity.
We have made it simple (and, dare we say, appealing) to find this info:
Select Your Filter: On the main Bid Banana search bar, click the “I’m peeling for” dropdown and select Award Data.
On the main Bid Banana search bar, open the search-type dropdown (labeled "I'm peeling for") and select Award Data to run an award data search.
Enter Your Keywords: Type in your industry (e.g., “Teacher Professional Development” or “EV Charger Infrastructure”) to see a list of historical winners in that space.
Dig Into the Details: Click the “Details” button on any result. This opens an expanded view where you can find key information, including the Awarded Vendor(s), Contract Start/End Dates, and the Procurement Type.
Ready to Search Better With Bid Banana?
Seeing that a contract was awarded to someone else does not mean that the door is closed; rather, it means you now have the blueprint to beat them next time. So, if you're looking for other ways to improve your bid and contract search, you need to experience Bid Banana! Bid Banana is the user-friendly bid database and RFP search engine packed with local, state, and federal RFPs from all 50 states and over 4,000 different government entities. Our advanced search features help you comb through thousands of open solicitations, closed bids, and our award data — key information from previously awarded contracts. Bid Pages let your team quickly summarize any search result, so you can build a more informed bid from a variety of sources. Bid Banana is also only $49.99 per month. So, sign up today for your 7-day free trial! Finally, keep learning by exploring our Bid Banana blog or by visiting The Bid Lab's articles at the Learning Center.