5 Ways to Successfully Run a Risk-Ready Tender

In 2003, Canadian power company TransAlta – an electricity power generator and wholesale marketing company – made a single copy-and-paste error in a spreadsheet.

Just one.

Rows shifted. Bids misaligned. And the company unknowingly overbid on low-demand transmission routes.

The cost?

$24 million.
Nearly 10% of their annual profit wiped out overnight.

There was no fraud.
No system outage.
No hidden conspiracy.

Just an outdated process…

Now, no one wants to admit it, but most tenders in global logistics continue to run on:

• Manual spreadsheets

• Inconsistent data

• Historical assumptions

• Last year’s rate files

• Regional methodologies that don’t match

• Supplier “promises” instead of real performance data

• Incomplete visibility into market shifts

When shippers rely on internal spreadsheets, guesswork, and anecdotes, they unknowingly create the perfect conditions for a TransAlta-style mistake — not necessarily $24 million, but millions in cost leakages, misaligned contracts, underperforming carriers, and avoidable disruption.

Because without verified, consistent, neutral freight intelligence, spreadsheets become exactly what they were for TransAlta: a quiet, unnoticed risk — until it becomes an expensive one.

Where Freight Teams Feel the Most Pain

Speaking to procurement professionals across multiple industries, the most common pain points occur when navigating tender rounds with fragmented data. This leads to:

• Inflated bids that “look fine” in Excel
• Freight strategies built on outdated costs or benchmarks
• Cheap carriers that later collapse on service
• Over-dependence on incumbents
• Sleepwalking into contract renewals with lost negotiation leverage
• Missed diversification opportunities

And the most frustrating part is, most teams don’t see the true cost until it hits their P&L.

So why wait until it gets that far?

Xeneta gives procurement teams the market clarity, performance context, and negotiation power they need to run tenders confidently. Here’s are 5 ways in which the Xeneta platform supports every step of the tender strategy process — before contracts are signed and while the bids are still coming in.

1. Xeneta Stops Tender Mistakes Before They Happen

Most tenders fail before they begin. Simply because the strategy is built on last year’s rates or internal cost targets. Xeneta corrects that.

With market-validated benchmarks, you can compare your current rates and performance to the wider market and your peer group.

This lets teams:

• Anchor tenders to realistic cost expectations

• Identify overpayment corridors

• Set achievable performance and service-level targets

• Build an informed award strategy before bids arrive

2. Strengthen Supplier Strategy With Carrier Scorecard

Choosing carriers without performance context is one of the costliest mistakes in procurement. Xeneta’s Carrier Scorecard exposes:

• On-time reliability trends

• Transit-time consistency

• Stability over peak seasons

• CO₂ performance

• Historical service risks

This makes diversification decisions much clearer — you can build an optimal carrier mix backed by data, not anecdotes.

3. Build Negotiation Power With Real Market Movement

When suppliers make claims, Xeneta provides the counterweight. Tender teams can use real-time insights into:

• Lane-level rate movements

• Market deltas

• Historical volatility

• Peer benchmarks

This gives procurement teams the hard data needed to challenge bids, anchor counteroffers, and know when to accept a tender bid and when to go another round. Explore more here.

4. Find “Hidden” Operational Risk in Cheap Bids

Every tender has a low-cost bid that looks irresistible, until it fails operationally.

Xeneta helps you stress-test these offers by overlaying historical reliability and transit-time performance on top of bid positions. This reveals:

• Where the cheapest carriers bring the highest disruption risk

• Where trade-offs aren’t worth the operational consequences

• Where higher-priced carriers may deliver far better service value

Cheap doesn’t always mean cost-effective. Xeneta makes that visible.

5. Optional Add-On: Tender Analysis With Xeneta Experts

For shippers looking to go deeper, Xeneta’s analysts offer a structured tender analysis that brings clarity to every decision point.

The team begins with an Incumbent vs. Best Bid review, comparing cost competitiveness, performance gaps, and operational trade-offs. They continue by tracking live tender dynamics, highlighting which suppliers are improving, where competition is heating up, and where additional negotiation rounds are warranted.

Alongside this, you gain insights into supplier behaviour, helping you distinguish genuinely competitive carriers from those simply “participating.” Xeneta experts also run scenario modelling to show how different award strategies would impact savings, risk exposure, carrier dependency, transit-time performance, and overall operational outcomes.

A diversification gap analysis then reveals where shifting volumes could reduce dependency risks or strengthen performance, and finally, a cost–service trade-off assessment quantifies where lower rates may introduce hidden downstream costs through weaker reliability or longer transit times.

In short, it’s the full picture — the depth of insight most teams never get to see, but every procurement professional deserves.

Let’s return to the TransAlta story — and rewrite the ending.

If TransAlta had real-time data validation? The error never submits.

If they had a performance overlay flagging outliers? Someone catches the misalignment.

If they had a benchmark against the real market? They instantly see the bids don’t make sense.

If they had scenario modelling? They see the overpayment before it becomes contractually binding.

The spreadsheet mistake becomes just that: a small, harmless mistake.

Not a headline.
Not a $24 million loss.
Not a CFO’s nightmare.

And here’s what should unsettle every freight procurement team: Most already know their tender process is held together by spreadsheets, gut instinct, and long-standing habits. They know there are gaps — even if the consequences haven’t surfaced yet. And most already know that with clearer benchmarks, cleaner performance insights, and realtime market visibility, they’d negotiate very differently.

The question isn’t whether the cost of inaction exists.
It’s how much it will cost you this tender cycle — and whether you see it before or after the contracts are signed.

Xeneta exists so you can see it before.

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If you want to run tenders with confidence, now is the perfect moment to take the next step.

Book a 30-minute discovery call and see how Xeneta helps shippers build stronger strategies, avoid hidden risks, and negotiate with real market power.