A competitive process is any procedure in which an organisation puts something on the market (an asset, a contract, a portfolio, a concession) and several interested parties compete for it under published rules. When the organisation running it is a public entity, the process stops being a commercial matter and becomes a legal one: equal treatment, open advertising, traceability of every decision and the ability to account for it all to the oversight bodies. Managing it with emails, spreadsheets and shared folders works until you have to show, months later, why the award went to one bidder and not to another. This guide explains what managing competitive processes demands of a public entity, what a platform that digitalises them must do and how CEDESA approached it in the platform it developed for SAREB.

What is SAREB and why does it run competitive processes?

SAREB (Sociedad de Gestión de Activos procedentes de la Reestructuración Bancaria, the company that manages the assets from Spain’s bank restructuring) was set up in 2012 to take on the property assets and loans of the bailed-out financial institutions and divest them over a fifteen-year horizon. Since 2022, with the FROB (Spain’s bank resolution authority) as its majority shareholder, it has been part of the central government public sector, which reinforces the requirements of transparency, equal treatment and oversight that already applied to its activities.

Much of its work consists of putting assets and services on the market through competitive processes: the sale of loan and property portfolios, the selection of the servicers and suppliers that manage those assets, the marketing of land and developments and, more recently, the transfer of homes to public authorities for affordable rent. Each of those processes has interested parties who must receive the same information at the same time, bids that have to be held securely and evaluated against published criteria, and an award that the organisation must be able to explain.

What a competitive process demands of a public entity

Whatever its subject matter (a property, a portfolio, a services contract), a well-managed competitive process in the public sector meets these conditions:

Rules published before it starts. Subject matter, participation requirements, evaluation criteria with their weightings, timetable and how bids are to be submitted. Changing them midway through the process invalidates the result.
Equal treatment and equal access to information. All interested parties have access to the same documentation and the same clarifications, with a record of who has seen what and when.
Confidentiality of bids until they are opened. Proposals are held in such a way that nobody, not even the entity running the process, can see them before the scheduled time.
Traceable evaluation. Every score is linked to a published criterion and to an evaluator, and collective decisions are documented.
A complete record in the case file. The call for bids, communications, bids, evaluation reports, award and contract in a single case file that can be handed to an auditor, to Spain’s Court of Auditors (Tribunal de Cuentas) or to a court.
Data protection and security. The processes handle personal data belonging to bidders and, in the case of loan portfolios, to debtors. The system that supports them is a public sector information system and must be categorised under the National Security Framework (Esquema Nacional de Seguridad, ENS), as we explain in the guide on what the ENS is and why your supplier must have it.

Why email and spreadsheets are not enough

The problem with managing competitive processes using office tools is not convenience but proof. An email with a bid attached does not prove that it arrived before the deadline, or that nobody opened it early. A spreadsheet of scores does not prove who did the scoring, or whether the formula was the published one. A document repository does not prove that every interested party saw the same version. When the volume runs to dozens of simultaneous processes with hundreds of interested parties, nationwide, those gaps stop being theoretical: they surface in the first challenge from an unsuccessful bidder or in the first audit.

What a competitive process management platform must do

A platform that digitalises the full cycle must cover these functions:

Process set-up. Templates for each type of process (asset sales, supplier selection, transfers of homes), with stages, deadlines, admission requirements and evaluation criteria that are configured and then locked once published.

Portal for interested parties. Registration and verification of participants, access to the documentation with version control and a download log, a channel for queries whose answers are published to everyone, and bid submission with an acknowledgement of receipt and a time stamp.

Custody and opening. Bids encrypted until the moment of opening, opening by users with the authorised roles, with an automatically generated record of the opening, and separation of the administrative, technical and financial documentation where the process requires it.

Evaluation. Scoring by criterion and by evaluator, financial formulas run by the system, automatic comparisons, evaluation reports generated from the data and a record of the awarding body’s decisions.

Communications and notifications. All communications with interested parties kept within the platform, with a record of when each was sent and read, and integrated where appropriate with the entity’s own notification systems.

Case file and audit. One electronic case file per process containing every document, event and decision, exportable and tamper-proof, and dashboards for the portfolio of processes: how many are open, at what stage, with what deadlines and with what outcome.

Security and integration. Corporate authentication, role-based access control, logs of every action, ENS measures according to the category of the system, and integration with the entity’s asset management, accounting and archive.

The case of SAREB: a custom platform for processes on a national scale

CEDESA developed a platform for SAREB to manage competitive processes on a national scale, as part of a relationship that continues to this day. For reasons of confidentiality we do not publish the functional detail or the client’s internal results; what we can explain is the approach, because it is the same one we apply for any public entity:

Custom development based on the entity’s actual processes, rather than a generic tendering product adapted to fit. SAREB’s process types, stages, roles and criteria are SAREB’s own, and the platform models them exactly as they are, as we explain in custom software versus a generic ERP in the public sector.
Traceability as a design requirement, not as a report added on afterwards: every action by every user has been logged since day one, because the system was built for accountability.
Security in accordance with the ENS, with CEDESA’s medium-category certification, issued by a body accredited by ENAC (Spain’s national accreditation body), and ISO 27001 as the working framework.
A stable team: the team that developed the platform is the one that maintains and develops it, with no subcontracting and with the code owned by the client.

SAREB is one of the reference clients that demonstrate CEDESA’s technical capacity to other public sector entities, alongside Metro Bilbao, Navantia, the provincial councils (Diputaciones) of Badajoz, Toledo, Ourense and Burgos, TITSA and Puertos de les Illes Balears. You can see them on our software for the public sector page.

How to approach digitalisation in your organisation

Draw up an inventory of the types of process and their rules: what is put out to competition, with which stages, who decides and which legislation applies to each.
Identify the points where there is no proof in the way processes are managed today: where you cannot prove that the deadline was met, that access to information was equal, that bids were kept secure or which criterion was applied.
Define the case file model and the roles, and categorise the system under the ENS before drafting the tender specifications. The guide on how to prepare technical specifications with ENS requirements covers the most common mistakes.
Choose the supplier model: off-the-shelf product, adaptation or custom development, and what size of supplier suits the contract, as we discuss in large integrator or mid-sized company.
Run a pilot with one type of process that has a moderate volume, measuring processing times and complaints before and after.
Roll out by type of process and retire the office tools, with training for the teams that run the processes and for those that evaluate bids.

Frequently asked questions about digitalising competitive processes

What is a competitive process?

It is a procedure in which an organisation offers an asset, a contract or a service and several interested parties compete for it under rules published in advance: participation requirements, evaluation criteria, deadlines and how bids are to be submitted. In the public sector it comes with additional requirements of equal treatment, open advertising and traceability.

Can a public entity manage competitive processes with email and spreadsheets?

It can, but it cannot use them to prove what an oversight body or an unsuccessful bidder will demand of it: that the bids arrived on time and were not opened early, that everyone received the same information and that every score corresponds to a published criterion. A platform with time-stamping, custody and logs provides that proof.

What is the difference between a competitive process platform and an e-tendering platform?

E-tendering is designed for contracts governed by Spain’s Law 9/2017 on Public Sector Contracts (Ley 9/2017 de Contratos del Sector Público, LCSP) and their strictly prescribed steps. A competitive process platform also covers asset sales, supplier selection outside the public contracts regime and other procedures specific to the entity, with rules that can be configured for each type of process and, often, integration with asset management.

Does a competitive process platform have to comply with the ENS?

Yes, when the entity is part of the public sector. It processes personal data belonging to bidders and, in the case of loan portfolios, to debtors, and it underpins decisions with legal and financial effects. It must be categorised in accordance with Royal Decree 311/2022 (Real Decreto 311/2022), and the supplier must demonstrate its conformity.

How long does it take to implement a platform of this kind?

It depends on the number of process types, on the integrations with asset management, accounting and the archive, and on the ENS category. What sets the pace is modelling the rules for each type of process; once the first has been modelled, those that follow reuse most of the work.

Conclusion

Digitalising the management of competitive processes in a public entity means turning every call for bids into a case file that explains itself: published rules, equal access to information, bids held securely, traceable evaluation and security in accordance with the ENS. That is what CEDESA built for SAREB on a national scale, and what it applies in every public sector project. If your organisation needs to take that step, tell us about your project via our contact page.