At illion TenderLink, we’re celebrating our 25th anniversary, connecting suppliers and buyers since 1994. So how did we make it to this momentous silver anniversary? We’re looking back at some of the milestones that led to becoming Australasia’s largest tender marketplace1, and looking forward to what the future holds as we continue bringing both sides of the procurement world together – the perfect match.
History
1994: Born from the frustration of trying to find all the latest tenders from different sources, founder Philip Brown started a ‘snail mail’ tender notification service out of his Wellington garage.
1997: The business moved back to Brown’s hometown New Plymouth, where it continued to grow.
1995: The main method of distributing tender information moved from mail and fax notifications to email.
1998: The first TenderLink website was launched.
2001: Our bespoke online tendering system was launched, providing a central gateway for the advertisement, management and notification of tenders published by government, public and private sectors throughout Australasia.
2010: The business was acquired by Fairfax Media Ltd who were keen to expand further into the Australian market.
2016: After years of steady growth, the business was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet Australia, who became illion shortly afterwards - the leading independent provider of trusted data and analytics in Australasia. TenderLink fit perfectly into illion’s Supply Chain Solutions offering, which improves procurement efficiency and reduces risk.
2018: illion acquired TendersOnline, successfully integrating them with TenderLink and combining their strengths with ours to create one enhanced, market-leading, online procurement business. This enabled us to add tender outcomes and award notices – a huge advance in our product offering.
2019: TenderLink officially became part of the illion family, rebranding to illion TenderLink. Alongside this we launched a variety of new subscription plans to meet market demand and cater to a broader range of customer groups.
Most recently, we launched monthly roll-over subscriptions in response to customer feedback. With no more 12-month minimum term, our subscribers have the freedom and flexibility they want from a tender notification service.
Today
Today we employ over 60 wonderful staff members, with offices in New Plymouth, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
Tendering is a complex process, and we aim to make it as quick, easy and successful as possible through our strategic product offering: web-based e-Procurement solutions, subscription-based tender notification services, and tender response training workshops.
Thanks to our valued customers, we’ve grown into Australasia’s largest tendering community, with over 124,000 businesses in our ecosystem and 1 in 5 public tenders in the marketplace produced by the 600+ buyers who use our e-procurement platform.
Looking Forward
As we celebrate the past 25 years, it’s also important to look to the future and what it holds for the business and most importantly, our customers.
Our key focus going forward is providing remarkable customer experiences through continual product evolution which is backed by customer insight. We’re excited to engage with both our suppliers and buyers more proactively, and use their feedback to enhance our product roadmap, creating a more seamless end-to-end journey.
Providing additional value to our customers will also be a main focus, so we’re aiming to integrate more of illion’s extensive data and product suite. Products like illion’s risk management solutions, credit and financial viability reports, and commercial monitoring services will provide valuable supplier intelligence to our procurement customers.
We’ll continue to create meaningful connections through our world-class online procurement services, and are looking forward to what the next 25 years will hold for buyers, suppliers, and our team here at illion TenderLink.
By Phil Stark, COO, illion TenderLink
1. Based on the number of subscribers and e-procurement portals as at January 2019.