Tender documents ask hard questions: who else works this market, how big are they, and where is the work heading. Answers built from a few phone calls age badly. Answers built from the register do not.
This walk-through maps a regional construction market in KnowFirst, the same path a market research team follows before any submission deadline.
Pull the market, not a keyword match
Open Businesses, search construction and set Location to the region. Then narrow Industry by ANZSIC: construction is a division, but the subdivisions are where the precision lives. Non-residential construction and civil construction are different markets wearing the same word.
The count at the top of the results is the first real number: how many registered businesses operate in this slice.
Segment by size and shape
Add Staff size filters to split the market into bands - the handful of majors, the mid-tier builders, and the long tail of subcontractors. Each band is a different competitor or a different partner, and the tender narrative should name them differently.
Switch a few filters and re-run to compare counts. Two saved searches - one for the mid-tier, one for the specialists - give you a clean side-by-side for the deck.
Read the signals on the movers
For the businesses that matter, open the profile:
- Jobs and salaries show who is hiring - a builder staffing up for a project is a live one
- Websites and tech show how they present and what they run on
- The feed shows the running changes - registered details, website updates, news mentions
A market is not a list of names. It is a list of names plus what each of them is doing this quarter.
Put the numbers in the room
Export the segmented lists with the fields the analysis needs, and the tender response cites the register rather than a hunch. Re-run the saved searches when the deadline nears; fresh counts cost nothing but the click.
Market questions become lists of real businesses. That is the job - and searching is free to start.