Data, Procurement / By / December 17, 2020 / 1 minute of reading

Algorithms That Are Better Than Humans

December 17, 2020
Data, Procurement

Categorisation is about making it easier to find opportunities.

Getting it right means being better than humans.

For it be really useful, we have to be able to take source documents and, where necessary improve on the categorisation provided by the publisher.

If a publisher gives us a record that is classified as construction, that is useful, but if you’re a roofing contractor, it’s not much use. Yes, it stops you looking at opportunities for taxis, it doesn’t give you *exactly* what you want. Even if you add a filter on construction tenders with ‘roof’ as a keyword, you’ll be better off, but you’ll miss any contracts that fail to mention the word ‘roof’. So a contract to replace guttering might get missed.

We’re striving to take existing broad classifications and give them better, more detailed classifications. So that users don’t just look at construction tenders, but tenders for roofing. That means writing code that does a better job of classifying the records than the original publisher.

That’s a challenge, but one we think we are equal to.

Our new categorisation algorithm is getting some really good results and will soon go into testing with some of our customers.

If you’d like to know more about our categorisation work,

December 2, 2021

We Don’t Want Your Trust.

Not because we're shifty. We're not. You don't have to trust us. Specifically, you don't have to trust our data. If you...
Read more...
November 30, 2021

Intelligent Procurement Fraud Is Coming.

Are you ready for artificial intelligence fraud? We've already written about the almost magical capabilities of artificial intelligence here. We're using it...
Read more...
November 18, 2021

What Do You Want To Predict?

Machine learning is changing the world. Spend Network is already using machine learning to categorize all of our documents. The results are...
Read more...
November 17, 2021

New Government IT Procurement Opportunities For Smaller Businesses.

The autumn budget included an announcement that HM Revenue and Customs will receive approximately £750m over the next three years to upgrade...
Read more...
November 11, 2021

What does good data look like?

If you're lucky, poor data will only make you look inefficient, but if you're unlucky, it will make a real mess of...
Read more...
November 9, 2021

Greek Defence Spends Billions On Cyber, Navy and Aerospace.

In early September, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outlined major defence procurement plans as a way to overhaul its loss-making Greek defence...
Read more...
November 4, 2021

Pressures Mounts On UK Procurement Processes

The UK Government has come under renewed pressure after being ordered to reveal the names of companies that were directly awarded significant...
Read more...
November 2, 2021

South Korea Targets SME Growth Through Health Procurement

When selling to governments, SME's often have challenges with matching the buying power and supply chain strength of larger organisations. For the...
Read more...
October 26, 2021

List Of UK Tender Sources.

Our list of tender sources in the UK extends to over 180 individual publishers. If you use Spend Network you can access...
Read more...
October 20, 2021

Canada Levels Up Procurement For Young Entrepreneurs.

Canadian not-for-profit organisation Futurpreneur,  has partnered with the Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council (CAMSC), on a project to diversify the Canadian...
Read more...
October 19, 2021

Delivery Guaranteed.

Our customers are the special ones. We make the bricks, they build the houses. They're the ones that make it easy to...
Read more...
October 14, 2021

Contracting Emissions

We are launching a new analysis; the carbon emitted by the public sector's supply chain (scope three emissions). We're calling it Contracting...
Read more...
October 12, 2021

The Services Sector Opens Up

The WTO have announced a new agreement on the regulation of the services sector in over sixty countries. The deal ensures more...
Read more...
October 7, 2021

Greece Spends €3 Billion in French Defence Deal.

A few weeks back, when the US, UK and Australian governments announced their surprise military pact, France wore the brunt of the...
Read more...
October 5, 2021

UK Government £650 Billion Pipeline.

The UK Government has released plans for the investment of £650 billion of public and private cash into infrastructure projects across the...
Read more...

Newsletter

Compelling research, insights and data directly into your inbox.

Recent media stories

Search

Recent articles

Scroll to Top