Systematic tender automation for a fast growing sales team

Schmitz Feuerwehrtechnik is one of Germany’s fastest-growing fire truck manufacturers, building on more than 80 years of engineering experience in Farnstädt, Germany. As an owner-managed, family-run business free from corporate group structures, Schmitz combines the agility of a mid-sized company with a clear focus: technology that performs in the field.

Every vehicle is configured around the customer’s operational requirements, from chassis selection and pump specifications to cabin layout, equipment storage, and payload distribution. Municipal tender requirements, strict road and weight regulations, and highly specific customer needs mean that every order is effectively a custom engineering project.

Today, teams of industry experts collaborate across five locations in Germany and Croatia to deliver tailored, cost-efficient solutions for municipalities, volunteer and professional fire departments, airports, and civil protection agencies worldwide.

As Schmitz expanded into new regions, identifying and evaluating public tenders became increasingly difficult. Tenders are published across different municipalities and federal states, and with a lean team, it was no longer feasible to screen every opportunity in time.

Each tender required detailed manual evaluation before the team could decide whether it was worth pursuing. This included assessing tender requirements, estimating the likelihood of success, identifying potential deal-breakers, and deriving the inputs needed for vehicle weight calculations.

The process was time-intensive and fragmented. Engineers spent significant time manually checking whether proposed vehicle configurations would comply with strict fire truck weight limits. At the same time, tracking the status of open tenders across multiple projects became increasingly difficult, creating a risk of missed deadlines and delayed submissions.

The Solution

With Atira, Schmitz automated the first steps of the traditional tender process.

Every identified tender is now routed through a predefined evaluation workflow. Atira agents extract relevant information, classify tender requirements, prepare draft evaluations, and support initial technical checks. Instead of starting from a blank document, Schmitz employees begin their work several steps later in the process, with an AI-generated draft and structured decision basis already in place.

This enables the team to evaluate more promising tenders without increasing manual workload or creating new capacity constraints.

Automated Tender Classification

Each incoming tender is mapped against Schmitz’s internal evaluation criteria. Atira answers, evaluates, and references the relevant requirements from the tender documents, creating a structured classification that feeds into Schmitz’s internal calculation and proposal logic.

This gives the team a faster, more consistent basis for deciding how to proceed with each opportunity.

Bid / No-Bid Decision Support

Atira links tender classification to Schmitz’s bid/no-bid logic. Sales teams can identify deal-breaking blockers early, before investing several days into a tender that is unlikely to be successful or technically feasible.

This helps Schmitz focus resources on the opportunities with the highest strategic and commercial potential.

AI-Driven Vehicle Weight Calculations

Fire trucks are subject to strict weight limits based on vehicle class, road regulations, and customer-specific configurations. Previously, checking whether a proposed configuration would comply with these limits could take engineers several hours per tender.

Atira extracts the relevant specifications from the RFQ, matches them against Schmitz’s product portfolio, builds a preliminary configuration, and runs the weight calculation automatically. This reduces manual engineering effort and helps the team identify technical feasibility risks much earlier in the process.

Tender Deadlines Enforced Through Microsoft Teams

Atira integrates with Microsoft Teams, meeting Schmitz employees in the tool they already use every day.

Agents surface approaching submission deadlines, open tasks, and missing information directly in Teams, with context tailored to each employee’s role and preferences. The team can act on RFQs before deadlines slip, without relying on manual status chasing across projects.

One Platform for the Full Sales Process

All tender information now lives in one place: classifications, weight calculations, bid/no-bid reasoning, open tasks, deadlines, and project status.

This gives the full sales team a shared view of every opportunity and replaces a fragmented process spread across individual inboxes, spreadsheets, and local files. The improved coverage also creates the foundation for more advanced analytics.

Deal Flow Analytics

For the first time, Schmitz can systematically analyze its tender pipeline.

The team can identify which tender types have the lowest win rates, where regional demand is increasing, which product features are most frequently requested, and where untapped commercial potential exists.

These insights create a foundation for a more data-driven sales strategy and, over time, an AI-guided R&D process informed by market demand.