Glossary

Definitions for the terms you will meet across Cothon, split into platform vocabulary and general procurement vocabulary.

Platform terms

Tender A government solicitation collected into Cothon's Tenders feed from official Canadian sources. Browsing tenders is available on every plan.

Opportunity A tender (or manually created pursuit) you are tracking. Each opportunity has a workspace with tabs for documents, requirements, proposals, flagged terms, team, activity, similar opportunities, and lessons. Opportunities move through pipeline statuses: Identified, Evaluating, Bidding, Submitted, Awarded, Lost, or Declined.

Bid analysis The AI pipeline that reads a tender's documents and extracts its requirements, then matches them against your company profile.

Requirement A single obligation extracted from a solicitation document. Every requirement carries a criticality and a match status.

Criticality How a requirement affects your bid:

• Mandatory — pass/fail; missing one makes the bid non-compliant
• Point-Rated — scored during evaluation; strength earns points
• Administrative — procedural obligations such as formats, signatures, and deadlines

Match status How your documented capabilities line up with a requirement: Fully Meets, Partially Meets, or Cannot Meet.

Bid decision The recommendation Cothon derives from an analysis: Recommend Bid, Consider Bid, Conditional, or No Bid.

Flagged terms Words and phrases you configure in Bid Config so they are highlighted wherever they appear in analyzed documents — risk language, disqualifiers, or opportunity signals.

Company profile Your organization's documented capabilities, certifications, and procurement industries. It is the reference the AI matches requirements against.

Claim code A code issued by Cothon that links your workspace to your company's existing government contracting record during setup, enabling profile suggestions inferred from your award history.

Organization A shared team workspace: common company profile, opportunities, analyses, and members. Your active organization is shown in the sidebar, above the user footer.

Active Bids The section listing pursuits you have committed to, with deliverable tracking and submission readiness.

Lessons Learned Captured knowledge from past bids — what worked, what did not, and why — attached to your workspace for future pursuits.

Command palette The Cmd/Ctrl + K launcher for navigating anywhere, searching, and starting an analysis.

Daily brief The dashboard banner summarizing your closing deadlines, active pursuits, and profile readiness for the day.

Layout preset One of the dashboard's three arrangements — Overview, Briefing, or Terminal.

Procurement terms

RFP (Request for Proposal) A solicitation asking suppliers to propose how they would meet a need, evaluated on more than price.

Solicitation The umbrella term for a government request to bid — RFPs, requests for quotation, invitations to qualify, and similar notices.

Amendment A change issued to a solicitation after publication — new deadlines, clarifications, or revised requirements.

Closing date The deadline for submitting a bid. After it passes, the tender is closed.

Award The contract resulting from a solicitation, including the winning vendor and contract value.

CanadaBuys The Government of Canada's official procurement platform and a primary source for Cothon's federal tender feed.

SEAO Quebec's official public tendering system (système électronique d'appel d'offres), the source of Cothon's Quebec data.

UNSPSC The United Nations Standard Products and Services Code — the category taxonomy used to classify tenders and awards, and the basis for the "procurement industries" you select in your company profile.

Standing offer A pre-arranged agreement under which the government can order goods or services at set terms, often with a long or open-ended horizon.

Incumbent The vendor currently holding a contract. Cothon's dashboard flags incumbents whose contracts end soon, since those are re-bid openings.

Vendor Any supplier doing business with government. Vendor analytics cover award history, buyers, and market presence.

Buyer The government department, agency, or organization issuing a solicitation or holding a contract.