What is Atamis?
Atamis (formerly known as ProSpend) is a Salesforce-based procurement management platform used by NHS trusts, central government bodies, local authorities and other public sector organisations to manage their sourcing and tendering activity. Each organisation runs its own branded Atamis procurement portal where it publishes contract notices, manages supplier registrations, issues Invitations to Tender and receives formal bid submissions from suppliers.
The platform is particularly prominent across the NHS and the wider health sector, with many NHS trusts and health bodies using Atamis portals for their procurement. Beyond the NHS, Atamis is used by central government departments, public bodies, regulators and a range of councils.
ProSpend is an earlier Atamis product name that still appears in some Atamis portal addresses, so you may encounter references to ProSpend portals. If you have previously dealt with a ProSpend portal, you are dealing with Atamis.
Like other multi-tenant procurement systems, Atamis gives each buyer organisation its own separate portal. There is no single Atamis marketplace where all opportunities from all organisations appear in one unified feed. Each portal has its own URL, its own supplier register and its own notification settings.
The problem with managing multiple Atamis portals
For NHS suppliers in particular, the multi-portal model creates a significant operational burden. With more than 35 separate NHS Atamis portals, each requiring its own supplier registration, a supplier that wants comprehensive coverage of NHS procurement opportunities must maintain dozens of separate accounts. Each account has its own login credentials, its own supplier profile, its own category classifications and its own renewal cycle.
The practical consequences for suppliers are substantial:
- Missed opportunities from unregistered portals. An NHS trust in a different region may publish a supplies or services contract that is a perfect fit for your business. If you have not already registered on that specific Atamis portal, you will not receive any notification and will only find the opportunity if you happen to check the trust's portal manually. With 35 or more NHS portals alone, systematic manual checking is not realistic for most suppliers.
- Registration overhead across multiple portals. Registering as a supplier on an Atamis portal requires time and administrative effort. You typically need to provide company information, financial standing documents, insurance certificates, bank details and sector-specific qualifications. Registering speculatively across 35 NHS portals before knowing which trusts have live relevant opportunities is not an efficient use of a small business's resources.
- No unified view across the Atamis network. Even suppliers registered on a dozen or more Atamis portals receive separate notification emails from each. There is no dashboard that consolidates all live Atamis opportunities across all the trusts and bodies you are registered with, let alone those you are not. Comparing opportunities, assessing pipeline and prioritising bids requires logging into multiple systems individually.
- Keeping profiles current across all portals. Supplier information changes: insurance renewals, company address updates, turnover figures. Keeping every Atamis profile up to date across all portals is ongoing administrative work that diverts resource from actual bid preparation.
Atamis vs TenderSignal: different tools for different jobs
Atamis and TenderSignal are not competing products. They operate at different stages of the procurement process and serve different purposes. Understanding the distinction helps suppliers use both effectively.
Atamis is a buyer-side procurement management system. Contracting authorities use it to run their tendering processes: publishing notices, managing supplier registers, issuing tender documents, collecting questionnaire responses and receiving formal bid submissions. To respond to an Atamis-hosted opportunity, suppliers must register on that specific buyer's Atamis portal and submit their response through it. There is no alternative route: Atamis is the submission channel the buyer has chosen.
TenderSignal is a supplier-side discovery and alerting layer. It brings the public contract notices that Atamis portals publish, alongside notices from hundreds of other UK procurement systems, into a single searchable feed. TenderSignal helps you identify which opportunities exist across the entire Atamis network before you invest time in registering on individual portals.
The two tools work together in sequence. You use TenderSignal to discover a relevant notice from, say, an NHS trust using Atamis. You then visit that trust's Atamis portal, complete the supplier registration and submit your response through Atamis in the normal way. TenderSignal handles the discovery and alerting step. Atamis handles the submission and evaluation step. Using TenderSignal means you register on Atamis portals purposefully, when a live relevant opportunity already exists, rather than speculatively across the entire network hoping something will come up.
How TenderSignal covers Atamis portals
TenderSignal covers public notices from more than 35 NHS and government Atamis portals, updated daily. These listings contain the information contracting authorities are required to publish: the buyer name, the contract title, the CPV category, the estimated value range and the submission deadline. Because the listings are public by design, TenderSignal shows them to you without needing a supplier account on each portal.
Atamis portals covered by TenderSignal include NHS bodies, central government departments and agencies, regulators and councils. Coverage is extended as new Atamis portals are identified.
In addition to live tender notices, TenderSignal also collects awarded contract data from Atamis portals via the SearchType=Contracts CSV export path. This means the platform captures not only current opportunities but also historical award data, which is useful for understanding buyer spending patterns, identifying likely renewal dates and researching which suppliers have previously won business from specific NHS trusts or government bodies.
When you configure a TenderSignal profile with your business description, CPV categories and region, the platform matches incoming Atamis notices against your criteria and alerts you to relevant opportunities in your digest (weekly free, daily on Pro). You can then click through to the relevant buyer's Atamis portal, register as a supplier on that specific portal and submit your response through it.
Who needs an Atamis alternative?
Any supplier that sells goods or services to NHS trusts, central government bodies or local authorities using Atamis will benefit from a way to monitor all those portals without maintaining dozens of separate registrations and logins. The businesses that gain most from seeing every Atamis portal in one place are:
- NHS suppliers frustrated by 35 separate portal registrations. Medical supplies companies, facilities management firms, IT providers, professional services businesses and clinical support suppliers that work across multiple NHS trusts are the most obvious beneficiaries. TenderSignal gives them a consolidated view of what all NHS Atamis portals have live, so they can prioritise registration and bid preparation accordingly.
- Suppliers to central government bodies on Atamis. Organisations supplying to the NDA, UKRI, Defra, Parliament or other government bodies using Atamis can monitor those portals alongside thousands of other public sector opportunities in a single feed, rather than checking each portal individually.
- Businesses expanding into NHS or government supply chains. If your business is new to public sector procurement or is looking to grow its NHS customer base, TenderSignal lets you see which trusts and bodies are actively procuring in your category before you invest time in portal registrations and pre-qualification.
- SMEs without a dedicated bid team. Smaller suppliers cannot afford to spend hours each week checking multiple procurement portals. Automated matching and daily or weekly alerts let a small team stay on top of every relevant Atamis opportunity without manual monitoring effort.
- Suppliers researching the Atamis landscape before registering. If you want to understand which NHS trusts or government bodies are active buyers in your sector before committing to registration on specific portals, TenderSignal's single feed gives you that market intelligence as a first step.
TenderSignal covers Atamis portals alongside Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, Public Contracts Scotland, Sell2Wales, In-Tend, ProContract, CompeteFor, eSourcing portals and hundreds of other UK buyer portals. The result is a single, comprehensive feed of UK public sector opportunities, not just the Atamis slice of the market.