IBM Uses Bid Certification As Its Prenup Agreement

“You can lie and still go to heaven,” said Robert Kennedy, president of CPS Technology Solutions, an IBM business partner based in Brooklyn Park, Minn.

IBM&'s bid certification program seeks to protect the partner that develops a specific business opportunity by giving that partner a higher discount on the IBM products included in the deal. The intent of the program is to keep other partners from swooping in at the last minute to win business solely on price and to avoid conflicts when more than one partner is active in a single account.

“But,” Kennedy said, “the problem is a lot of it boils down to how creative a writer you are.”

Companies must provide supporting documentation to IBM to prove that they created the opportunity, he said, and the process tends to favor larger IBM partners that can devote resources to filing documentation to win bid certification. Kennedy said that large partners can flood their bid applications with reams of documents and IBM does little to verify it before certifying the deal.

Donn Atkins, IBM&'s general manager of global business partners, said the Armonk, N.Y.-based company recognizes the problem and has moved to fix it. “In the early days of [bid certification] it became an exercise in packaging and creative writing, and I wanted to nip that in the bud,” Atkins said.

To that end, IBM last year built a set of Web tools in which all partners, regardless of size, can quickly and easily submit supporting documentation for bid certification. “We think the process works pretty well,” he said.

Beyond bid certification, Atkins said IBM field people encourage partners that don&'t have specific skills or carry specific IBM product lines to address all opportunities in an account and to team with other business partners that can fill the gaps.

“I&'m not going to autonomously introduce another partner into an account, I prefer to do it in a more collaborative way,” said Atkins.

Kennedy said, however, that the success of any marriage between partners depends on trust.

“The way it works is that if I bring another partner to the table, I maintain control of the account,” Kennedy said. “If he brings me to the table, he maintains control. But that&'s a matter of trust, and you can&'t make that deal with everyone.”