System for assessing and rating vendor risk and pricing of technology delivery insurance

Abstract

A method and system for providing a standardization and commoditizing the process of technology contracts and creating method for assessing, scoring, ranking and rating technology vendors for the purpose of comparing vendor bids on a project and for structuring and pricing insurance / surety contracts. Intrinsic and two-way vendor ratings are established for each of the vendors in a particular project. This two-way rating is used to provide a risk adjustment to the nominal bid of each of the vendors. The two-way rating is also utilized to structure and calculate an insurance premium based upon the probability that the vendor would fail / default on the delivery of a technology project.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE APPLICATIONS[0001] The present invention claims the benefit of U.S. provisional patent applications 60 / 227,513, filed on Aug. 24, 2000, and 60 / 290,069, filed May 11, 2001 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 930,140, filed Aug. 16, 2001.[0002] The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for the commoditization of service contracts allowing various vendors to be ranked based upon their intrinsic strength (intrinsic rating) and on their ability to deliver on a specific project (Two-Way Rating). The present invention is also directed to a method and system for pricing technology delivery insurance based upon the failure / default by a vendor. This assessment and ranking will allow insurance companies to structure and underwrite insurance / surety contacts, by allowing insurance companies to assess the comparative risk inherent in specific vendors hence giving the insurance company / guarantor the ability to price risk based premiums or fees and the ability ...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

As can be appreciated, at least partly basing the awarding of a large contract on the perceived reliability and trustworthiness of the vendor could result in a non-timely completion of the project as well as the project being delivered over the agreed upon cost if the perceived reputation of the vendor was unwarranted.

Additionally, along with the subjective nature of the decision to reward a contract, the contract process itself was rather time consuming.

However, while it is relatively easy to make a well known substance such as wheat or corn into a commodity, the commoditization of a less quantifiable concept such as technology services becomes problematic.

However, this yardstick would not take into account the performance of the vendor.

Therefore, while the patent to Grosh et al does recognize an impending trend in the industry, it does not address the manner in which this trend is to be utilized to obtain data relating to various contracts to be awarded.

Although this patent acknowledges that the vendor's qualifications are important in making procurement decisions, it does not provide a clear indication of relatively ranking these vendors based upon the time of performance and cost of a particular project as well as partitioning the product when making this determination (or of structuring an insurance contract from this).

Additionally, this patent does not describe a system in which the contracts are partitioned to better compare the vendors during the selection process, allowing an insurance company / guarantor to underwrite the technology risk.

Also, this patent does not address the vendors ability to deliver on a "specific contract".

This is because second-tier vendors will be usually less expensive than first-tier vendors, but the risk is greater.

Choosing the lowest bidder could turn out to be a mistake.

While the intrinsic rating of a particular vendor might be high, the two-way rating may be low if the vendor does not have the relevant expenditure that a particular project requires.

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