Six bidding for billing
Six companies have submitted bids to provide a new billing system for TPSA in a contract estimated by investment bank Schroders Salomon Smith Barney in their report of 2 August to be worth PLN500m.
Those bidding are the American Electronic Data Systems (EDS), CAP Gemini which will probably bid with Kenan the distributor of Lucent Technologies in this country, Comarch, IBM; Hewlett-Packard and Prokom together with Sofrecom.
The clear favourite is the Prokom and Sofrecom offer. The latter is a subsidiary of France Telecom which is also about to update its system of customer relations management (CRM). The tender for the CRM system, believed to be worth around PLN100m will be awarded at the same time as the billing contract. The CRM deal was originally due to be announced on 17 July.
Under normal circumstances the Sofrecom — Prokom alliance would have little chance of victory. Neither company has any great experience in this area to speak of and neither is linked to any of the big names in this field. However they are likely to win because of obvious contacts.
The biggest global names in this field are Amdocs and Lucent. The former is interested in entering this country although officially it is not part of the tender because it was not invited. Unofficially it would appear to be linked to one of the bidders. Lucent is likely to be linked to CAP Gemini.
Logically Polish companies would not stand a chance in the tender although they could expect healthy subcontracting work from foreign companies unwilling to bring their own staff to Poland.