For procurement, commercial and category leads
The award is the easy part. The renewal three years later is the test.
On a Maximo or MAS engagement the risk sits in scope never pinned down, a delivery team that is not the bid team, and a buying route confirmed after the requirement was written. All three are visible at tender if the pack asks for them.
- A defensible decision
- A scoring record that survives internal audit and a challenge from an unsuccessful bidder.
- Value across the term
- What the engagement costs by year three, including the changes scope should have caught.
- Route compliance
- A framework or process your organisation is permitted to use, confirmed early.
- Supplier risk
- Certification, financial standing and sub-processors, evidenced on request.
Written for: Head of Procurement · Commercial Director · Sourcing Manager · IT Procurement Lead · Category Manager
Pack specification
What a Maximo pack has to state before it goes to market
Buying route, fixed first
- UK public sector
- Crown Commercial Service G-Cloud 14 call-off. MaxIron is supplier 721548, verifiable on the Digital Marketplace. Public sector delivery.
- Callable off framework
- Implementation, MAS upgrade, managed hosting, application support and Health Check work.
- Confirmed when
- Before the requirement is written. Settling it afterwards commonly costs a month nobody planned.
- Licence position
- AppPoints consumption modelled before scope is written, because it moves the shape of the requirement. MAS AppPoints and licensing.
Scope a panel can score
- Ask bidders for
- Approach, sequence and decision points, in that order.
- Question library
- Published in full, free and ungated: questions to ask a Maximo partner in an RFP. Use it against us as well.
- Scoring framework
- How to choose an IBM Maximo partner, built around the failures that surface at month four.
- Plan sanity check
- Maximo implementation timeline.
The team you actually receive
- Named before contract
- Individuals, biographies, references and the committed share of each person’s time.
- Continuity
- Written into the contract schedule rather than into the presentation.
- MaxIron leads
- Leadership and senior specialists, with public professional profiles.
Supplier evidence, checkable without us
- IBM tier
- IBM Gold Partner. What the tier covers in delivery terms.
- Certificates and listings
- ISO 27001 certificate 27274 with ISOQAR, G-Cloud 14 supplier 721548, IBM Partner Plus company 8294, each on recognition and credentials.
- Estates run today
- Six anonymised engagements with scope and duration named, on MaxIron clients.
- AI assurance section
- Where your pack now carries one, enterprise AI governance and assurance answers it with review gates.
Every figure and listing above is verifiable without contacting MaxIron. Apply the same four groups to each bidder and the responses stop being comparable on writing quality alone.
Where the term money goes
A decade of spend, and the document that decides each part of it
Evaluation weights the implementation. The estate is then run for ten years under whatever the support schedule happened to say.
Share of a ten-year Maximo or MAS estate cost
-
Implementation programme
22%
Decided today by: the tender you are scoring now, and the only line most panels weight heavily
-
Licence and subscription across the term
30%
Decided today by: your IBM agreement, sized by AppPoints consumption and user counts
-
Application support and hosting, years one to ten
28%
Decided today by: the support schedule, which is often scored as a compliance annex
-
Change requests against unspecified scope
12%
Decided today by: whatever the pack failed to pin down, priced after you lost your competitive tension
-
Version currency and upgrades
8%
Decided today by: the upgrade clause, where the contract carries one
Four fifths of the term cost is decided by schedules that are rarely given a score weight, and the change line is set by the words missing from the pack.
Shares illustrate typical bid mix. Duration and cost are set by live customisation and interface count, whether the database platform has to change, and AppPoints entitlement. A documented starting position on an upgrade is available through the free MAS upgrade analysis.
Contract commitments
What each side has to hand over, and who signs for it
Written into the schedules at award, these five stop being an argument in month four.
| What moves | From | Direction | To | Signed by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customisation register and integration inventory | Operator | ← | Supplier | Your platform owner, at discovery |
| Firm delivery price, built from discovery findings | Supplier | → | Operator | Supplier commercial lead, before the delivery stage starts |
| Named delivery team and committed time share | Supplier | → | Operator | Supplier delivery director, in the contract schedule |
| Decision log for every scope change, with the price basis | Both | ↔ | Both | Programme board, at each change |
| Configuration, documentation and exit data on termination | Supplier | → | Operator | Supplier, under the exit provisions |
What no schedule should carry
- A firm delivery price quoted before anyone has read the estate.
- Team continuity as an intention in the presentation rather than a term in the schedule.
- An exit provision that names no format and no timescale for the data.
Write these into the pack
Five tests the market can pass or fail in front of your panel
None of them favours MaxIron. They favour any supplier prepared to be specific, which is what an evaluation exists to find.
- P1
The named delivery lead can defend the approach without the bid manager.
- Passes when
- The person named in the proposal answers the awkward technical question in the room.
- Witnessed by
- Your evaluation panel, in clarification
- P2
The price is produced from a read of your estate.
- Passes when
- Discovery is priced firmly and the delivery range arrives with its drivers stated.
- Witnessed by
- Your commercial lead
- P3
The buying route was settled before issue.
- Passes when
- Framework, lot and supplier number are recorded in the pack, G-Cloud 14 supplier 721548 in our case.
- Witnessed by
- Procurement and internal audit
- P4
The decade is scored, not assumed.
- Passes when
- Support model, change governance, upgrade path and exit provisions each carry a weight.
- Witnessed by
- The service owner who inherits the estate
- P5
The bidder will say what they expect to go wrong.
- Passes when
- A written list of unknowns, each with an agreed mechanism for pricing it later.
- Witnessed by
- Your evaluation panel
Positions we hold before procurement
Three positions you can test against the market
Each one is stated the same way to every buyer, and each is straightforward to put to the other bidders.
The fixed price follows a read of the estate
A shape, a range and the drivers behind both are available in the first conversation. The firm number follows discovery or a trial upgrade, so the difference between the two never arrives later as a change request.
Fit is assessed in the first conversation
Where a simpler system suits the operation, or where an incumbent is delivering well and governance is the real problem, we say so at the start rather than in month three of your evaluation.
A clear requirement is written before the market sees the pack
A well-run procurement against a vague requirement buys a vague engagement. That work happens ahead of issue, which is why the question library and the scoring framework are free and ungated.
Where to go next
Three routes, and the move that costs a month
The requirement is not written yet
Open the question library →You are on it if
You have a budget line, an internal date and no specification.
The wrong move here
Issuing an outcome-led requirement and expecting the market to differentiate itself against it.
The buying route is the blocker
The G-Cloud 14 route →You are on it if
You need to know how this is bought before you can write how it is scoped.
The wrong move here
Writing the scope first and meeting the framework question in week six.
You are assessing the supplier itself
Why customers choose MaxIron →You are on it if
Due diligence, references and the named team you receive.
The wrong move here
Treating a wall of client logos as a reference instead of asking for a named call.
Procurement and commercial, questions we are asked first
- How does MaxIron price an upgrade?
- In two parts. The discovery or trial upgrade is priced firmly, because we know what it involves. The delivery price is built from what that run measures on your estate. A range and its drivers are available at any point, and we do not convert a range into a firm figure before there is evidence for it. The free MAS upgrade analysis is the documented starting position.
- Can we buy through a framework?
- For UK public sector, yes. MaxIron is a Crown Commercial Service G-Cloud 14 supplier, number 721548, and the listing is verifiable on the Digital Marketplace. Implementation, MAS upgrade, managed hosting, application support and Health Check work can be called off, which removes a full competitive procurement from your timetable.
- Will the people in the proposal be the people doing the work?
- We name the individuals on your account in the proposal, with biographies and references, before contract. Make it a scored requirement for every bidder rather than a courtesy: it is the easiest thing on the list to verify and one of the most predictive.
- Do you publish named client references?
- Our published case studies are anonymised, because most of our clients operate in regulated sectors and prefer their platform arrangements not to be a marketing asset. Named references, including people you can speak to directly, are provided during procurement.
- What do you need from us to respond well to a tender?
- Current version and database platform, environment list, integration inventory, rough user and asset counts, whatever customisation register exists, and the timetable with its driver. Where those are missing we state what we have assumed, so the panel can see which parts of our price are load bearing.
Take the question library before you write the pack.
Published in full, free, with no email gate, and written so you can use it against us. If a conversation helps, thirty minutes on your scope, your route and what the market is likely to dodge.
Have this to hand
- The requirement in whatever draft state it is in
- Your buying route, or the question of which routes you are permitted to use
- The current version, environment list and anything known about integrations
- The internal date driving the timetable, and who set it