Unsuccessful bidders question award of CAT contract to TCS

Say request for proposal mentioned IIMs wanted an assessment partner, but a software firm was chosen

Players who had unsuccessfully bid to bag the contract for conducting the computer-based Common Admission Test (CAT) for the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) from 2014 are now raising questions on how Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) managed to bag the contract.

Software major TCS bagged the contract pitching nearly half-a-dozen players, including Aptech, MeritTrac, Prometric and Eduquity Career Technologies, among others.

Players who had bid for the five-year contract said IIMs’ selection of TCS has left them confused as the request for proposal (RFP) mentioned the IIMs wanted an assessment partner but the contract has been delivered to a software partner. A formal announcement to the effect will be made in July or August.

Companies participating in the bid said TCS is a software consultancy firm and has no experience in delivery examinations which other players had. TCS did not reply to an email sent last week.

“In our opinion, the CAT exam is not just software delivery but also involves assessment processes to test a candidate’s abilities and skills. The RFP had a huge weightage on test development capabilities and experience which could only be met by bidders with pure play Assessment experience. It was surprising that a software company finally got selected and not an Assessment specialist in a process where 80 % weightage goes to relevant assessment experience and exam delivery capability," said Nagendran Sundararajan, executive vice-president, MeritTrac.

MeritTrac is a pure-play Assessment firm with 13 years of experience and does over six million assessments a year.
Globally, assessment companies deliver computer-based examinations.

The bidders said RFP mentioned a 30-40 % of evaluation criterion in pure content, which meant the bidder should be able to manage content for the examination. Rohit Kapoor, CAT convenor, IIM Indore, said the selection committee took a call on the new vendor and it was not decided by one IIMs alone.

“We have followed every process that was required and provided every player with equal opportunity. Why one bid was selected and others were rejected has not been decided by me,” Kapoor said. The players alleged the bidding process was not transparent and details were not shared with them.

“I am aware of the bid processes followed globally, and in India. In this case, we still do not know where we stand in terms of scores that would have governed the best bidder. I feel the entire process of decision-making could have been more transparent,” said Pravir Arora, executive vice-president, Enterprise and International Business, Aptech. Aptech through its assessment firm, Attest, has delivered more than 3.5 million tests. The company with over seven years of experience has test centres in Bahrain, Dubai, Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria.

Kapoor rubbished the allegation of a non-transparent bidding process, and said the bids where not made public as the players had requested that. “All parties that applied asked us not to share the details with other players. We merely honoured their request,” said Kapoor. CAT is the gateway for those wishing to study at the 13 IIMs and 150 other B-schools.

Kapoor said the contract is for a period of five years and would be renewed every year, based on the vendor's performance. He refused to divulge the value of the contract, adding the bank guarantee of all the bidders has been returned. Between 2009 and 2013, IIMs partnered with US-based Prometric for delivering the CAT. The IIMs had made CAT computer-based in 2009.