International Business Machines Corporation

Mark A Smith

Taiga Nakamura

Aly Megahed

Kugamoorthy Gajananan

Shun Jiang

Mari Abe Fukuda

Shubhi Asthana

Valeria Becker

One embodiment provides a method for augmenting missing values in historical or market data for deals. The method comprises receiving information relating to a set of deals. For any service included in one or more deals of the set of deals but not included in one or more other deals of the set of deals, the method further comprises augmenting, for any or all of the one or more other deals that does not include the service, one or more missing values for the service with one or more recommended values based on a recommendation algorithm. The service may be at any service level of a hierarchy of services.

Augmenting missing values in historical or market data for deals

One embodiment provides a method for estimating unit price reduction of services in a new in-flight deal using data of historical deals and market reference deals cost structures. The method includes receiving a detailed cost structure for historical information, market deals information, services quantity information and deals metadata for a first year. For each service: peer deals to the in-flight deal are selected based on the detailed cost structure; missing cost data values in the peer deals are augmented; unit cost reduction values for the peer deals estimated; the unit cost reduction for the in-flight deal from each year in total contract years to a next year without a last contract year are estimated; and a total cost for the in-flight deal for all years in the total contract years beyond the first year are estimated.

Estimating annual cost reduction when pricing information technology (IT) service deals

One embodiment provides a method comprising receiving historic peer deals relating to at least one service, and a baseline and cost percentage estimation for each service. Historic peer cost data for each service is clustered to form at least one cluster. Each cluster includes similar unit costs, and has an assigned label. A classification model is trained based on each baseline received, each cost percentage estimation received, and each assigned label. For each assigned label, a corresponding probability distribution is computed based on the classification model. For each service of a new client solution, an assigned label for the service is predicted based on the classification model, and, based on a probability distribution corresponding to the assigned label predicted, transforming an initial range of historic peer cost data relating to the service into a narrower range for use in estimating a cost of the service with improved accuracy.

Effectiveness of service complexity configurations in top-down complex services design

One embodiment provides a method for top-down pricing of an in-flight deal. The method comprises receiving a first set of information relating to the in-flight deal. The in-flight deal comprises multiple services. The method comprises, for each service of the in-flight deal, selecting a corresponding set of peer deals from historical and market data based on the first set of information, and mining costs for the service from the corresponding set of peer deals. The method further comprises determining a set of price points for the in-flight deal based on each cost mined.

Top-down pricing of a complex service deal

A method for selecting a set of information technology (IT) services peer deals to an in-flight deal for each first level service in the in-flight deal includes receiving a detailed cost structure for historical information, in-flight deals information, market deals information, services baselines and deals metadata, and multiple peer deals for selection. For historical information and market deals information, all missing baselines for all services in the in-flight deal and all missing unit cost for services are augmented at the first level service. The multiple peer deals are classified into different clusters at the first level service. A closest cluster to the in-flight deal at the first level service is selected. For each second level service of the in-flight deal the method: classifies the selected peer deals into different clusters. A predetermined number of peer deals that appear in a largest number of the selected clusters is selected.

Growing community of inventors

Skeffington, United Kingdom

Mark A Smith