Opinion ID: 1694101
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Incomplete and Inaccurate Data

Text: Bentley next contends that when Intergraph did submit the data, it was incomplete and inaccurate. According to Bentley, key information necessary to transition maintenance agreements to Bentley was missing and key information changed from submission to submission, indicating that one or the other or both submissions were incorrect. Bentley maintains that what it describes as late data and bad data greatly frustrated its ability to create seamless maintenance transitions for its new CRP customers. Timely and accurate data, Bentley says, was key to the smooth transition of any CRP maintenance agreement, requiring such information as the expiration or renewal date of the agreement, the contact person, and the products covered. Bentley personnel observed problems resulting from the inaccurate data early in 2001, reporting such problems as marketing mailings being returned because names or addresses were incorrect, inability to ascertain the correct contact person, inability to ascertain the correct business location in which to pursue renewal of the maintenance agreement, and the failure of certain data, for example, the number of CRP parts or licenses listed, to match the equipment or software the customer actually owned. In addition to the problems associated with the incomplete and inaccurate data supplied by Intergraph, Bentley had to contend with a myriad of changes Intergraph made in each updated TM schedule submitted, changes that went well beyond the addition of agreements as contemplated by the APA. Bentley points out that the 150-day updated TM schedule was not intended to correct earlier mistakes, but was merely a safety net to allow Intergraph to supplement the 50-day updated TM schedule with any agreements that had been inadvertently omitted. During the course of his work as Intergraph's principal contact concerning the APA, John Carter summarized the flaws in the data provided to Bentley in an e-mail exchange with a European Intergraph executive, Marc Krans. Per the meeting that we held in April, it was agreed by the parties that serious questions remained as to the quality and extent of the data in the first update (referred to as the March submittal); therefore, a second update would be made by INGR. Per the APA, the second formal submittal (which is referred to as the July update), was suppose [sic] to have corrected any errors within the March submittal. However, it was known, even before being submitted, that the July update did not have all of the necessary corrections, as Bentley Europe and INGR Europe were continuing to update the data; hence the agreement (reached in in [sic] June), that the parties would continue definitizing the data. Intergraph's director of finance at its European headquarters, Reinder van Weperen, acknowledged in an e-mail exchange with Carter in May 2001 that Bentley's complaints about the data were valid, although he also indicated that he thought Bentley was partly to blame. The complaint that `Bentley is getting bad or inaccurate information' is true. Largely because of Bentley's own lack of initiative to arrange for the transfer of the billing responsibility, providing information has been like shooting at a moving target. When the information was submitted initially in August 2000, it was based on giving notice to the customers in [the third quarter]. Since Europe did not hear anything until December 28, business continued as usual. New information submitted in February was based on giving notice in [the first quarter]. The latest information submitted last week is  hopefully  based on having given notice in [the second quarter]! Erika Linsalata, a member of Bentley's CRP task force, testified about the problems that the inaccurate data and the changes in the data from update to update caused for Bentley. Q. And you said you became aware of these issues [problems caused by inaccurate data provided by Intergraph] in February of `01. Had you received updated  well, do you know if there had been any updated data from Intergraph between February of 2001 and May of 2001? A. Yes. I am aware that there was more data. Q. . . . [D]o you know ... where that came from within Intergraph or how it got to Bentley? A. No, I don't. Well, it got to Bentley I think through Bob Hewitt. . . . It's my understanding that when we got the first round of data that Intergraph said, `we're going to do some more work to get you more data.' So early  like, as we got through the month of February as people did contact me, I'd tell them, `I understand we're going to get more data. . . . That additional data we got, we started referring  I don't know if everyone called it this, but I know on the task force, we called it the St. Patrick's Day data. Since we called it that, I guess we must have gotten it roughly around St. Patrick's Day. But I don't have an understanding or recollection of the details in regards to the difference between the February and the March. I do know that St. Patrick's Day data didn't make our lives any easier. Q. Did it contain any improved information or was it the same ... information as what Bentley received in February? A. I can't recall for certain. I think... that in some areas it was better. In other areas, it was worse. So when you look all and all, that made it even harder because now we had information we already had on our accounts in [Bentley's computer system]. Then we have February data that had some information but not all good. Then we had the March data which had some good information but not all. So now we had to spend time saying account by account what's the most recent up-to-date info that we should work off of. Other Bentley employees made similar complaints about the extra work caused by Intergraph's inaccurate data submissions, the maintenance agreement renewal opportunities that Bentley lost, and the difficulties created by the changes in the updated TM schedules.