2023200046_A1_OCR Software Solution_RFI.pdf

Request for Information

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Software Solution

Solicitation Number RFI 2023200046

Due Date and Time:

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

3:00 PM PST

CITY OF EUGENE

Central Services Finance Division/Purchasing

100 West 10th Avenue, Suite 400 Eugene, Oregon 97401

Telephone: (541) 682-5055 The Purchasing Office is currently closed to the public.

I. INVITATION TO SUBMIT INFORMATION

INVITATION TO SUBMIT INFORMATION

Solicitation Number RFI 2023200046

Notice to Suppliers Letters of Interest, including high-level price range information for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Software Solution will be accepted by the Purchasing Office until Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at 3:00 PM. This Request for Information (RFI) is for informational purposes only and will not directly result in a contract award.

Project Description The City of Eugene is requesting Letters of Interest from suppliers that provide OCR software solutions to automate data entry for accounts payable. The City wishes to compile information about available software and establish a budget and a list of suppliers who may wish to submit proposals for a future Request for Proposals (RFP).

Upon review of the Letters of Interest, the City may issue a subsequent solicitation with the intent to purchase a solution.

Solicitation Documents Solicitation documents may be examined electronically by logging in to OregonBuys. To view City of Eugene solicitations:

• Scroll to Supplier Activities

• Click the Open Bids icon

• Click the Advanced Search button

• Click Select Organization

• Select City of Eugene

• Click Search

• Click the Bid Solicitation # to view solicitation details and documents

A copy of the Solicitation may be also be obtained by emailing the Purchasing Analyst shown below.

Offerors shall submit, via email, a single PDF file, including Letter of Interest and accompanying information, to the Purchasing Analyst referenced below.

Letters of Interest with all accompanying information shall be submitted before the due date and time specified in the Request for Information.

Dated: December 19, 2022

Noel Dietz, CPPB, NIGP-CPP Purchasing Analyst NDietz@eugene-or.gov https://oregonbuys.gov/bso/ mailto:NDietz@eugene-or.gov

II. INSTRUCTIONS TO OFFERORS

1. Fill out and return the attached Standard Request for Information Form with Offeror Letter of Interest. The City will use this information to contact Offerors about future solicitation requests.

Include Offeror responses to the questions outlined in Section IV. Questions for Offerors in Offeror’s Letter of Interest.

2. Offerors shall submit an electronic response, including Letter of Interest and accompanying information, in pdf format by emailing the City’s Purchasing Analyst.

Letters of Interest with all accompanying information shall be submitted before the due date and time specified in the RFI. Offeror shall bear all risks associated with delays in email or file sharing services.

3. Letters of Interest may be withdrawn by written notification on company letterhead signed by an authorized person and received prior to the deadline for submitting Letters of Interest.

4. This RFI does not commit the City to pay any costs incurred by any Offeror in the submission of Letters of Interest.

5. PUBLIC RECORDS: This RFI and one copy of each Letter of Interest received in response to it, shall be kept by the City of Eugene Purchasing Office and made a part of a file or record which shall be open to public inspection, excepting any information that is considered trade secret under ORS 192.501(2), each sheet of such information must be marked with the following legend:

“This data constitutes a trade secret under ORS 192.501(2), and shall not be disclosed except in accordance with the Oregon Public Records Law, ORS 192.”

The Oregon Public Records Law exempts from disclosure only bona fide trade secrets, and the exemption from disclosure applies only "unless the public interest requires disclosure in the particular instance." ORS 192.501(2). Therefore, non-disclosure of documents or any portion of a document submitted as part of a letter of interest may depend upon official or judicial determinations made pursuant to the Public Records Law.

6. Questions or clarification requests shall be submitted by email to the City’s Purchasing Analyst no later than 2:00 PM PST on Thursday, January 5, 2023. Contents of questions and clarifications should include a reference to the page or item being addressed, the reason and any proposed alterations. The City may limit the number of responses it provides in response to Offerors’ questions. Therefore the City asks Offerors to prioritize questions asked. Do not include questions with the response to the RFI.

7. Statements by City staff or its representatives are not binding on City, unless confirmed by written addendum. Addenda will issue and Offerors shall receive Addenda as follows: City will not mail notice of Addenda but will publish notice of any Addenda on OregonBuys. Addenda may be downloaded from OregonBuys. Interested Offerors should frequently check OregonBuys until closing.

III. REQUIREMENTS / SPECIFICATIONS

Minimum Requirements The City of Eugene’s Accounts Payable team currently process approximately 2,000 invoices and 400 utility bills each month. The City seeks an optical character recognition (OCR) software solution that automates data entry from scanned and emailed invoices and bills.

• Capacity for users to set up recognition of at least 12 fields of at least 6 different formats of documents.

• Capacity to transfer data into an excel spreadsheet in defined formats.

• Ability to integrate with Oracle PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management (FSCM).

Desired Characteristics:

• Ability to check defined folders for new documents at scheduled times, process and save to defined folder.

• The City particularly values system security, continued software support, and customer ease of use.

City of Eugene Technical Infrastructure The City currently operates in a Microsoft technical environment. The City manages its own complex, multi-tiered network with over 200 servers, 1700+ PCs and fiber distributed to facilities throughout the city. Review this entire document prior to publishing and RFPO or signing a contract for any new technology.

Network Architecture The City network consists of 50+ sites connected via fiber optics, with a few exceptions Cable Business Connections. Backbone connections are redundant 10Gbps. Large Sites have 10Gbs connections and smaller sites have 1Gbps connections. Workstations connect to the network at 1Gbps. The City has a 1Gbps internet connection for general City business use.

The City also utilizes 802.11ac/ax at the majority of sites and requires domain joined machines with active domain users to access the business network. There is also a publicly available wireless network that is throttled to a symmetrical 75Mbps that goes over a separate connection to the internet;

due to its nature, it has no guarantee of uptime.

The City uses a combination of perimeter firewalls and inspection at various places in the network as well as URL Filtering capabilities. VPN access is achieved via Cisco AnyConnect or NetMotion Mobility. Cisco Phones are utilized on the network and QoS/CoS are implemented as such.

In addition to the wired network infrastructure, the City of Eugene also has a robust, secured business Wi-Fi network running IEEE 801.11b/g/n/ac/ax on most of its sites. Wi-Fi supports WPA3.

Servers The City utilizes a regional data center to house the majority of server and network assets. The server environment at the City consists of 85% virtualized servers running in a highly available VMware vSphere 6 cluster on HP Proliant servers with Nimble SANs providing storage. All other general use servers are HP Proliant servers with local storage. The City also has server and network resources running in Microsoft Azure in the GCC Cloud.

The City runs on Microsoft software: Servers run Windows Server OS, SQL Server and IIS. The City utilizes Active Directory and ADFS for authentication. E-mail and Office services are provided via

Office 365. General practice stipulates installing applications to a data drive and not to the C:

drive of any server.

Workstations City of Eugene workstations run on Intel-based chipsets with a minimum of 8 GB of RAM and a large hard drive. Laptops are mostly Dell Latitude or Precision models. Desktops are mostly Dell Optiplex or Precision tower PCs. All PC run Windows 10, managed by Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager and have Microsoft security patches applied on a regular basis.

Security/Compliance/Backups

• Antivirus is provided by Microsoft Endpoint Protection on servers with some installations of Bit9 to offset larger risks.

• The City has compliance obligations in regards to HIPAA, CJIS, and PCI. Minimum password requirements meet minimum CJIS requirements of 8 characters with complexity.

Additional requirements may apply depending on the compliance standards.

• Backups are handled by CommVault Galaxy.

• Vendor access: Vendors requiring access to City systems must be preapproved and have background checks, or be monitored at all times during access. The access times may be limited if it requires City IT access monitoring.

Data Hosting If the system being reviewed is a hosted solution(SaaS), all data shall be maintained within the United States, which means the 50 states, the District of Columbia and outlying areas.

Mobile Platforms The City currently has many mobile devices for integration with Office 365. In addition, the City has created mobile applications for iOS and Android devices.

IV. QUESTIONS FOR OFFERORS

(Submit responses with Letter of Interest)

Cooperative Purchasing and References

1. Are there any cooperative agreements available to purchase the software? If so, provide contract information.

2. Provide references from three (3) similar public agencies which have implemented the software. Briefly describe the services that were provided.

System Description

3. Provide a complete list of system requirements (hardware and software) for system, such as a listing of needed servers, other hardware, and network integration.

4. Which RDBMS is used (SQL Server, Oracle)?

5. Does the Offeror supply a data dictionary?

6. Provide a list of peripheral hardware that is compatible with the software.

7. Describe Offeror’s current data security plan. Has the software had any data breaches and if so, what was done to mitigate future breaches?

8. Describe how the individual modules in the software are integrated together.

9. Eugene Finance requires the software to be user-friendly and intuitive. List summary features that demonstrate an intuitive user interface.

10. Describe the administrative tools used to manage the Offeror’s software. Provide a listing of functions for each tool including:

a. Workflow

b. Managing software updates

c. Mapping and exports

d. Quality control

Implementation and Support

11. What is the estimated time for implementing the software solution described above?

12. Describe the implementation process including testing and training.

13. Describe the on-going support and maintenance model.

a. Upgrade schedules

b. Hours of support

c. Methods of contacting support and tracking open issues.

Cost Estimate

14. Provide the estimated cost, both one-time and on-going, to implement a software solution that achieves the stated needs with the following scenarios:

a. Client hosted on premise (client/server).

b. Client hosted on premise (web enabled).

c. Vendor suggested optimal hosting. (May be partially vendor hosted and client hosted, if applicable.)

15. Describe additional modules or services not identified in this document that would be appropriate for similar operations. Include cost of each module or service.

After reviewing the Letters of Interest submitted in response to this RFI the City may, in its sole discretion, invite selected Offeror(s) to demonstrate the functionality of their offered software solution.

Provide a sample demonstration agenda, including the recommended amount of time to review modules and/or core software functionalities and features.

IV. STANDARD REQUEST FOR INFORMATION FORM

Solicitation Number 2023200046

Due Date and Time: January 17, 2023 at 3:00 PM

I, the undersigned, and authorized representative of ________________________________ (Firm Name) which is a sole proprietor __________, partnership __________, or corporation __________ have read and thoroughly understand the specifications, the RFI instructions, and all other conditions of the Request for Information solicitation as well as all addenda issued for this solicitation by the City of Eugene for tax collection software and agree that the information submitted is accurate and correct.

Name: Title:

Signature: Date:

Company Name:

Tax ID Number (TIN): ___________________________________________________________

Address:

Phone: Fax:

E-mail Address: ________________________________________________________________

Company contact for this project (if different from above):

Name: Title: ______

Phone: E-mail:__________________________________