P03-JA Medallia SaaS V.12 Redacted.pdf

VA-23-00043348

JUSTIFICATION

FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Office of Procurement, Acquisition and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: This acquisition is for an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) requirements contract for brand name Medallia Customer Experience Measurement (CEM) Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription licenses. These SaaS subscription licenses specifically include access to Medallia Experience Cloud (MEC), Digital Experience Analytics (DEA), Medallia Ideas, Mindful, Medallia Experience Orchestration/Journey Orchestration, Agent Connect, Sense 360, Concierge, Video, CheckMarket and packaged integrations. All performance shall be completed by July 1, 2028. Each task order issued will delineate the specific period of performance and/or delivery schedule(s).

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA’s Office of Information Technology, Product Engineering office requires subscription licenses for a SaaS solution that provides robust survey, report/dashboard and analytics capabilities for both internal (employees) and external (customers, Veterans, beneficiaries, partners, vendors) populations. VA requires a platform for customer experience via digital, speech, text message-based (text/SMS) communication and crowdsourcing, as well as packaged integrations, Application Programming Interface (API) enabled integrations and integrations with VA-used Customer Relationship Management Systems (CRMs) including ServiceNow and Microsoft® (MS) Dynamics. The Medallia CEM SaaS provides access to: MEC, an end-to-end closed loop SaaS experience management platform that analyzes feedback (text, speech, etc.) in real time; DEA which scores online experiences to enable capture of real-time digital experience at scale; Medallia Ideas, a social idea and innovation management platform with a click-to-configure functionality to collect, develop and evaluate ideas/potential solutions to challenges;

Mindful, a call center callback experience software to improve customer satisfaction;

Medallia Experience Orchestration/Journey Orchestration, which is a platform that displays real-time actionable insights to improve customer experiences; Agent Connect, a quality management platform that analyzes call center data for quality to improve customer satisfaction and agent engagement; Sense 360, an insights platform that provides the ability to analyze foot traffic and deploy targeted surveys to customers;

Concierge, an intelligent messaging solution (text and app messaging) which enables real-time feedback; Video which provides video capture to collect, analyze and share video-based feedback; CheckMarket, a fast survey software that supports over 50 languages; and Packaged Integrations which provide integration with Adobe, MS Dynamics, Salesforce and ServiceNow. VA requires the platform to create and issue surveys and text analytics with both pre-configured algorithms and configurable algorithm capability for topic/theme/sentiment analysis.

Medallia CEM SaaS Subscriptions VA-23-00043348

This requirement has a one-year base period with four 12-month option periods. The total estimated value of the proposed action including all option periods is $60,035,000.00.

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C. 3304(a)(1) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1 entitled, “Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services Will Satisfy Agency Requirements.”

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on extensive market research as described in section eight of this justification, it was determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for the required brand name Medallia CEM SaaS subscription licenses. This procurement will provide Medallia software subscription licenses that will enable VA to strategically implement new or revised enterprise-wide experience feedback capture and analysis, as well as idea sourcing/management. Medallia MEC, DEA and Ideas are currently in use across VA.

VA spent multiple years in configuration and integrations to achieve the current state and implement customer and employee experience feedback programs, train field users and develop and refine algorithms to improve/enhance intent/sentiment analysis, including crisis alerts. VA implemented the VSignals Medallia CEM, a SaaS tool, in 2016 and the ESignals Medallia CEM, a SaaS tool, in 2021. The Medallia MEC, operating as VSignals, is currently implemented in all Veterans Health Administration, Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), National Cemetery Administration (NCA) and Board of Veterans Appeals (BVA) offices as well as multiple headquarters offices (Financial Services Center (FSC), Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU), Veterans Experience Office (VEO) and others) in support of VA and OIT customer and employee experience improvement initiatives. Using another manufacturer’s SaaS would require an extensive development and configuration effort to replicate required functionality already developed via previous efforts with the Medallia CEM and MEC. Specifically, the configurations and integrations that have been developed are proprietary to the Medallia solution. Use of any other SaaS platform would require a complete replacement of the Medallia infrastructure in place, including integrations with other VA products, including MS Dynamics (PATS-R) and Salesforce, and require a robust training effort to retrain employees for user roles and to rebuild previous surveys into the new system. Additionally, there are significant data sources which have been developed to map for survey sampling. These sources, such as Stop Codes for VHA departments/offices and Cerner codes, impact who receives surveys and how that is mapped into filtering access roles and displaying results in the Medallia SaaS. Replacing the existing infrastructure, inclusive of the aforementioned integrations and data sources, would result in estimated duplicative costs of approximately $10 million and require approximately six (6) years to reconstitute a new CEM tool, as well as additional costs and time to develop and deploy new training and tools across the VA enterprise to include outpatient and inpatient toolkits. These estimates of duplicative cost and time are based on previous acquisition history and comparable configuration and development efforts of similar sizes and would not be recovered through competition. VEO has developed custom algorithms embedded and managed directly into Medallia's Experience Cloud (MEC) AI and Machine Learning Text Analytics engine, which VA has built upon over the past six (6) years. Only through continued use of the Medallia CEM SaaS will VA be able to take advantage of the existing Text Analytic topic sets and algorithms developed and refined under the VSignals and ESignals programs.

Additionally, Medallia is the only commercially available source that can meet all of VA’s functional requirements. Specifically, the Medallia CEM SaaS is the only SaaS that can provide a customer experience measurement product with the ability to capture experience feedback on calls (phone survey), which VA has implemented in enterprise contact centers. Medallia’s CEM SaaS is also the only SaaS which provides for both structured and unstructured feedback (such as open text field responses and agent notes) with real-time analytics. This is a critical VA requirement because only Medallia’s CEM SaaS can provide near-real-time experience feedback which allows for immediate input into the impact of changes (positive or negative), understanding of patterns in changes which enable reaction and resource allocation for important initiatives, and ensuring any unstructured feedback is analyzed for responsive action (such as crisis or homelessness alerts). Additionally, only the Medallia CEM SaaS is capable of meeting all of the following VA functional requirements:

• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance, which ensures VA customer and employee PII/PHI data is protected;

• Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) approval, which allows VA to meet healthcare feedback requirements;

• Packaged integrations required to enable connection with platforms such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, as well as using the RESTful API and custom API development for custom integrations;

• Automated/out-of-the-box text and sentiment analysis and custom development functionality to tailor sentiment analysis;

• Access to the required data to meet America Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Magnet comparisons for nursing surveys, which are required for recognition of the highest standard of care for patients;

• Patient rounding capabilities for VHA providers and leadership to increase the quality of care and patient satisfaction;

• Social media channel data scraping to capture the voice of the customer online;

• Contact Center analysis and feedback capabilities to analyze and improve the customer experience with call center agents; and

• Idea/crowdsourcing capabilities to solicit, collect and analyze innovative solutions to challenges.

Medallia is essential to the Government’s requirements, and market research indicates only Medallia brand name customer experience measurement products meet the Agency’s needs.

Without procurement of the Medallia CEM SaaS, VA’s ability to further build upon its existing capabilities would not be possible and would negatively impact its ability to provide greater level of care and benefits. For example, VSignals integrates with PATS- R to provide VHA patient advocates with actionable input for service recovery and includes text analytics and sentiment capabilities that provide VA leadership with the ability to identify trends in feedback through system-integrated analytics which does not exist in other products. This system provides the ability to analyze quantitative and qualitative feedback to aid in prioritization of resources against operational goals that influence customer satisfaction with VA benefits and services. Without that input and the ability to have immediate feedback and analysis, VA would lose the ability to react timely to customer feedback from surveys and even the ability to react timely to crises and homeless hotline calls. VA requires that survey responses are safeguarded to prevent deletion/non-restorability. This is a significant requirement for VA data because without such precautions, VA’s ability to respond and act timely could be severely impacted. Survey responses cannot be deleted in Medallia (other than by a Medallia Engineer if required), which is critical for VA data security. Further, data fields can be masked for certain users when needed to protect privacy.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in Section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government’s requirements. However, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name Medallia. In accordance with FAR 6.302-1(c)(1)(ii)(c) and FAR 5.102(a)(6), this justification shall be posted with the solicitation. Furthermore, the proposed action will be synopsized on the Contracting Opportunities Page in accordance with FAR 5.201. Any proposals that are received shall be evaluated in accordance with the solicitation.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: VA technical experts conducted market research from November 2022 through March 2023. Specifically, the Government’s technical experts conducted market research through issuance of a Request for Information (RFI) on NASA SEWP, GSA Advantage and SAM.gov contracting opportunities on March 7, 2023, to ascertain if there were alternative SaaS solutions capable of meeting VA’s requirements. The RFIs were posted for two weeks. Only one response, from Medallia, was received. No alternative solutions were proposed.

Additionally in March 2023, VA technical experts conducted web-based research on other commercial SaaS solutions including Qualtrics, Verint, QuestionPro and SurveyMonkey/Momentive. Based on these reviews, VA’s technical experts determined that none of these alternatives could meet all of VA's functional requirements detailed in Section 5 of this justification and as defined below. Additionally, VA’s technical experts determined that no alternative SaaS can avoid the estimated duplication of time and cost as detailed in Section 5 of this justification.

Specifically, SurveyMonkey/Momentive lacks the analytics capabilities VA requires.

Survey responses can be deleted in SurveyMonkey and then cannot be restored, which is a significant concern for VA data. SurveyMonkey does not offer any crowd/idea sourcing software capability. It also does not offer ANCC Magnet comparison or patient rounding capabilities, nor does it offer contact center solutions. SurveyMonkey is also not an HCAHPS approved vendor.

Qualtrics XM does not offer an idea/crowdsourcing solution. Qualtrics XM is not HCAHPS approved, nor does it offer patient rounding software. Survey responses can be deleted in Qualtrics and then can be restored if requested to be recovered within 30 days, after which time the data is unrecoverable, which is a significant concern for VA data.

QuestionPro allows survey responses to be deleted, and responses cannot be restored which is a concern for VA Data security. QuestionPro also does not offer packaged integrations with VA-used CRM systems including ServiceNow and MS Dynamics.

QuestionPro does not offer any crowd/idea sourcing software capability. It also does not offer ANCC Magnet comparison or patient rounding capabilities, nor does it offer contact center solutions. QuestionPro is not an HCAHPS approved vendor.

Verint does not offer any crowd/idea sourcing software capability. It also does not offer ANCC Magnet comparison or patient rounding capabilities, nor does it offer contact center solutions. Verint is also not an HCAHPS approved vendor.

The Contract Specialist contacted Medallia directly on April 14, 2023, to inquire if they could provide a list of authorized resellers. Medallia responded with a list of five Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses that are authorized to resell Medallia software.

Based on all market research efforts, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only Medallia brand name software can meet all of VA’s functional requirements. Additionally, the Government has determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for the required Medallia CEM SaaS subscription licenses.

9. Other Facts: None

10. Technical and Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in this justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Nicole Reatherford Date: ___________________

Program Analyst Signature: __________________

11. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable based on price analysis in accordance with FAR 15.404-1(b).

Mary Accomando Date: ______________________

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: __________________

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Mary Accomando Date: ______________________

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: __________________

Approval

In my role as Head of the Contracting Activity, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of Medallia Customer Experience Measurement (CEM) software as a service (SaaS) subscription licenses on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Date: ____________ Signature: _____________________

Michele R. Foster Head of the Contracting Activity Technology Acquisition Center Office of Procurement, Acquisition and Logistics