Addendum 1 Q&A RFP HR-24-397.pdf
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- Attached to
- Business CRM System
- Solicitation number
- ED-24-397
- Issued by
- California
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This is Addendum No. 1 to Request for Proposal (RFP) No. ED-24-397 issued by the City of Long Beach, Department of Financial Management, dated April 3, 2024, which addresses 37 questions and answers related to the procurement of a Business Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System. The City seeks a pre-built, ready-to-implement CRM solution designed to support local small business services across four internal teams: BizCare Business Support Hotline, City Loan Program Team, Pacific Gateway Business Engagement Team, and Business License Team. The system must accommodate approximately 40,000 business records sourced from multiple data systems including Infor, EnvisonConnect, and BuySpeed, with daily CSV exports and minimum monthly data imports. The CRM will support approximately 20 users for initial implementation, with two user personas (regular users and administrators), and must enable bulk email capabilities for targeted business outreach, custom surveys segmented by business lists, and project management features to track business onboarding across City programs including grants, loans, technical assistance, certification programs, and internship initiatives. The City seeks quick implementation within a six-week timeline upon vendor award, with mutually agreed project milestones to be established between the City and successful vendor.
The anticipated annual budget for the Business CRM System is $25,000, which covers system licensing and ongoing services. This is the sole source of funding for the contract. The City currently stores program data in Excel files and manages email communications through Constant Contact, which does not require integration with the new CRM system. Approximately 40,000 business records will be pre-populated, sourced from external data including business contact information, open hours, NAICS codes, estimated revenue, employee counts, and business demographics. Contact email addresses have not been scrubbed or verified for accuracy. The CRM must integrate with Microsoft Outlook Version 2402 and support routine data enrichment with publicly available information. Collaboration features will enable cross-departmental tracking of business interactions and program participation metrics, including location data by council district and zip code, business demographics, business size, interaction dates, assistance provided, and completion status. The City does not maintain a standard development or implementation methodology, and only confidential information or communications require record-level access restrictions; most records will be available to all authorized users.
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Department of Financial Management 411 West Ocean Boulevard, 6th Floor
Long Beach, CA 90802
(562) 570-6425
April 03, 2024
NOTICE TO PROPOSERS
ADDENDUM NO. 1: Questions & Answers
RFP No. ED-24-397
Business CRM System
This addendum changes and supersedes the language in the original RFP. Please acknowledge receipt of this addendum by signing and submitting with your proposal. Any proposer who fails to submit this addendum may be disqualified.
The City would like to remind Proposers that pursuant to Section 5.2.26 of the RFP, the City will not be responsible for or bound by any oral communication or any other information or contact that occurs outside the official communication process specified herein, unless confirmed in writing by the City Contact.
The questions and answers are as follows:
1. Q: Are there any existing integration tools to integrate with Infor Application? (RFP Section
2.1)
A: Daily data csv exports will be generated for import into the CRM system.
2. Q: How will the data from the EnvisonConnect be provided? Will there be flat files every month? (RFP Section 2.1)
A: This will depend on system capability to integrate with this data system. The minimum updates from this system to the CRM will be monthly data imports.
3. Q: Does the Business Vendors coming from BuySpeed also present in Infor or EnvionConnect?
(RFP Section 2.1)
A: Yes, businesses located in Long Beach or with an out of area business license will also be present in Infor and possibly EnvisonConnect. Businesses outside of Long Beach may not be present in other datasets.
4. Q: Is there any MDM solution owning customer or business data? (RFP Section 2.1)
A: No
Addendum # 1 RFP ED-24-397
5. Q: What is the definition of “Program”? (RFP Section 2.1)
A: Programs include City managed services in support of local small businesses. These include grants, loans, technical assistance through City staff and contracted partners, recognition/certification programs, and staffing support through Pacific Gateway internship and training programs.
6. Q: How are past programs currently stored? Is it an excel file or a system? (RFP Section 2.1)
A: Program data is currently stored in excel.
7. Q: “Source business data to pre-populate in the CRM system". What are data elements and which system is termed as Source? (RFP Section 2.1)
A: Data should be sourced from external data sources to improve the City’s data available for local small businesses. This data may include business contact information, open hours, NAICS codes, estimated revenue and number of employees, and business demographics.
8. Q: How much data (in terms of number of records) need to be pre-populated based on the entity type? (RFP Section 2.1)
A: There are approximately 40,000 businesses operating in Long Beach to be populated into the CRM system.
9. Q: How many profiles will be there? (RFP Section 2.1)
A: Approximately 40,000
10. Q: Where are emails currently stored? Are you expecting the current emails from the existing system to be loaded into the new system and linked to the contacts? (RFP Section 2.1)
A: Emails are currently stored in Constant Contact. This is not required to be linked with the CRM system.
11. Q: Are you planning to run a campaign and require bulk email capability in that regard? (RFP
Section 2.1)
A: Yes, bulk emails may be used for campaigns or more focused messaging for smaller subsets of local businesses eligible for and participating in programs and services.
12. Q: “The anticipated budget for this service is $25,000". Help me understand the budget. Is that for the software licenses? What does this mean? (RFP Section 1.4)
A: This is the anticipated annual budget for system licensing and services.
13. Q: What is the driving force behind the 6 weeks’ timelines for implementation and rollout of the system? (RFP Section 2.2.1)
14. A: The City seeks a system that is already built and designed for this purpose. The system should be ready to implement quickly upon award. Q: What is Long Beach’s standard development/Implementation Methodology? Are you following Agile or WaterFall?
A: The City does not have a standard methodology.
15. Q: Are there any tollgates to be followed up at City of Long Beach?
A: The City will work with the successful vendor to establish mutually agreed upon project milestones.
16. Q: Do you have signed functional requirements? Are there any user stories defined?
A: Please refer to section 2.1 of the RFP.
17. Q: How many personnas are going to use the application among 4 business divisions?
A: Two, regular users and administrators with higher level access and controls. Read only or other user types available may be added at a later date but are not planned for initial implementation.
18. Q: The RFP states that the anticipated cost is $25,000 per year. Since all CRM software requires setup, configuration, and training. Is the $25,000 budget expected to cover onboarding services and software / or only the software for the team of 20 people?
A: $25,000 is the anticipated annual budget for licensing and ongoing services.
19. Q: How many business records do you have, in total, that you will want to import into the database? Once the company data is in our CRM, the company records will be routinely enriched with publicly available data.
A: Approximately 40,000 records
20. Q: Do all data sources include the company's website address which can be used as a unique identifier?
A: Company website addresses are not consistently included in the data.
21. Q: If a website address for the company record is not included, does each database include unique identifiers for both companies and contacts? If yes, please provide examples of the data structure from each data source (header row and de-identified data will suffice)
A: Business license data is publicly available: BizMap. Each data source is different, but the business license number serves as the UID where available, otherwise address, and business name have been used to connect records across data sets for past programs.
22. Q: How many contracts will be imported into the CRM database? Of these total contacts, how many of these contacts will you market to via mass marketing emails (ie. a newsletter)? This number impacts the software cost.
A: Approximately 40,000 total records. The number to be contacted through bulk emails is unknown.
23. Q: Have contact email addresses been scrubbed or verified for accuracy? If not, this will harm your email sending reputation.
A: No
24. Q: What version of outlook does your team use? This impacts software integration.
A: Version 2402
25. Q: How many people at the city will use this software to create and send custom surveys to contacts segmented into lists in the CRM?
A: Approximately 20 users are anticipated for initial implementation. Custom surveys will be needed in each of the 4 teams, at least 1 user per team will need access to this feature.
26. Q: How many people on the team will only need "view only access" to the CRM (ie. no data entry)
A: There are no views only users anticipated for initial implementation, though this may be added after.
27. Q: Will certain teams have defined access to certain records, or will all employees be able to
"see" and work with all records?
A: Most records will be available to all. Only confidential information or communications will need to be protected in the system.
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=4051186b084f4df2984bd9be467d9b12
28. Q: How many teams will be using the software, please list the team and describe how they will use the CRM database.
A: 4 initial teams: 1) BizCare Business Support Hotline tracking interactions with businesses through hotline, email, and outreach efforts, 2) City Loan Program Team tracking communications and follow up with businesses interested in City loans or recipients of a City loan, 3) Pacific Gateway Business Engagement Team tracking engagement with local businesses for recruitment into and participation in work experience and on the job training programs, 4) Business License Team tracking communications with businesses working towards their business license.
29. Q: Please describe the types of projects that will be created by your teams.
A: Projects will track onboarding of businesses into programs ensuring all steps are completed, including City Loans, Pacific Gateway Work Experience, Green Business Certification, and others.
30. Q: Are you interested in leveraging a searchable knowledge base of articles created by your team that business contacts (and internal staff) can use to find answers and information on their own in a self-serve model?
A: This is not included in the current project scope.
31. Q: Are you interested in using a customer ticket portal to capture ticket requests while allowing the business contact to follow / track their ticket / case?
A: This is not included in the current project scope.
32. Q: Please provide a list of desired reports needed from each team.
A: Please refer to section 2.1 of the RFP.
33. Q: How many people will create and manage programs, program participation?
A: Approximately 20 users are anticipated for initial implementation.
34. Q: Do you hold events and if so, do you use event software?
A: Yes, events are hosted without the use of event software.
35. Q: Can you describe what city resources a company might use? Can you provide a list of resources and what data points might be tracked on a resource (reference page 5 " Create a profile for each business including multiple contacts, custom data fields, and all communications and interactions with City programs and resources"
A: Business support programs include grants, loans, technical assistance through City staff and contracted partners, recognition/certification programs, and staffing support through Pacific Gateway internship and training programs.
36. Q: Can you provide examples of programs offered, along with what you track for different programs?
A: Business support programs include grants, loans, technical assistance through City staff and contracted partners, recognition/certification programs, and staffing support through Pacific Gateway internship and training programs. Metrics vary somewhat by program.
Common data tracked includes location (participants per council district and zip code), demographics, business size (revenue, number of employees), date of interaction, assistance provided, and status/level of completion.
37. Q: Program Management: (reference page 6. "Project management features to facilitate collaboration across City departments and teams" - can you provide an example of a project
- please describe a project that would require collaboration and are the collaborators in city departments and teams users of CRM database or not? Collaborators will either require a license or we will integrate with a project management system that is used across other departments (if the latter - what project management systems do you use today)?
A: Collaboration on projects would be among system users. For example, BizCare may refer a business to Pacific Gateway’s Work Experience Program. The business must then complete forms and provide proof of insurance to be onboarded. BizCare may provide ongoing support to help the business complete onboarding tasks. The CRM system would ensure both teams are aware of tasks remaining and who is providing support to avoid duplication of efforts.
PREPARED BY: Keisha Sanker, Buyer I
ACKNOWLEDGED BY: __________________________________________________
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