Amendment 001.docx

SAP

State of South Carolina

Request for Proposal

AMENDMENT 001

Solicitation:

Date Issued:

Procurement Officer:

Phone:

E-Mail Address:

Mailing Address:

5400021420 8/26/2021

BRITTANY SLOAN

803-737-3410 bsloan@mmo.sc.gov SFAA, Div. of Procurement Services, MMO PO Box 101103 Columbia SC 29211

DESCRIPTION: Predictive Analytic Solution

USING GOVERNMENTAL UNIT: Orangeburg Calhoun Technical College

SUBMIT YOUR OFFER ON-LINE AT THE FOLLOWING URL: http://www.procurement.sc.gov

SUBMIT OFFER BY (Opening Date/Time): 09/13/2021 11:00 am (See "Deadline For Submission Of Offer" provision)

QUESTIONS MUST BE RECEIVED BY: 08/12/2021 4:00 pm (See "Questions From Offerors" provision)

NUMBER OF COPIES TO BE SUBMITTED: ONLINE BIDDING PREFERRED; If submitting Online in SCEIS please See Online Bidding Instructions in Section II.B. If submitting Hardcopy, submit One (1) Original Hardcopy marked “Original”, and One (1) Electronic (digital) Media Copy marked “Copy” (See “Electronic Copies-Required Media & Format” provision Section II.B.) Initial here if NO redacted copy is necessary___________

CONFERENCE TYPE: Pre-Proposal DATE & TIME:08/12/2021 10:00 am

(As appropriate, see "Conferences - Pre-Bid/Proposal" & "Site Visit" provisions) LOCATION: virtual

You must submit a signed copy of this form with Your Offer. By signing, you agree to be bound by the terms of the Solicitation. You agree to hold Your Offer open for a minimum of ninety (90) calendar days after the Opening Date. (See "Signing Your Offer" provision.)

NAME OF OFFEROR

(full legal name of business submitting the offer) Any award issued will be issued to, and the contract will be formed with, the entity identified as the Offeror. The entity named as the offeror must be a single and distinct legal entity. Do not use the name of a branch office or a division of a larger entity if the branch or division is not a separate legal entity, i.e., a separate corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, etc.

AUTHORIZED SIGNATURE

(Person must be authorized to submit binding offer to contract on behalf of Offeror.)

DATE SIGNED

TITLE

(business title of person signing above)

STATE VENDOR NO.

(Register to Obtain S.C. Vendor No. at www.procurement.sc.gov)

PRINTED NAME

(printed name of person signing above)

STATE OF INCORPORATION

(If you are a corporation, identify the state of incorporation.)

OFFEROR'S TYPE OF ENTITY: (Check one) (See "Signing Your Offer" provision.)

___ Sole Proprietorship ___ Partnership ___ Other_____________________________

___ Corporate entity (not tax-exempt) ___ Corporation (tax-exempt) ___ Government entity (federal, state, or local)

COVER PAGE - ON-LINE ONLY (MAR. 2015)

SAP

SAP

PAGE TWO

(Return Page Two with Your Offer) HOME OFFICE ADDRESS (Address for offeror's home office / principal place of business)

NOTICE ADDRESS (Address to which all procurement and contract related notices should be sent.) (See "Notice" clause)

_________________________________________________ Area Code - Number - Extension Facsimile

_________________________________________________ E-mail Address

PAYMENT ADDRESS (Address to which payments will be sent.) (See "Payment" clause)

____Payment Address same as Home Office Address ____Payment Address same as Notice Address (check only one) ORDER ADDRESS (Address to which purchase orders will be sent) (See "Purchase Orders and "Contract Documents" clauses)

____Order Address same as Home Office Address ____Order Address same as Notice Address (check only one)

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF AMENDMENTS

Offerors acknowledges receipt of amendments by indicating amendment number and its date of issue. (See "Amendments to Solicitation" Provision)

DISCOUNT FOR PROMPT PAYMENT

(See "Discount for Prompt Payment" clause)

PREFERENCES - A NOTICE TO VENDORS (SEP. 2009) Preferences do not apply. See SC Consolidated Procurement Code Reference 11-35-1524 (E) (2)

PREFERENCES - ADDRESS AND PHONE OF IN-STATE OFFICE: Preferences do not apply. See SC Consolidated Procurement Code Reference 11-35-1524 (E) (2)

PAGE TWO (SEP 2009)

End of PAGE TWO

AMENDMENT # 001

Solicitation #5400021420

AMENDMENTS TO SOLICITATION (JAN 2004)

The Solicitation may be amended at any time prior to opening. All actual and prospective Offerors should monitor the following web site for the issuance of Amendments: www.procurement.sc.gov (b) Offerors shall acknowledge receipt of any amendment to this solicitation (1) by signing and returning the amendment, (2) by identifying the amendment number and date in the space provided for this purpose on Page Two, (3) by letter, or (4) by submitting a bid that indicates in some way that the bidder received the amendment. (c) If this solicitation is amended, then all terms and conditions which are not modified remain unchanged. [02-2A005-1]

Questions from Offerors - amendment (Jun 2017) The solicitation is amended as provided herein. Information or changes resulting from questions will be shown in a question-and-answer format. All questions received have been reprinted below. The “state’s response” should be read without reference to the questions. The questions are included solely to provide a cross-reference to the potential Offeror that submitted the question. Questions do not form a part of the contract; the “state’s response” does. Any restatement of part or all of an existing provision of the solicitation in an answer does not modify the original provision except as follows: underlined text is added to the original provision. Stricken text is deleted. [02-2a097-1]

ALL OTHER TERMS, CONDITIONS, BIDDING INSTRUCTIONS, AND SPECIFICATIONS REMAIN UNCHANGED. IF THERE ARE ANY QUESTIONS OR IF ANY CONFUSION OR UNCERTAINTY ARISES AS A RESULT OF THIS AMENDMENT, IT IS THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE OFFEROR TO CONTACT THE PROCUREMENT OFFICER FOR CLARIFICATION. CONTACT INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND IN THE TOP RIGHT HAND CORNER OF THE COVER PAGE OF THIS AMENDMENT. REFERENCE THE “DUTY TO INQUIRE” CLAUSE IN THE ORIGINAL INVITATION FOR BID.

MAXIMUM CONTRACT PERIOD - ESTIMATED (Modified)

Start date: 11/02/2021 End date: 11/01/2026. Dates provided are estimates only. Any resulting contract will begin on the date specified in the notice of award. See clause entitled "Term of Contract - Effective Date/Initial Contract Period".

This is a three (3) year contract with two (2) one-year renewal options. The maximum contract life is five (5) years.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

SOLICITATION 5400021420

OCTC-Predictive Analytic Solution

1. Are you building predictive models on each course or a specific set of courses?

State’s Response: This is for each course. The solution will not just be a predictive model, but also an alert model for advisors.

2. The identified scope of work detailed in the Solicitation does not speak to the recruitment capabilities highlighted multiple times in the pre-bid conference. Can you please provide a clarification of this verbalized request in connection to the requested response?

State’s Response: OCtech is not expecting a system to help the college recruit. We are requesting analytical analysis on students already in the Ellucian system.

3. Do you expect this to be a product offering (Annual licensing model), or can it be a custom solution that we build specifically for your requirements?

State’s Response: The College is looking for a product offering that will be smoothly implemented.

4. What is the database system used in Case management and other homegrown applications? Do you expect the vendor to develop an API to integrate these systems with the proposed solution?

State’s Response: The homegrown systems are Flat SQL databases. No, OCtech does not expect integration with the homegrown systems. The goal is to replace these systems.

5. How frequently the data should be updated from the source systems to centralized repository?

State’s Response: Daily

6. Do you expect the system to have predefined (Out-of-the-box) predictive models or solution with the simple customization (models) to meet the college’s specific requirement considerable?

State’s Response: The College expect an out of the box solutions. The solution may need simple customization to meet the needs.

7. Can you please provide the number of the users and their roles that will be interacting with the system?

State’s Response: 125 – 150 faculty and staff – This includes around 73 faculty members, in addition to admissions, advising, financial aid, and student services staff, as well as support staff.

8. Do you expect any other third-party tools that need to be integrated with the system?

State’s Response: Only Ellucian and D2L currently in use.

9. Do you want to implement role-based access control for Student, Staff, and Faculty?

State’s Response: Yes

10. What is the preferred method of alert capability (Email or push notification)?

State’s Response: Both email and push notifications.

11. Can you please provide any sample reporting format? Do you have any preference in terms of reporting tool?

State’s Response: OCtech expects vendors to provide an agreed upon reporting format.

12. Do you expect to integrate any business intelligence tools like Power BI or Tableau?

State’s Response: Information not available at this time.

13. “Demonstrated experience with institutions of higher education, preferably with two-year colleges of similar size is required” Is it mandatory that the vendor should provide the Higher Education references?

State’s Response: Yes, higher education references are required.

14. What is the anticipated go-live date?

State’s Response: Summer 2022

15. Is it mandatory that the vendor should be a Minority Business Enterprise?

State’s Response: No

16. Is the project funded? Can you please specify the budget cap that we need to consider?

State’s Response: Budgetary information will not be disclosed at this time. However, OCtech believes the Scope of Work is in proportion to the funds we anticipate spending for this project.

17. Are vendors required to submit Attachment B, given the questionnaire deals specifically with government information rather than education/institution data/FERPA data? State’s Response: All attachments to this solicitation are required for submission.

Or, per the definition of Government Information in the RFP, should vendors interpret Government Information as student data/university data? State’s Response: Yes, “Government Data” is ALL data that will be accessible to the awarded contractor. That data would include college data, student data and FERPA data.

18. Has OCTC identified a budget for this initiative, and if so, is it possible to share? Is there a price above which proposals would not be accepted?

State’s Response: Please see response to question # 16

19. Can OCTC please provide the decision timeline for this RFP (when well vendors be notified of the recommendation for award made by OCTC)?

State’s Response: Please see the Amended Cover pages attached herein for tentative award date.

20. Did OCTC evaluate solutions that could meet its requirements through vendor presentations leading up to the RFP release? If so, what types and names of solutions and vendors were evaluated.

State’s Response: No

21. Can OCTC share who will be on the evaluation committee for this RFP? Who has the authority to sign the proposal and how do they make decisions?

State’s Response: Evaluation Committee information is confidential.

22. Can OCTC provide additional details on the three current homegrown systems installed at the institution for student support and intervention? Does OCTC imagine the new solution will integrate with these tools or will the new solution be replacing these systems?

State’s Response: The College has a system of several applications using SQL that includes advisor tools, case management tools, and student success alerts that are sent to the Student Success Center. The goal is to replace these 3 systems; therefore, they will have no impact on the procured product.

23. What Degree Audit system is installed at OCTC?

State’s Response: Colleague

24. What is the level of support – in implementation, launch, and ongoing support – do you require and want out of a partner vendor?

State’s Response: OCtech expects to see that as part of the vendors proposal.

25. Does OCTC have an implementation team or group in mind that will support from OCTC. If so, what roles are included in that group?

State’s Response: Yes, a team will consist of representatives from Student Services, Academic Affairs and Information Technology.

26. What strategic challenges is OCTC looking to address through this RFP? Are there specific goals OCTC is looking to achieve? And in what time period?

State’s Response: A main goal of the College is that by utilizing the 2019-2020 academic year as the baseline, the college will increase the number of graduates and industry-based credentials by 20% each year over the next 2 years. This will be an ongoing goal for the next few years. Success is monitored by each term.

27. What are some challenges unique to OCTC that you think proposing vendors should be aware of as they compose their responses?

State’s Response: No unique challenges are noted.

28. Does OCTC have a preferred “go live” date? When would OCTC expect to begin realizing the benefits from the selected solution?

State’s Response: OCtech expects to be live by Summer 2022. The College expects to see benefits within the first term.

29. Has funding been identified? If so, what is the budget for this project? What is the budget for implementation?

State’s Response: Please see response to question # 16

30. Describe how OCTC measures success. What metrics is OCTC looking to impact with this partnership?

State’s Response: OCtech measurers success by Completion, Core Success Rates and Enrollment, Persistence, and Retention.

31. The RFP response structure requested is unclear in the document. Can OCTC confirm whether the following response order and structure is acceptable? Or suggest an alternate response structure if the below is unacceptable?

· A. Technical Proposal

· Signed Cover Page and Page Two

· Cover Letter

· Executive Summary

· Response to I. Scope of Services

· Section III Scope of Work Specifications

· c. Proposed Approach and Methodology (c1 through c8)

· d. Project Requirements (d1 – d5)

· E. Additional Information

· Response to II. Project Approach and Methodology

· Attachment A: OCTC Software or Cloud Services Questionnaire

· B. Provide Deliverables, Implementation, and training requirements

· C. Project Completion Schedule

· D. Implementation, Transition Plan & Training Plan

· Response to III. Past Performance and References

· Response to IV. Offerors Profile

· Response to V. Qualifications of Personnel and Team

· Minority Participation

· Attachment B: Service Provider Security Assessment Questionnaire

· Appendices

· Submitted Separately: Business Proposal (Attachment C and other pricing information)

· Submitted Separately: Redacted Proposal State’s Response: Please refer to page 22 of the solicitation, Section IV. Information for Offeror to Submit, subsection Information for Offerors to Submit- Evaluations (Jan 2006), third point from the top.

Offerors will need to reinstate items from this subsection as well as Section III with a response immediately following.

32. D. PROJECT REQUIREMENTS

(See Attachment B) D.1. Offeror must provide application functionalities that:

D.1.a. Are both an intuitive and user-friendly tool that will increase and enhance the efficiencies, productivity, and capabilities of OCTC’s functional users.

D.1.b. Will facilitate collaboration across campus units/departments/offices to ensure students receive support by all necessary means in a timely manner. Offeror should detail support services with tiered options. What does tiered option means: access controls? functions?

i. user based: teachers, students, ...

State’s Response: From OCtech’s perspective, the vendor should have product offerings that will give flexibility to the College for the services selected.

33. D.1.c. Have a robust communication tool that allows for timely, modern, and convenient interaction and reports, dashboards, and analytics to support the needs of various stakeholders, which may include but not limited to faculty, staff, and students. What kind of report? Graphs? How many dashboards on an average?

State’s Response: Octech expect the vendor to have this information included in the proposal.

34. D.1.d. Is capable of interfacing with other critical systems and applications to maximize use of available student information, and minimize the number of systems our students, staff, and faculty must engage. How does integration happen? Do we have support docs or support? State’s Response: OCtech expects to see this information in the proposal from the vendor, as well as how they plan to fulfill the contract. push or pull model or both? State’s Response: See response to question #10 Will we get support member from Universities critical systems we are talking about what other systems do they already have identified? See question 25 Could they list some of them?

State’s Response: See response to question #25.

35. D.1.e. Must be designed to complement OCTC’s semester and session structures. How are semester and session structures represented in data? State’s Response: Fall, Spring, and Summer Semesters as well as Mini Term Semesters.

Structured or unstructured? State’s Response: Structured

36. D.1.f. Provides model transparency and high accuracy with robustness in an automated framework. What defines accuracy for this use case? Is there a baseline?

Volume of historical data?

State’s Response: Data is expected to be 100% accurate. The solution will deal with real time data from current Colleague and D2L systems.

37. D.1.g. Have both standardized and customized reporting capabilities that combines predictive models and propensity score models for outcomes analysis.In what sense are the models being combined? Are the results for both just being displayed on the same dashboard?

State’s Response: OCtech expects the Vendor to include this information in the proposal.

38. What are the expected reporting capabilities? Should users have the option to download reports? Share through the system? Save? Integrate with other systems? etc.

OCtech expects the Vendor to provide and define their capabilities in the proposal. The College would expect any vendor to be able to offer standardized reporting capabilities, but with flexibility to develop customized reports. The College does not anticipate or desire proprietary data that cannot be extracted for other reporting uses.

39. D.1.h. Analyzes and compares courses in aggregate gathering data from OCTC’s sources. What does analyze means? Group and collect metric?

What are the different type of systems we will be looking into?

State’s Response: OCtech expects the Vendor to indicate how they analyze data in the proposal.

40. D.1.i. Reports faculty engagement and influence scores and provides an infrastructure for measuring intervention efficacy, in specific interventions such as but not limited to tutoring, intrusive advising, mentoring and student organizations. Tracks, documents, and evaluates the effectiveness of faculty and staff usage and interventions. How is data being captured for specific interventions? Is there a database that logs each specific intervention for students? In the future are we creating an implementation on this system to track interventions?

State’s Response: OCtech expects the vendor to provide in the proposal.

41. D.1.j. Implements LDAP/single sign-on integration. What is the existing sign-on system? Are there multiple LDAPs to connect to?

State’s Response: The existing single sign-on is with Azure. There may be an internal LDAP.

42. D.1.k. Provides a positive student experience. What are the KPIs to measure positive student experience?

State’s Response: OCtech expects the Vendor to provide this information in the proposal. OCtech would like to see how the vendor proposes to provide a positive experience to students and faculty.

43. D.1.l. Offers a feature to evaluate student interventions so that OCTC can determine which interventions are either most or least successful for which groups of students.

D.1.m. Aggregates student behavioral, demographic, academic progression, and other data to create, progressively build, and report on an institutional dataset that can provide benchmark metrics. Does the institutional dataset currently exist? Or are we building it?

How is this information being stored currently?

State’s Response: Data is currently found In D2L and Colleague. The data is currently manipulated in the three homegrown systems that the College plans to replace.

44. D.1.n. Provides a tool for program, degree, and career auditing and planning that progressively includes student progress and achievement.

D.1.o. Provides a comprehensive system of alerting faculty regarding student progress in their classes and which ones are doing well, are borderline, or which require early alerts or interventions. Data for these alerts should be accessed from Colleague, OCTC’s LMS, and other sources. Student services and administrative staff should also have access to these alerts. That alert should be “pushed” to faculty on a periodic basis and not be accessed by faculty on a voluntary basis. Further, that alert should include data as to why each student in their class is performing as indicated. The application should also include a means of tracking faculty intervention and other follow up. How should faculty be alerted? Email?

State’s Response: OCtech expects the Vendor to provide this information in the proposal.

45. D.1.p. Identifies student stop-out, dropout, or fail-out points with alerts. How is this being reported currently?

State’s Response: The current systems, D2L and Colleague do not provide this information. The information is currently reported through the homegrown systems that we wish to replace.

46. D.2.a. Offeror must provide a core data science application designed to support the efforts of institutional research and policy administrators which allows on-demand exploration and complex query of the data uploaded and utilized from the various systems of record. The core application must:

D.2.a.i. Show historical trends for various measures of student performance as well as provide a persistence prediction for all active students at OCTC. Do we have the measures defined or are we required to explore measures for the analysis?

State’s Response: OCtech expects the vendor to provide this information in the proposal.

47. D.2.a. ii. Allow for data isolation and analysis of specific types/cohorts of students across common factors such as ethnicity, gender, age, GPA, online/offline, financial aid, full-time /part-time, program type, etc.; and adjust the prediction, according to the data filters selected, in real time.

D.2.a.iii. Provide institution-specific, directional insight into the causes of increased student risk ranked according to predictive power.

D.2.a.iiv. Allow for data exploration across the entire data set and student population from all OCTC campuses/locations as well as the ability to filter such queries to a specific campus/location data set.

D.2.a.v. Allow for benchmarking of inquiry results from institutions using the vendor’s software platform and their anonymized results. Who is the vendor?

State’s Response: The Vendor will be the award contractor for this RFP.

48. D.2.b. Offeror must provide additional applications which are powered the data set, predictive models, and testing layer uploaded and utilized from the institution systems of record. Such application must include:

D.2.b.i. Provide an application designed to support the efforts of retention advising which provides a daily risk score for non-persistence to the individual student level and delivers those scores in an advising application dashboard. In addition, the advising application should provide individualized student risk analysis, include a student outreach/communication tool, and the ability to log and analyze the intervention record for each student.

D.2.b. ii. Provide an application designed to support the efforts of faculty members teaching online and blended courses which use the institution’s LMS to deliver course content.

The faculty application should provide a daily class engagement score to the individual student level and deliver those scores in a faculty application dashboard. In addition, the faculty application should provide individualized student class engagement analysis, include a student outreach/communication tool. Daily reports of the above should be “pushed” to the faculty of record. How is class engagement currently being measured? Attendance? Participation? Comments? Do we require a feature to collect the metric variables?

State’s Response: The College does not have a formal way to measure Engagement. It is up to faculty members to record this information if it pertains to their class.

Attendance and participation are measured daily by the instructor. This includes discussion boards and group work.

OCtech expects the vendor to describe how they can integrate this in a daily alert system.

49. D.2.b.iii. Provide an application designed to audit student data and assist students with degree planning, degree progress, course planning/selection, and job placement. The student application should be accessible to students by logging into the OCTC student portal using their OCTC secure log-in credentials. The application should map data for degrees, certificate programs, and courses from the institution’s systems of record for course planning and audit. This information must also be readily available to student services, faculty, and administrative personnel.

Does the OCTC student portal currently audit student data and assist students with degree planning, degree progress, course planning/selection, and job placement? Or will we have to create a system from scratch that does this?

State’s Response: OCtech is currently using Student Planning within Self Service. The College is interested to see what capability vendors can provide.

50. D.3. Offeror must provide data mapping and system integration that:

D.3.a. Has predictive (data mining) algorithm functionality. Same predictions as mentioned above? Anything new?

State’s Response: OCtech expects the vendor to provide their capability in the proposal.

51. D.3.b. Offers proactive initiatives, with seamless interactions for students, faculty, and staff that enable OCTC to achieve successful student outcomes. These interactions should be customizable. OCTC should have the ability to customize what students, faculty, and other users require for display and reporting.

D.3.c. Has a demonstrated ability to upload data from various institution systems of record where student or other critical, decision-making data may reside. Such data sources may include data warehouses, ERP, SIS, LMS, CRM, assessments, tutoring, etc.

D.3.d. Has a demonstrated ability to upload and utilize student data from standard and commercially available software and database systems (i.e.: Colleague, D2L, Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL, etc.) as well as systems which have been custom developed by the institution. The application must have the ability to gather user data from any system in use at OCTC; must not be associated with any individual application or solution. Application must integrate various systems across OCTC, creating unified insight and action applications for the use of OCTC faculty, students, student services personnel, and administrators.

D.3.e. Uploads and utilizes data from the various OCTC systems. Further explain how data is “normalized” and combined into a single student record and hosted in a FERPA compliant, private instance in a cloud-based, or Contractor hosted data repository.

D.3.f. Establishes and maintains a persistent, secure connection to OCTC applications, databases, and systems from which student data will be extracted.

D.3.g. Will automatically “pull” data from those systems on a predetermined, frequent basis to ensure the student data stored in the vendor’s cloud instance is reflective of the most recent data available for each student.

D.3.h. Must have the ability to easily handle volume of data that an institution the size of OCTC will present. Any size estimates?

State’s Response: No

55. D.4. The Offeror must:

D.4.a. Provide a high degree of services from data uploading and utilization (mapping normalization, operational integration), data science modeling using available data (for predictions for enrollment, retention, course completion, graduation), to application deployment, training and ongoing support.

D.4.b. Provide multiple, education-specific models used to score and predict student success and risk to the individual student level for courses enrollment, completion, persistence, and graduation.

D.4.c. Have the capability to provide institution-specific predictive models for OCTC as opposed to deploying the same set of common models at each institution they service.

D.4.d. Have the capability to reexamine the model set being used for predictions on an established schedule to ensure the models being used are those that provide the most updated predictive accuracy and insight. Are they looking for active learning systems? State’s Response: Yes Or periodic manual re-training? State’s Response: No

56. D.4.e. Provide student success forecasts for a variety of stages of student interaction with OCTC including, but not limited to, application, registration, progress toward an award, completion, using a flexible predictive engine and interface. How are these student actions currently being stored in data?

State’s Response: Data is stored in D2l and Colleague, but the College does not currently have a predictive engine or interface.

57. D.5. The Offeror must provide testing prior to going live to demonstrate abilities of solution during implementation phase:

D.5.a. Gather data from all of the available systems that students, faculty and advisors use for academics, including testing systems. This also includes CRMs, LMSs, ERPs, tutoring systems, social networks, orientation systems, etc. Are they looking for an initial stage of data collection and integration? Do they want a new “data lake” which will integrate the required data in one place?

State’s Response: Yes, the College is requesting a data lake that integrates the required data in one place.

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