Amendment One.pdf

State of South Carolina

Invitation For Bid Amendment One

Solicitation:

Date Issued:

Procurement Officer:

Phone:

E-Mail Address:

Mailing Address:

5400019812 05/19/2020

INDIGO BURROUGHS

(803) 734-2904 iburroughs@ed.sc.gov SC Department of Education Attn: Procurement Office 1429 Senate Street, Suite 200 Columbia SC 29201

DESCRIPTION: Customer Relationship Management Software - GSSM

USING GOVERNMENTAL UNIT: SC Department of Education Admin

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

SUBMIT OFFER BY (Opening Date/Time): 06/02/2020 06/04/2020 11:00am (See "Deadline For Submission Of Offer" provision)

QUESTIONS MUST BE RECEIVED BY: 05/15/2020 11:00am (See "Questions From Offerors" provision)

NUMBER OF COPIES TO BE SUBMITTED: 1

CONFERENCE TYPE: Not Applicable

DATE & TIME:

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

LOCATION: Not Applicable

AWARD &

AMENDMENTS

Award will be posted on 06/03/2020 06/08/2020. The award, this solicitation, any amendments, and any related notices will be posted at the following web address: http://www.procurement.sc.gov

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 thirty (30) 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)

http://www.procurement.sc.gov/ http://www.procurement.sc.gov/ http://www.procurement.sc.gov/

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)

Amendment No. Amendment Issue

Date Amendment No. Amendment Issue

Date Amendment No. Amendment Issue

Date Amendment No. Amendment Issue

Date

DISCOUNT FOR

PROMPT PAYMENT

(See "Discount for Prompt

Payment" clause)

10 Calendar Days (%) 20 Calendar Days (%) 30 Calendar Days (%) _____Calendar Days (%)

PREFERENCES - A NOTICE TO VENDORS (SEP. 2009): On June 16, 2009, the South Carolina General Assembly rewrote the law governing preferences available to in-state vendors, vendors using in-state subcontractors, and vendors selling in-state or US end products. This law appears in Section 11-35-1524 of the South Carolina Code of Laws. A summary of the new preferences is available at www.procurement.sc.gov/preferences . ALL THE PREFERENCES

MUST BE CLAIMED AND ARE APPLIED BY LINE ITEM, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER AWARD IS MADE BY

ITEM OR LOT. VENDORS ARE CAUTIONED TO CAREFULLY REVIEW THE STATUTE BEFORE

CLAIMING ANY PREFERENCES. THE REQUIREMENTS TO QUALIFY HAVE CHANGED. IF YOU

REQUEST A PREFERENCE, YOU ARE CERTIFYING THAT YOUR OFFER QUALIFIES FOR THE

PREFERENCE YOU'VE CLAIMED. IMPROPERLY REQUESTING A PREFERENCE CAN HAVE SERIOUS

CONSEQUENCES. [11-35-1524(E)(4)&(6)]

PREFERENCES - ADDRESS AND PHONE OF IN-STATE OFFICE: Please provide the address and phone number for your in-state office in the space provided below. An in-state office is necessary to claim either the Resident Vendor

Preference (11-35-1524(C)(1)(i)&(ii)) or the Resident Contractor Preference (11-35-1524(C)(1)(iii)). Accordingly, you must provide this information to qualify for the preference. An in-state office is not required, but can be beneficial, if you are claiming the Resident Subcontractor Preference (11-35-1524(D)).

____In-State Office Address same as Home Office Address ____In-State Office Address same as Notice Address (check only one)

PAGE TWO (SEP 2009) End of PAGE TWO

Amendment One Solicitation No. 5400019812 – Customer Relationship Management Software -

GSSM

AMENDMENTS TO SOLICITATION (JAN 2004)

(a) 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]

THE SOLICITATION IS AMENDED AS PROVIDED HEREIN. INFORMATION OR CHANGES

RESULTING FROM QUESTIONS WILL BE SHOWN IN A QUESTION-ANDANSWER 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 CROSSREFERENCE 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 PROVISON. STRICKEN TEXT IS

DELETED.

A. Extend Solicitation End date as noted on Page One.

B. Extend Award Posting Date as note on Page One.

C. Answers to Questions Received Below:

Question 1: What is the total number of employees that would need to have access to the system?

State’s Response: Please see Section III Scope of Work Item 27. We require licensing for 5 admissions staff and 10 users who will access dashboards, reporting interfaces, and back-end databases for integration into other systems.

Question 2: What are the total number of internal employee user types?

State’s Response: 3 user’s types: (5) CRM System Administrators, (6) CRM Managers, & (4)

CRM Users

Question 3: How many total students would need to access the system?

State’s Response: We expect that 500-600 families will submit online applications per year.

There will be approximately 500 enrolled families who will maintain ongoing access to the portal to update demographic information as needed and to receive campus communications.

Question 4: What is the total budget for this project?

http://www.procurement.sc.gov(b)/

State’s Response: The budget will not be provided for this project. Please provide your best price based on criteria outlined in the solicitation and amendment(s).

Question 5: What is the annual recurring software cost for this project?

State’s Response: Please provide your best price based on criteria outlined in the solicitation and amendment(s).

Question 6: For event functionality, is the Department open to replacing QR codes with Bar-

Code Scanning or alternative methods of code check in - if it completes the same desired result?

State’s Response: This is acceptable.

Question 7: How will the decision be made for the CRM? What are the scoring criteria and how is each section weighted?

State’s Response: Please see Section VI of the solicitation. This solicitation is an Invitation for

Bid (IFB). The award will be determined by price from the lowest responsive and responsible bidder.

Question 8: Will the Department complete scoring on June 2nd?

State’s Response: This solicitation is an IFB and awarded to the lowest bidder who meets all of the requirements of the solicitation, as stated in the solicitation. The solicitation will be awarded on the date indicated on Page One of Amendment One.

Question 9: Is there an incumbent solution that is already being used by the Department?

State’s Response: School Admin is the incumbent solution being utilized by the department.

Question 10: Item 12: Can you explain functionality expectation of tracking student participation in the admission activity record please?

State’s Response: We expect the solution to provide event details, registration, and attendance of event to display on the student record. This will be used for reporting and for targeting individuals to register for specific events that best fit the student’s profile.

Question 11: Item 17: Can you explain what your functionality expectations of application review are?

State’s Response: We need the solution to support multiple applications and application types.

The solution needs to allow for a single record to have multiple applications under one email address providing the applicant to the ability submit multiple applications. The application review needs to enable the ability for multiple admission committee members to view the applications and supporting documents electronically. The application review tool needs to allow for rubric scoring of the application components and to be able to provide detailed feedback/comments to assist with the holistic application review. The application review tool needs to be customizable to the admissions criteria and rubric parameters for quality application review. The ability to pull and report on the completed reviews for total applicant scores, decision recommendations, and comments. The ability to allow limited users to be added to have only application review level access. Additionally, the same application review needs to be able to be used for reviewing applicants with rubrics during the review & rating and interview stages of the application review. See Item 18 for details of the application review process in place.

Question 12: Item 18: Can you explain existing application review process in detail?

State’s Response:

The Residential admissions process uses various committees to provide a holistic review of the applications. Applications are vetted to meet academic/curriculum pre-requisite requirements to finalize invitations to attend Semi-Finalist Day (interview day). Semi-Finalist Day is a day of interviewing students with faculty/staff to gain more information of student fit and interest in

GSSM. Semi-Finalist day consisted of nine teams of two (staff/faculty) members interviewing

28 students in sessions of 6 applicants per session. Interviewers used a rubric to score the applicants and provide feedback for using in the holistic application review. Following Semi-

Finalist day, the applicants were then reviewed by the Review & Ratings Committees (R&R).

The R&R committees consisted of seven teams of two staff/faculty members reviewing applications. The applications were assigned by regions of South Carolina among the teams. The

R&R committees used a rubric to score the applicants applications and supporting documents

(transcripts, standardized test scores, teacher & counselor evaluations, and essay). After the

R&R committee review was completed, a spreadsheet was created to compile all the scores from the rubrics used for Semi-Finalist Day and R&R to create a holistic capture of the applicants to be reviewed by the Admissions Review Committee (ARC). The ARC committee consisted of three members, two from Leadership and one academic/faculty representative, that were provided with a spreadsheet containing all review scores and given access to electronic viewing of the application. The ARC committee had one week to review the assigned applications and applicant data spreadsheet to consult to a final decision recommendation that was in consensus of all three members. After review by the ARC, the recommendations along with all electronic access to applications and applicant data underwent a final review by the Final Admissions

Recommendation Committee (FARC). FARC consisted of the Senior Vice President for

Residential Programs and the Vice President for Enrollment Management who were given one week to conduct their review. As with the ARC committee, the FARC had to consult to recommend a final decision in consensus of the two members to set the class. The same process was utilized by Virtual Admissions without having interviews for the applicants but instead the applicants had to take a math assessment to gage their mathematic abilities and the score from the assessment was utilized in the decision recommendation process. The ARC committee for the

Virtual review was made of two Directors for Virtual programs and a Director of Academic

Programs. The FARC committee consisted of the Interim President /Senior Vice President for

Virtual and Outreach Programs and the Vice President for Enrollment Management. Residential and Virtual admission decisions were sent out to students via email and students were given a deadline to accept the offer of admissions.

Question 13: Do you have any softphone in place, if yes, can you name the vendor? And would you provide APIs for us to integrate the softphone with the proposed system if selected?

State’s Response: There is no softphone capacity in place now. If it is advantageous to the school’s recruiting and admissions effort, the capacity can be added.

Question 14: Item 20: Please provide functional expectations or examples for student community tool?

State’s Response: Reporting and data analytics on student log in (access) and time spent in the application and student portal, when and how often documents and tasks were viewed and completed relating to the check list.

Question 15: Do you have document management system? If yes, what is the roadmap for your current document management system?

State’s Response: The school does not have a document management system.

Question 16: Can you provide any volume data (call/online/in person)?

State’s Response: On campus events:

Preview Days (200 families), Shadow Days (60 students).

Question 17: What is the current list of your CRM specific processes?

State’s Response: Inquiry and applicant record management, online application management, dash boards and reporting.

Question 18: How many departments or business units would be using the CRM platform?

State’s Response: The following departments will use the CRM platform: Office of Enrollment

Management, Office of Virtual Programs, and Office of Outreach Programs.

Question 19: What would be the level of reporting customization required for the implementation?

State’s Response: Provide pre-developed analytic reports with the ability to easily create customized reports. Easily select and manipulate data (select, sort, filter) based on individual data elements, categories, statuses, workflow. Reports can be run real time with the most current data available. Final report product should allow for logos to be imported for final product and may be exported into a variety of standard formats. Provide mechanism to create and configure dashboard reports

Question 20: What is the amount of marketing mailers that would be triggered as a part of marketing campaign?

State’s Response: On average, we expect 2-3 mailings to groups per week. Automated mailings that confirm, or are triggered by, prospect or enrollee actions would be sent to individuals immediately as needed.

Question 21: Item 9: Is there already testing score and GPA integration in place with existing software inside SG campus? If not, we must integrate?

State’s Response: No, integration would be needed.

Question 22: Item 25: Can you provide names of software used by GSSM which are required for integration?

State’s Response: School Admin (Admissions: Residential and Virtual (Accelerate and Team

Up online programs), Power School, and Camp Minder (Outreach-campus programs).

Question 23: Could you please help us in understanding the integration touchpoints i.e., existing solutions to proposed solution & existing Financials system to proposed financials solution, & existing Campus solutions to customer engagements business objects?

State’s Response: See the answer provided to question 22.

Question 24: Would you provide API and Webservices for those systems which require integration?

State’s Response: Yes, if necessary.

Question 25: Does the existing system integrations support REST API and WSDL?

State’s Response: Unknown.

Question 26: Do you have any middleware in place towards integrating multiple applications, if it is so what is the middleware currently in place?

State’s Response: The school currently uses in-house developed middleware to provide integrations between systems.

Question 27: Are you willing to change your customer facing portal which is currently in place?

State’s Response: Yes, if necessary.

Question 28: Would you like to have the payment gateway link in the landing page of the event management mails / forms / communications?

State’s Response: The school uses a credit card verification and payment site provided by the

State Office of Administration. This will need to be integrated into any payment workflows.

Question 29: Item 9: Is there any event management system in place? If yes, please provide name and would you be interested to replace it?

State’s Response: No, we do not have an event management system. All events are managed using excel spreadsheets and external resources for registration like evite brite or google docs.

Question 30: Item 9: Can you please explain the process of capturing event attendance in your current workflow?

State’s Response: We do not have a current workflow in our CRM. Event data is captured using Excel spreadsheets.

Question 31: Can you tell us average number attendees for your typical event?

State’s Response: Preview Days (200 families), Shadow Days (60 students), and Semi Finalist

Day (400-500 student and families).

Question 32: Item 14: How many e-mails being triggered currently on yearly basis as part of marketing activity?

State’s Response: Based on previous workflows, we estimate between 30-50 email interactions for each applicant who completes the application process.

Question 33: Do you have revised roadmap for marketing automation considering COVID-19?

State’s Response: Plans for this are in the discussion phase and are not available for release at the time of this amendment.

Question 34: What is your roadmap for gift management solution?

State’s Response: Gift management is out of scope for this project.

Question 35: Would you provide technical resources for your existing stack of apps and products?

State’s Response: We will provide assistance necessary to integrate the selected solution with other systems in use.

Question 36: Apart from the pain points mentioned in the RFP, do you have any other business gaps which you would like to map with the proposed solution?

State’s Response: The solicitation is not a Request for Proposal (RFP). It is an IFB awarded by low bid to a responsive and responsible offeror, as stated in Section VI.

Question 37: Can you provide us with the user split for each module which are currently in place?

State’s Response: Please refer back to the answer in Question 2.

Question 38: Can you provide list of applications currently being used as part of single sign-on?

State’s Response: Active Directory, PowerSchool, Canvas, Naviance, in-house applications, Microsoft 365 products and Omnilert.

Question 39: Do you have any SMS solution towards marketing automation/ engaging with your customers? If yes, so who is the vendor? If not, are you looking for SMS solution?

State’s Response: We do not currently have an SMS solution.

Question 40: Are you using any cloud-based tools and services?

State’s Response: Yes. As mentioned in the solicitation, the school uses, and seeks cloud-based solutions.

Question 41: What is the implementation timeline you are looking at?

State’s Response: (CRM and online application for application cycle 2020-2021) Begin with implementation of the online application starting mid-June/early July 2020 and have the foundations of the CRM functionally usable to support the new online application for going live

October 2020 when our application opens. Following going live with online application in

October 2020, the full integration/build of the CRM (marketing, data management (reporting), and communications) and expansion of the online application (full integration of all capabilities/functions).

Question 42: Do you like to consider special user access / workflow customization due to

COVID-19?

State’s Response: Plans for COVID-19 accommodations are in the discussion phase.

Question 43: Reference: III Scope of Work/Specification Number 4. The system will provide unlimited messaging to recruiting/admissions contacts via text messaging and email.

Would the government evaluate solutions that provide the capability to send a large volume of text messages and emails to recruiting/admissions contacts? As you may know, SMS and email messages have a hard cost associated with the number sent and an "Unlimited" number of messages would not likely be a cost effective solution for the government. Please consider solutions that provide a tailored amount of messages to allow for competitive pricing.

Does the government have estimates for the amount of contacts and the number of messages that would be sent in a year?

State’s Response: Yes. There will be roughly 30 contacts per applicant and 500-600 applicants, 20-25% of those contacts would be via SMS, so 3,600-4,500 messages.

End of Amendment