ATTACHMENT 1: SCOPE OF PROJECT

1.0 GENERAL OVERVIEW

Montana State University (MSU) is a four-campus university system consisting of the main campus in Bozeman and three affiliate campuses located in Billings, Great Falls, and Havre, as well as three agencies serving across the state of Montana. The units vary in size, organizational structure, student and employee populations, and the complexity of their budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and financial management needs.

The purpose of this procurement is to acquire and implement a comprehensive, turnkey, web-based budgeting, forecasting, reporting, analytics, and dashboard solution that supports the University's financial planning and management needs across all four campuses. The solution must address the unique needs of higher education, including complex funding sources, fund accounting, multi-campus budgeting, enrollment-driven planning, strategic resource allocation, and regulatory reporting requirements.

1.1 SCOPE OF PROJECT

MSU uses Ellucian’s Banner ERP software. The Budget and Forecasting software system must be able to interface with the Banner software via batch imports and support Banner upgrades in an ongoing, timely manner.

MSU currently utilizes a budgeting and forecasting software system that imports daily bath data from an ARGOS data extract of Banner data. This data includes dimension tables that provide hierarchical information related to org, fund, accounts and other financial structures. These dimensions can also be customized and categorized as needed to support reporting requirements. Additional data elements include Finance, Student, and HR data, separated by fiscal year.

The mission of the project is to address the budgeting, forecasting, dash boarding, and reporting needs of the University in these areas:

1) The software will offer a unified platform that will support long-range planning and forecasting as well as short-term analytics and reporting.

2) The software will provide a user-friendly interface for building budgets each year with interactive updating, commenting, and collaborative sharing.

3) The software will offer multiple ways of projecting individual position budgets based upon legislative pay plan information either through a flat dollar amount, a percentage, or a combination of both determine by the classification of the position and incumbent eligibility.

4) The software will provide the ability to report and dashboard multiple trends from Banner HR, Finance, and Student data

When implemented, the system shall be an integrated web-based budgeting and forecasting system to assist MSU to: automate and streamline the budgeting process; improve ongoing and relevant constituent communication via dash boarding and reporting; efficiently manage position budgets and actuals as well as vacancy savings; assist with the tracking on long-term commitments; support efficient data gathering by the budget office to allow for more time spent on data analysis. This system would be available for the tracking, budgeting, reporting, and analysis on all fund types across the institution.

Although it is MSU’s desire to have the implementation complete within 90 days after contract execution, the timeline will be at the discretion of the MSU’s designated contract liaison. Vendor must include in their proposal a timeline for the implementation. This RFP will be used to acquire and implement services, customer support, and any required software and/or hardware devices.

The specific requirements for service are stated below.

1.2 CONTRACTOR REQUIREMENTS

1.2.1 Mandatory Requirements

1) Be able to create multiple budgets for a large number of cost centers within the same budget time period. Must be able to update templates to reflect upcoming fiscal year requirements by MSU system administrators (4 needed).

2) Allow the budget office to configure each data element for a different data type (i.e. percentage, integer, lookup value, calculated value, etc.).

3) Allow for various budget building techniques including but not limited to formulae, reference tables, existing budgets, prior year actuals, fixed entry, and percentage growth variables.

4) Provide revenue and expenditure forecasting to more accurately reflect available resources specific to a higher education environment.

5) Support flexible budget periods.

6) Be able to apply changes both to selected budgets and broadly to all existing budgets.

7) Have the ability to incorporate single frequency events into existing budget models (i.e. One-time-only adjustments) and track them in a way that is easily reportable and identifiable.

8) Be able to budget and forecast labor under defined labor classifications: hourly, union classified, non-union classified, professional, tenure-track faculty, non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty, and so on.

9) Support budget splits for individual employees assigned to multiple units as well as the ability to calculate benefits on employees whose benefits may fluctuate depending upon appointments (i.e. NTT working across units).

10) Be able to budget and forecast unique benefits loads determined by employee type.

11) Track individual position budgets vs actual expenditures and FTE in each unit and by different fund types to understand where resource savings and constraints lie.

12) System must be capable of expanding for use across all 4 MSU campuses.

13) System must have customizable views of information and permissions based on user roles assigned by administrator. This would include 85 editing, 200 view only (access but cannot complete entry).

14) The budget office must be able to review status of all actions, flag issues, push reports to constituents, and be notified of the status or corrections.

15) Distribute budgets for review/approval/rejection to appropriate staff member based on budget/cost center or unit.

16) Log actions taken in the budget via date/timestamp and user ID for audit/history information.

17) Have the ability to allow multiple approvers in a hierarchy in the administrator group and should route (notify) in series through approval process.

18) Be able to compile data from multiple sources for comparison and analysis.

19) Allow users to view reports based upon user-defined parameters.

20) Allow users to create a static and dynamic version of a report for different operating purposes (i.e. publish static reports to directors and department heads, use dynamic reports for analysis).

21) Provide reports with drill down functionality to see individual transactions that make up an account balance, as well as drill down to see individual employee payroll data.

22) Allow users to design, write, and distribute custom reports.

23) Allow users to design, write, and distribute custom dashboards.

24) Allow users to record, track, report, and push to process (i.e. move from commitment module to adjustments module without duplicate entry) multi-year commitments.

25) Vendor must be able to provide responsive technical support for primary functional users. Describe support services included as part of this proposal cost including standard response times and methods (e.g. phone, email, web-site).

26) System has the ability to re-create reports and data from existing Excel formats with the incorporation of necessary formulae (lookups, if statements, etc.)

27) System must be able to directly export reports into an Excel format for users’ external analysis.

28) System should have the capability to store past budgets by unit in a static format from the original template approach including original user comments.

29) Web reporting distribution that aligns with end user security access.

30) System training community to enhance user knowledge and ongoing growth opportunities.

31) Ability to create groups based on specific criteria to be used in multiple report settings.

1.2.2 Preferred Requirements

1) Be able to track vacant positions.

2) Be able to drill down from position to see historical incumbent list.

3) Provide interactive and ongoing budget monitoring and updating throughout different layers of the university.

4) Eliminate redundancy of data compiled for different reports and analyses by providing an ongoing and interactive reporting mechanism.

5) Provide tools for analyzing actual and forecasted data together.

6) Pricing flexibility based upon user type (i.e. read, edit, view).

7) Provide data visualization tools

8) Have the ability to create, distribute, compare, and apply scenario modeling with different variables while keeping the integrity of the original budget and versions.

1.2.3 IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

1) Although MSU anticipates the System will be fully operational, training of campus users completed and tested and be ready no later than 90 days after contract execution, the implementation schedule will be at the discretion of the MSU’s designated contract liaison. This timeline reflects that all data imports are properly prepared and ready to be connected directly into the system. Provide an Implementation Plan that includes installation, migration of data, training, acceptance testing, identification of single point of contact, and schedule. Include in your response a sample implementation plan and flowchart describing details of the implementation process. Document must show the activities vendor expects to perform and those the University is expected to perform.

1.2.4 TRAINING AND DOCUMENTATION

1) Provide a sample of system’s operating manual. Via website download is preferred.

2) Vendor must provide training plan for users, technical and administration staff and system maintenance staff. Plan should include but not be limited to who should be trained, delivery method (e.g. site-based, instructor-led online, etc.); training materials to be provided; remote and web based training options and ongoing training available.

3) Vendor must provide Help Desk Services (telephone and online) for the Budget Office staff during business hours (Monday through Friday, 7:30 – 5:30 pm, MT).

4) Documentation of system administration processes must be provided at the completion of implementation.

1.2.5 ACCEPTANCE PLAN CRITERIA AND PROCESS

1) Provide an Acceptance Plan that includes details of the criteria and process for testing and acceptance of the System after implementation.

1.2.6 PROCESS IMPROVEMENT SERVICES

1) If the University requires process improvement in conjunction with implementation of the budgeting and forecasting system, describe your offerings in process analysis and organizational change management. Provide hourly rate for these services in the Cost Proposal section of this RFP. (the hourly rate will not be included in RFP cost calculations)

1.2.7 VALUE ADD

Offerors may propose any additional modules, features, or services that could enhance the proposed solution. Please include a description of each option and its associated pricing. Information provided in this section is for informational purposes only and will not be considered as part of the evaluation or scoring process. The University reserves the right to purchase any optional modules or services under the resulting contract if they are determined to be beneficial.