CTR049575-Data_Manageent_Apex.pdf

Request for Proposal Solicitation No.

BPM001998

Data Management Services

Arizona Department of Administration

State Procurement Office 100 N 15th Ave., Suite 402

Phoenix, AZ 85007

PART 3 of the Solicitation Documents Template version 4.0 (16-NOV-2018)

SECTION 3-B: Offer Forms Page 62 of 62 3

A v a i l a b l e o n l i n e a t : A P P . A Z . g o v

Attachment 5-E Offer Checklist

STATE MAY DETERMINE YOUR PROPOSAL IS NON-RESPONSIVE IF YOU DO NOT SUBMIT ALL ATTACHMENTS.

DOCUMENT SUBMITTED

1. Attachment 1: Offer and Acceptance Form YES no

2. Attachment 2-A: Experience and Capacity Questionnaire YES no

3. Attachment 2-B: Organization Profile YES no

4. Attachment 3-A: Method Proposal YES no

5. Attachment 3-B: Key Personnel Proposal YES no

6. Attachment 3-C: Proposed Subcontractors YES no

7. Attachment 3-E: Israel Boycott Disclosure YES no

8. Attachment 4: Pricing Sheets YES no

9. Attachment 5-A: Confidential Information Designation YES no

10. Attachment 5-B: Conformance Statements YES no

11. Attachment 5-C: Letter of Insurability YES no

12. Attachment 5-D: Arizona Baseline Security Controls YES no

13. Attachment 5-E: Offer Checklist YES no

End of Attachment 5-E

End of Part 3

SECTION 3-B: Offer Forms

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Attachment 5-A Confidential Information Designation

All materials submitted as part of a response to a solicitation are subject to Arizona public records law and will be disclosed if there is an appropriate public records request at the time of or after the award of the contract.

Recognizing there may be materials included in a solicitation response that are proprietary or a trade secret, a process is set out in A.A.C. R2-7-103 (copy attached) that will allow qualifying materials to be designated as confidential and excluded from disclosure. For purposes of this process the definition of “trade secret” will be the same as that set out in A.A.C. R2-7-101(52).

Complete this form return it with your Offer along with the appropriate supporting information to assist State in making its determination as to whether any of the materials submitted as part of your Offer should be designated confidential because the material is proprietary or a trade secret and therefore not subject to disclosure.

STATE WILL NOT CONSIDER ANY MATERIAL IN YOUR OFFER “CONFIDENTIAL” UNLESS DESIGNATED ON THIS FORM.

Check one of the following – if neither is checked, State will assume that as equivalent to “DOES NOT”:

� This response DOES NOT contain proprietary or trade secret information. I understand that my entire response will become public record in accordance with A.A.C. R2-7-C317.

This response DOES contain trade secret information because it contains information that:

1. Is a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique or process, AND

2. Derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable by proper means by, other persons who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use; AND

3. Is the subject of efforts by myself or my organization that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy.

NOTE: Failure to attach an explanation may result in a determination that the information does not meet the statutory trade secret definition. All information that does not meet the definition of trade secret as defined by A.A.C. R2-7-

101(52) will become public in accordance with A.A.C. R2-7-C317. State may make its own determination on materials in accordance with A.A.C. R2-7-103.

If State agrees with Offeror’s designation of trade secret or confidentiality and the determination is challenged, the undersigned hereby agrees to cooperate and support the defense of the determination with all interested parties, including legal counsel or other necessary assistance.

By submitting this response, Offeror agrees that the entire Offer, including confidential, trade secret and proprietary information may be shared with an evaluation committee and technical advisors during the evaluation process.

Offeror agrees to indemnify and hold State, its agents and employees, harmless from any claims or causes of action relating to State’s withholding of information based upon reliance on the above representations, including the payment of all costs and attorney fees incurred by State in defending such an action.

Apex Systems, LLC.

Offeror Company Name Signature of Authorized Person

4400 Cox Rd., Suite 200 Eric Sholl

Address Printed Name

Glen Allen VA 23060 Executive Director

City State Zip Title

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End of Attachment 5-A

Copy of A.A.C. R2-7-103 [Confidential Information] as was current at time of Solicitation issuance

PROVIDED FOR REFERENCE ONLY

A. If a person wants to assert that a person's offer, specification, or protest contains a trade secret or other proprietary information, a person shall include with the submission a statement supporting this assertion. A person shall clearly designate any trade secret and other proprietary information, using the term "confidential". Contract terms and conditions, pricing, and information generally available to the public are not considered confidential information under this Section.

B. Until a final determination is made under subsection (C), an agency chief procurement officer shall not disclose information designated as confidential under subsection (A) except to those individuals deemed by an agency chief procurement officer to have a legitimate state interest.

C. Upon receipt of a submission, an agency chief procurement officer shall make one of the following written determinations:

1. The designated information is confidential and the agency chief procurement officer shall not disclose the information except to those individuals deemed by the agency chief procurement officer to have a legitimate state interest;

2. The designated information is not confidential; or

3. Additional information is required before a final confidentiality determination can be made.

D. If an agency chief procurement officer determines that information submitted is not confidential, a person who made the submission shall be notified in writing. The notice shall include a time period for requesting a review of the determination by the state procurement administrator.

E. An agency chief procurement officer may release information designated as confidential under subsection (A) if:

1. A request for review is not received by the state procurement administrator within the time period specified in the notice; or

2. The state procurement administrator, after review, makes a written determination that the designated information is not confidential.

SECTION 3-B: Offer Forms

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Attachment 3-D Boycott of Israel Disclosure

Please note that if any of the following apply to this Solicitation, Contract, or Contractor, then the

Offeror shall select the “Exempt Solicitation, Contract, or Contractor” option below:

• The Solicitation or Contract has an estimated value of less than $100,000;

• Contractor is a sole proprietorship;

• Contractor has fewer than ten (10) employees; OR

• Contractor is a non-profit organization.

Pursuant to A.R.S. §35-393.01, public entities are prohibited from entering into contracts “unless the contract includes a written certification that the company is not currently engaged in, and agrees for the duration of the contract to not engage in, a boycott of goods or services from Israel.”

Under A.R.S. §35-393:

1. "Boycott" means engaging in a refusal to deal, terminating business activities or performing other actions that are intended to limit commercial relations with entities doing business in Israel or in territories controlled by Israel, if those actions are taken either:

(a) Based in part on the fact that the entity does business in Israel or in territories controlled by Israel.

(b) In a manner that discriminates on the basis of nationality, national origin or religion and that is not based on a valid business reason.

2. "Company" means an organization, association, corporation, partnership, joint venture, limited partnership, limited liability partnership, limited liability company or other entity or business association, including a wholly owned subsidiary, majority-owned subsidiary, parent company or affiliate, that engages in for-profit activity and that has ten or more full-time employees.

5. "Public entity" means this State, a political subdivision of this State or an agency, board, commission or department of this State or a political subdivision of this State.

The certification below does not include boycotts prohibited by 50 United States Code Section 4842 or a regulation issued pursuant to that section. See A.R.S. §35-393.03.

In compliance with A.R.S. §§35-393 et seq., all Offerors must select one of the following:

� The Company submitting this Offer does not participate in, and agrees not to participate in during the term of the contract, a boycott of Israel in accordance with A.R.S. §§35-393 et seq. I understand that my entire response will become public record in accordance with A.A.C. R2-7-C317.

� The Company submitting this Offer does participate in a boycott of Israel as described in A.R.S. §§35-393 et seq.

� Exempt Solicitation, Contract, or Contractor.

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Indicate which of the following statements applies to this Contract:

� Solicitation or Contract has an estimated value of less than $100,000;

� Contractor is a sole proprietorship;

� Contractor has fewer than ten (10) employees; and/or

� Contractor is a non-profit organization.

Apex Systems, LLC.

Company Name Signature of Person Authorized to Sign

4400 Cox Rd., Suite 200, Eric Sholl

Address Printed Name

Glen Allen VA 23060 Executive Director

City State Zip Title

End of Attachment 3-D

SECTION 3-B: Offer Forms Page 49 of 62 3

Attachment 3-C Proposed Subcontractors

Check “NO” if you WILL NOT subcontract any portion of the Work and will therefore be carrying out all of the Work with your own personnel.

NO, the Offeror will not subcontract any portion of the Work.

If you WILL subcontract any portion of the Work, check “YES” below and list name of persons or companies you propose to use as subcontractors.

1. Fill in the information for every significant subcontractor – indicate the type of work the subcontractor will perform under the Contract, and their approximate percentage of the total Contract work.

2. Provide copies of relevant certifications each one possesses in the Attachment Supplements section.

3. Provide description of quality assurance methods and quality control measures that you will use to ensure that Subcontractor work meets the Contract requirements.

4. State may demand additional information about proposed subcontractors as a precondition of award.

YES, the Offeror will use the Subcontractors listed below:

Name and contact information

Small Business Work to be performed %

1. Name select

2. Name select

3. Name select

4. Name select

5. Name select

6. Name select

7. Name select

8. Name select

9. Name select

10. Name select

End of Attachment 3-C

SECTION 3-B: Offer Forms Page 41 of 63 3

Attachment 3-B Key Personnel Proposal

Answer all questions thoroughly in the spaces provided. Complete this form in full for each one of the key personnel proposed to be involved in carrying out the Work. Insert or attach a separate resume if desired, but any attached resumes are supplemental to this form and do not substitute for this form. If there are more than three

(3) Key Personnel, please utilize the same form for each additional Personnel.

1 Name: Richard Stanley How long with company? 7 years

Current position in company:

Director, Applications & Development

How long in positon? 7 years

Position for the Services:

Applications/Development Technical Thought Leader

How much of time will be dedicated to the Services?

25 %

What primary functions will be assigned?

Richard’s responsibilities include managing our nationally-based talent acquisition strategies of Apex’s Applications and Data Management. Richard creates specialized technical training for Apex's recruiters that focus within Java, Big Data and other skill areas.

Overall, Richard acts as Apex’s advisor, trainer and subject matter expert regarding Java and other related technologies. His management of the Practice includes oversite of 30+ technical recruiters and screeners dedicated to finding top tier architects, developers and more. As an extension of our skill practices, the State will receive Apex Elite Candidates by partnering with Richard to gather information, build a technical profile and create a customized screening to ensure technical competency

Describe person’s experience in performing services like those that are to be assigned:

Richard has over 25 years of experience within Java programming and web-based technologies. His specialties include system architecture, data persistence/replication, system integration and multithreading. Prior to joining Apex in March 2012, Richard was CEO for a technology solutions company providing software development, web development and marketing. Richard’s experience also stems from his role as a Senior Java Developer, Java SE- EE/C++/VB .Net/PHP Solutions Developer, Senior Programmer/Database Administrator and Software Trainer.

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List person’s job-related training and education:

Richard has a Cisco Systems Certification, HP Technical Certification; is a Microsoft Certified Software Engineer and has a BSE in Computer Science and BS in Computer Information Systems.

Resume: filename

2 Name: David Muhammad How long with company? 2.5 years in company:

Director, Digital Services How long in positon? 2.5 years

Position for the Services:

Digital Services Technical Thought Leader

How much of time will be dedicated to the Services?

25%

What primary functions will be assigned?

David will develop digital transformation processes for engagements through a consultative lens. His agency background and knowledge-base extends to digital, social and content strategy. David’s exposure to cutting edge technologies like bio-metrics, artificial intelligence/machine learning, virtual reality, augmented reality and real-time data capture will enable the State and related agencies and entities to “futureproof” their enterprises for shifts in technology.

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Describe person’s experience in performing services like those that are to be assigned:

Highlights of David’s career include:

Developing content/social/digital strategies for each client and working closely with copywriters, designers, and developers to create new digital, social, content and mobile strategies

Identifying digital and content trends and leading digital education for clients and internal staff on strategic digital initiatives

Applying breakthrough ideation to create a holistic approach, integrating diverse channels (including AI, AR/VR, experiential, broadcast, web, mobile, social, content, eCRM, video, gamification and analytics)

Creating integrated launch campaign for HP’s new Sprocket social media printer during the 2016 Rio Games, which drove a 37% increase in web traffic, 22% increase in search volume and increased positive social sentiment during the launch, that resulted in a brand recall of 41%, which surpassed projected KPIs by 20%

Working on analytics to monitor and analyze the reporting and provide key insights/ learning’s to clients, and identify opportunities to enhance existing digital marketing programs

List person’s job-related training and education:

Bachelor of Arts, Business Administration and Management

Interactive Agency Executive Training, Digital Communication and Media/Multimedia at NYU

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3 Name: Valaida Nadohi How long with company? 1 year in company:

Director, Data & Business Intelligence

How long in positon? 1 year

Position for the Services:

Data & Business Intelligence Technical Thought Leader

How much of time will be dedicated to the Services?

25 %

What primary functions will be assigned?

Valaida will aid in advising our internal teams on key data technologies and skill sets including developing recruiting strategies and creating customized technical screenings in order to thoroughly vet candidates. Valaida will be available to provide consultation and subject matter expertise to the State’s key stakeholders including assessing the technical requirements for any given Task Order so that Apex may advise on the best solution for achieving optimal results.

Describe person’s experience in performing services like those that are to be assigned:

Valaida began her career with the Air Force Reserves in 1997 and she started working with database systems shortly after. She has over 20 years of database administration and development experience. She has over 14 years of experience working with business intelligence solutions and developing websites, and over 3 years of experience developing dynamic web based applications. Valaida has worked with MS Access 2000-2016, AS/400, Oracle 9i-12c, SQL Server 2000- 2016, and MySQL database systems. Over the past 3 years, Valaida has actively pursued software development skills, including Java, .NET, and Angular while still absorbing the newest technologies in the Big Data and data visualization skill areas.

List person’s job-related training and education:

As described above, Valaida has extensive experience and training on business intelligence solutions and database systems including MS Access 2000-2016, AS/400, Oracle 9i-12c, SQL Server 2000-2016, and MySQL. She has also developed skills with software development using Java, .NET, and Angular and stays immersed in emerging technologies with rapidly growing demand in the areas of Big Data and Data Visualization.

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4 Name: Eric Sholl How long with company? 13 years in company:

Executive Director, National Accounts – Government Services:

State, Local, Education

How long in positon? 7 years

Position for the Services: Director/Escalation Point How much of time will be dedicated to the Services?

50%

What primary functions will be assigned?

Executive escalation point, provides strategic and consultative support to our teams including planning, service delivery, Describe person’s experience in performing services like those that are to be assigned:

Throughout his career, he has helped establish valuable relationships with clients, such as State, Local and Education Industry accounts, as well as multiple government services systems integrators. Eric joined Apex in 2006 as a technical recruiter focusing on IT, Engineering and Government Services, where he was a valuable and productive asset and leader. Following several successful years as an Account Executive, Eric was again promoted to his current position responsible for business development and overall account management for specific Government Service portfolio accounts, such as State/Local, Federal Government, systems integrators, and DOD. Over the past 13 years Eric has been a valuable team member and is well-versed in the trends and factors that impact our State entity clients.

List person’s job-related training and education:

Eric has completed technical training on all key technical skill sets, including Data related skill sets. He has also completed several leadership and management training sessions at Apex. Eric has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business.

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5 Name: Will Sebra How long with company? 13 years in company:

Senior Managing Director How long in positon? 4 years

Position for the Services:

Senior Managing Director, Escalation Point

How much of time will be dedicated to the Services?

25 %

What primary functions will be assigned?

Will is responsible for overall management and direct account oversight for the State’s needs. He will also serve as the second escalation point for project stakeholders and will escalate any issues as high up the Apex chain of command as needed in order to provide a satisfactory resolution for the State and/or agencies involved.

Describe person’s experience in performing services like those that are to be assigned:

Senior Managing Director, Will Sebra, has been with Apex Systems for 13 years.

He began his career with Apex in Denver, CO where he spent nine years as a Recruiter and Account Manager. Will has overseen the Phoenix branch for the last four years and is responsible for managing a team of 16 Account Managers and 23 Recruiters. Will was also named a Principal of the company in 2019, which is one of our highest honors to give an employee.

List person’s job-related training and education:

Will has completed numerous trainings as an employee including but not limited to, technology and skill-focused training, leadership and management training, and more.

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6 Name: Mark Waterman How long with company? 2 years in company:

Managing Director How long in positon? 2 years

Position for the Services:

Engagement Managing Director, Escalation Point

How much of time will be dedicated to the Services?

25 %

What primary functions will be assigned?

As a Managing Director, Mark oversees Apex’s consulting services practice for the Government Services industry. Mark will be responsible for engagement management and delivery, client satisfaction, service level agreement monitoring/adherence, policy and process compliance, and immediate escalation of any scope or process changes that could impact engagement quality and efficiency.

Describe person’s experience in performing services like those that are to be assigned:

Mark has over 27 years of experience in business transformation, integrated performance management, continuous process improvement, and program and project management. He specializes in leading client teams responsible for use and implementation of strategic/business planning, business and financial process improvement, organizational design, activity based costing, cost and performance management systems, enterprise resource planning implementation, business intelligence and decision support, and system development and integration.

Mark has consulted in a variety of industry, account, and geographic leadership roles as a management consulting Principal at both “Big 4” and middle-market CPA firms. He is a retired Navy Captain, serving 25 years in the nuclear submarine force. The last 18 years were served concurrently with his management consulting career, where he commanded four reserve units supporting fleet readiness and joint/coalition warfighting operations

List person’s job-related training and education:

Mark is a certified Project Management Professional

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End of Attachment 3-B

SECTION 3-B: Offer Forms Page 28 of 63 3

5Attachment 3-A Method Proposal (Method of Approach)

Offeror shall provide a detailed narrative response to each question below. Proposals without a detailed narrative to the questions below will receive a lower score during the evaluation. Information provided through the use of a web URL link (within a response, or otherwise) will not be taken into consideration when evaluating proposals. The narrative response shall address the following questions, in the order below, referencing the related section of the Scope of Work.

Question 1:

Provide a narrative of the Offeror’s method for establish and maintain adequate personnel that possess exceptional interpersonal, leadership, project specific knowledge and customer service skills and how the Offeror will assign and maintain designated Point of Contact for the State (Scope of Work, Section 5.2- 5.4).

Offeror Response:

Apex’s model is strategically aligned to deliver services at the right balance of project control, risk management, work quality and customization that are delivered at a lower cost than traditional firms due to our ability to build on demand, fit-for-purpose teams. Apex will deploy highly qualified resources with the requisite skills needed per each task order.

We build custom-fit teams by leveraging our virtual bench of over 16 million professionals within our Talent Cloud and our more minimal ‘traditional’ bench of specialized consultants. Apex’s industry and Data & Analytics solution leaders will assess the technical requirements for each task order and will use this information to build out the ideal candidate profile for each resource needed. From there, Apex’s Data Management and Business Intelligence practice will support the sourcing, screening, and delivery of resources to fill our engagement team. This will include verification of current/up-to-date CDMP, EDMA, or other certifications appropriate to the task order, relevant experience with state government and public sector data management consulting, and availability during regular work hours.

For each active project/TO, Apex will assign a designated project manager and primary point-of-contact to support the Customer leadership and provide same day response to all inquiries. The Apex project manager will be responsible for overseeing the entire engagement team and serving as the liaison between Apex, our engagement team, and customer project leadership. As part of Apex’s program delivery framework, CLEAR SM there will be regular cadences between the Apex project/engagement leadership and customer project leadership at regular, agreed upon intervals throughout the lifecycle of the project. Additional details on Apex’s CLEAR framework can be found in our response to question 7 below.

The Apex project manager will communicate any potential problems to the customer’s project lead within two business days, or sooner, of becoming aware of the problem. Additionally, Apex’s dedicated Account Manager, Garrett Lever, will serve as a point-of-contact to stakeholder with the State and will escalate any issues as needed to Apex’s internal leadership.

Question 2:

Outline, in detail, the Offeror’s method of approach to maintain the necessary physical and technology security controls, ensure the quality of work products, maintain a document library and provide customer with access to this document library during the project and upon completion of the project. Please limit your response to no more than 5 pages. (Scope of Work, section 5.5-5.12.)

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Offeror Response:

Apex prides itself on delivering a quality working product. The project manager will work with the Customer team to identify the quality standards and create a quality plan with checklists throughout the life of the project identifying corrective action and continuous improvement.

Apex provides a periodic review with our client throughout the course of an engagement. The interval depends on the length of the engagement and can be either monthly or weekly. The intent of this checkpoint is to make sure we are still on track with meeting our clients’ expectations. During the review, we cover any issues or risks that need attention. Also, we want to make sure we ask the following questions to help us better understand the work effort from our clients’ perspective.

1. What is working well that can be further leveraged?

2. What should we be doing differently?

3. What are we not doing that needs to be done?

The answers to these questions will give us a better view of what is happening on the project in our clients’ eyes and give them a chance to give direct objective feedback outside of the project team.

Regarding sections 5.7 and 5.8 of the Scope of Work, Apex resources will utilize only Customer laptops, servers and storage systems ensuring no data from the Customer is stored or transferred from the Customer premises.

As a part of the SOW, all work developed for the client remains the property of the Customer. Apex resources will complete a non-disclosure agreement prior to commencing work as requested by the customer. As a part of this agreement, Apex will inform the Customer of any conflicts of interest of any type during the life of the contract. All Client project documentation including but not limited to emails, memos, meeting notes, and project documentation will be stored on Customer storage in a location identified by the Customer.

Question 3:

Describe the Offeror’s current and existing capabilities, which may include but not limited to, tools, processes, steps to review, assess and measure data management maturity, make recommendation, train and educate staff and provide variety of services pertaining to data management and governance (Scope of Work, section 6.0.)

Maturity Assessment and Best Practice Implementation

Achieving maturity in data management requires a balanced approach – organizations must not only address data and technology challenges, but also develop and employ the underlying processes and policies to enable these changes, as well as plans to hire, retain, and train the people to move to a more mature data environment.

Apex has helped many clients achieve their strategic objectives through actionable business insight: the accurate and deep understanding of business data. Leveraging a wealth of cross-industry experience with data strategy and implementation, we assess clients’ current capabilities and needs and develop data strategies to achieve overall business goals.

These data strategies stem from assessment of existing data maturity utilizing established frameworks by CMMI and the DAMA. Apex uses these models as part of a structured approach to evolving maturity that drives organizational transformation across the enterprise through identification of gaps within data and how the enterprise employs this data to drive analytics.

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At Apex, we help our customers and business partners move toward a future state that we call Continuous Analytics.

Continuous Analytics encompasses best practices in governance and continuous improvement that enable enterprises in their data management maturity journey. Four key tenets surround our data management solutions that help achieve this vision:

1. Self Service – Users must be able to create reports and visualizations, perform ad-hoc queries, and explore data sets in their own sandbox when necessary.

2.Data Science – Advanced analytical workloads must be supported whether they are for programmatic decision making or deep learning.

3. Automation – Processes and must Agile and Automated whenever possible in order to keep data flowing and allow users to focus on analysis and decision-making.

4. Governance – When it comes to data, quality and trust cannot be sacrificed for speed and cost so principles of Data Governance must still be applied in Big Data

Finally, we lead clients in implementing new business strategies, tools, and processes to enable and direct data management maturity. Key among these strategies is assessing human capital: the roles and skills within the enterprise that will support data management maturity.

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Training Approach

Effective learning begins with well-structured, organized topics focused on key training objectives. When implementing a new technology and architecture model, paired programming and formal training sessions can be leveraged for better assimilation of new concepts.

Apex’s recommendation for training of State resources will be highly dependent on assessing State’s team members’ current state understanding of the technologies, identifying skill gaps, creating customized learning plans based on each person’s role, and delivering custom workshops developed by Apex or by a 3rd party vendor. After the assessment and evaluation of training needs, Apex will implement a specific training curriculum that can be iterated over the course of the engagement based on State’s timeline and goals.

Key Components of a training program that will be identified during the course of the engagement are:

Skill Assessments Role-Specific Workshops Post-Training Survey Adapt to feedback and close the loop

As a part of each Task Order, Apex will build in Training and Knowledge Transfer. It is a critical objective for Apex to ensure that training is an ongoing process throughout the course of any engagement we are involved in with our clients. It is our intention to share knowledge from start to finish of our service delivery. Training specific to DMM assessments and appraisals will be built into each engagement.

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Question 4:

Provide a narrative of how the Offeror will comply with Data Solution Consulting, Architecture, Support and Development requirements (Scope of Work, section 7.0.)

Apex has significant experience in designing, building, testing, and implementing integrated data layer solutions across various industries, as well as federal, state, and local governments. From HIPAA to PII, Apex has delivered projects and solutions have been subject to the highest security and privacy restrictions.

We have a long history of helping our clients gain value from increased visibility of their customer data. By linking data across multiple systems, we have been able to support a diverse range of use cases to help our clients evaluate risk and confidently make fact-based business decisions, such as business intelligence, analytics, and regulatory reporting and compliance.

Our commitment to increased data accuracy and quality provides several benefits to our clients. These include improved credentialing, reduced process turnaround time, and heightened customer experience. Better accuracy also yields improved reporting performance as well as greater compliance with regulatory requirements.

In addition to significant improvements to overall data quality, our approach supports the creation of a single pipeline of customer data. This has resulted in simultaneous improvements in data integrity and sets the stage for robust data stewardship as part of an overall data management solution.

We are confident that we possess the requisite experience that the state is looking for in this scope area. Below we have included some relevant use cases that describe our experience and capabilities in data solution consulting, architecture, support and development.

Apex Case Studies and Implementations

Case Studies Additional Implementations

Manufacturing Data Lake Longitudinal Patient Record – Customer360 Tableau Visualization and Dashboard DW Modernization Customer360

Data Science o Cost/Ratings Prediction o Device Failure Prediction

Unstructured Data Management DevOps Environment Sizing Performance Tuning

Use Case: GroupM – Data Marketplace

Apex implemented and manages on an on-going basis a large-scale data integration project known as Data Marketplace which is based on the Microsoft tech stack – SQL Server, SSIS, .Net/C#.

GroupM is the world’s largest media investment group with more than $113BB in revenue, responsible for one in three ads globally. Prior to implementing our solution - Data Marketplace- Media Planners and Analysts

SECTION 3-B: Offer Forms Page 33 of 63 3 working on behalf of a GroupM client had to individually log in to as many as 50+ different platforms to collect information, export data sets and feed them together and manually make sense of the data to produce ROI reporting.

Data Marketplace serves as a one stop shop for Media Planners and Analysts to get the data sets they need to do their planning as well as client reporting. Data Marketplace is a portal where they can take the sources they want, enter some parameters and the solution will feed the data to them right away or has the capability to ship it to a particular place if they want to schedule it.

The Data Marketplace consists of dozens of external batch feeds aggregated mostly to a daily level. GroupM generates very little internal data; everything in the Marketplace comes from third-party vendors such as GoogleAds, Facebook, etc. Primarily, the Marketplace serves as a centralized, single-sign-on data collection point with tokenized security, that facilitates agency reporting of campaign effectiveness back to their clients (the advertisers). Currently, we are investigating the best strategies to migrate the entire platform to the Azure cloud in 2019.

The integration piece is very customized, as each data vendor has their own data feed specification (FTP, API, etc.). The customer management piece is rather simple because GroupM’s customers are the agencies and the agencies’ customers are the advertisers. What’s more, due to privacy regulations, Data Marketplace adheres to the ideal of not being able to identify the millions of individuals to whom ads are served.

Use Case: Global Auto Manufacturer - Global Customer Data Hub

Global Customer Hub insources customer data across North America, EMEA and APAC from external and internal applications and uses that data for targeted advertising and sales campaigns such as promotional mailing lists and former customer outreach. Global Customer Hub integrates customer data from the dealer portal and billings operations with strategic downstream advertising partners such as Carfax.com, Edmunds, Axciom, Carguru, and Experion, whose marketing and sales campaigns accounts for over $150MM in revenue.

Poor customer data quality was negatively impacting the cost and effectiveness of advertising and sales campaigns due to lost and faulty leads. The client engaged Apex for a large rearchitecting effort. Apex evaluated current technology, process and functionality.

Our technology recommendations included a migration plan to data stage 11.3, retaining history in staging layer, changing ETL process and reporting execution operation statistics.

Apex developed enhancements to the Global Customer Data Hub by implementing matching/deduplication rules, data cleansing/standardization rules like address verification name/phone, email and vehicle cleansing/standardization. These rules were consumed by the web services that provided standardization and matching functionality to various internal applications (CRM, Sales Lead, Campaign) via Oracle enterprise service bus. We loaded historical data from various sources using Informatica ETL that included identity resolution matching services, address standardization, validation rules, matching and survival rules like UCM applications.

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Use Case: Multinational Semiconductor Company - Customer Single View using Microsoft MDS (Master Data Service)

A multinational semiconductor company that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets engaged Apex to implement a unified customer data solution with multiple hierarchies in Microsoft Master Data Service (MDS) for the Finance department to improve their order operations.

Customer data was sourced from CRM and SAP R/3 and then the golden customer data was subscribed back into these applications and to the data warehouse and external file feeds.

We defined a staging data model and developed SSIS scripts to load source data into staging tables. We created business translations from inbound to staging within customer hub and outbound published views and consolidated customer by merge, reconcile and survive rules. We also implemented batch synchronization between hub and insourcing and subscribing applications.

The business benefits yielded include establishing consistency in customer data which improved management of credit risk and reduced defaulted loans, as well as improved the CRM user experience and efficiency of Finance employees.

We also implemented process recommendations and introduced end to end to integration testing that includes external partners as well as automation of deployment process.

Apex was also involved in the implementation of a data quality dashboard to continuously monitor UCM (MDM) data quality and alert data stewards.

Use Case: Multi-line Managed Care Enterprise - Data Quality Management

The client is a health managed services company that provides access to high-quality healthcare, innovative programs and a wide range of health solutions to communities. The client also manages Medicaid for many states, acting as an intermediary between claims and government services.

An external audit identified data quality issues at the client putting the company at risk of losing their existing contract managing Medicaid. Apex was engaged to implement a data quality platform for monitoring and correcting data quality issues.

Our analysis included the source data model of a 3rd party Medicare enrollment vendor, data profiles, and the target data model used by Analytics and Reporting team. We worked with the client to define monitoring data quality for Medicare entities:

• Member Application

• Member DS Information (Part B/Part D)

• Medicare Dual Status

• Member Plan Information

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• Member Agent

• Member Demographics

• Member Correspondence

• Member Enrollment.

We also designed and implemented the ETL process that would monitor key elements such as first & last name, HIC number, SSN email, statuses across various source application claims, authorization, CRM (Dynamics) and MDM. This information was presented in a dashboard to check the variance across applications.

Use Case: Behavioral Healthcare Managed Service provider - Customer Master to Address Data Quality Issues

The client provides managed behavioral healthcare services for vulnerable and underserved populations. Their members are enrolled in publicly-funded programs including Medicaid (TANF), CHIP, ABD/SSI, the Child Welfare System, and Medicare. The client offers agencies, health plans, and states solutions to administer healthcare services more effectively. Their specialties include managed care solutions for behavioral health, foster care, specialty therapy and rehabilitative services, specialized school services, and community re-entry programs.

The client was experiencing significant data quality issues with their provider information which was impacting their ability not only to meet regulatory requirements, but also their ability to rely on their data to improve patient outcomes. To address the client’s data quality challenges, Apex implemented a Customer Master solution with a reporting component. As part of our solution, we addressed data quality issues at the patient level. We were able to implement data quality processes and procedures, as well as better BI automation and visualization that improved the quality of provider/patient data and efficiency of patient reporting.

As part of the implementation, we completed an inventory of all existing BI reports and metric dictionaries in order to define the entities that needed to be added to the master model and gain full understanding of provider information. Conceptual models for the identified entities such as provider, claims, authorization were defined and deployed along with their relationship reference data and made available in the EDW.

In addition, Apex established a data governance function with a focus to improve data quality in the source systems as well as master data identification and management.

The scope in creating a provider master included the provider subject entity and their relationships to provider/practitioners, group practice, affiliation, location, taxonomy, plan specialty & sub-specialty, networks/product, modality. Reference data included product hierarchy, level of care, department hierarchy, procedure codes, and diagnosis codes. We then mapped the information flow across various data collection applications performing claims management, case management, authorization, and provider management functions to identify data gaps and opportunities. We also performed extensive data profiling to create data validation rules that would identify issues such as multiple hospitals with same NPIs, invalid Medicaid numbers, Invalid specialty, Provider match by NPI but not by name, etc.

Use Case: Unstructured Data Solution Improves Quality of Medicaid & Other Healthcare Services

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Apex delivered a platform to a national non-profit organization in order to improve the quality of medical professional and patient encounters and obtain better results by improving patient forms. Apex’s solution was designed to take in unstructured data from multiple sources, use Natural Language Processing w/ Sentiment Analysis to understand the data, and then feed the data into a Machine Learning algorithm to track patterns and produce recommendations for improvements.

The solution ingested unstructured data, which included cases from doctors, medical notes of licensed/certified medical professionals and various medical documents and forms filled out by patients. We then used Natural Language Processing to apply Sentiment Analysis by assigning key words to understand sentiment, categorize the piece of data as either positive or negative, and evaluate if it was strong or weak. For example, if a patient put in a note that, “my doctor was friendly” the NLP platform would take in that language and assign as a positive. If someone said, “my doctor was too friendly” then that would be categorized as a negative thing.

Natural Language Processing and Sentiment Analysis was used to understand what was actually meant by the note, which was then was fed into a Machine Learning algorithm. This algorithm tracked patterns of those encounters and produced recommendations of adjustments needed to improve the quality of the encounters.

Additionally, the Machine Learning analytics produced recommendations for improvements to the documents such as ways patients could fill out forms to obtain better results.

As a result of this project, the client was able to produce more reliable and more trusted information to meet regulatory requirements. The client was also able to meet internal reporting requirements by reducing the burden on analysts so they could focus on analyzing data opposed to focusing on integration and cleanup.

Use Case: Data Assets Modernization: A Centralized Solution in AWS Cloud Enables Scale and Predictive Insights

A leading global solar innovation firm has experienced gaps in its reporting and analytics capabilities. Their system consisted of five international databases that allowed for data storage but lacked the ability to be leveraged for data queries. These separate databases prevented information sharing between applications which created quality issues, exposed a lack of overall data governance and process controls, and led to a time consuming and error-prone manual reporting process.

Apex partnered with the client to devise a Data Management and Analytics strategy to improve accuracy and efficiency of current reporting requirements, as well as strategically position their organization to be competitive in the marketplace.

Apex designed and implemented a Hadoop data lake bringing in the unconnected data from the five databases.

The data lake was built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a scalable and centralized solution. Apex also implemented process improvements and leveraged deep data science expertise to resolve the previous issues and provide an automated predictive model with a self-service yield calculation reporting solution.

Apex’s scalable solution allowed applications to share information preventing silos, automated data integration that empowered reporting users with self-service, and included a predictive model creating actionable insights pertaining to yield calculation.

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Question 5:

Describe the Offeror’s current and existing capabilities, to perform tasks related to Data Science, Business Intelligence, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Consulting, Architecture, Support and Development Requirements (Scope of Work, section 8.0)

Apex Capabilities Description

Apex has a long-history of architecting, designing and implementing data management and analytic solutions for our customers. We have deep expertise in Data Warehousing/Data Lakes, Master Data Management, Data Governance & Quality, and Advanced Analytics and BI, among other areas. Apex is a Microsoft Gold partner with a deep expertise in Azure, especially around the areas of data integration, data platforms, master data management, and analytics.

Apex’s Core Competencies and Differentiators in the Marketplace

Apex’s focus areas within the Data & Analytics space are:

Data Ingestion Services

The modern data ecosystem provides many different options for the ingestion of batch and streaming data:

Spark, Kafka, Beats, Azure Event Hub, Cloud IoT, Express Route, Talend – the list goes on. Apex can recommend the best data ingestion technology for your requirements or build data ingestion pipelines that enable access to the essential data your business needs.

Data Lake and Data Warehousing

Centralizing your data in a data lake or data warehouse can give your data consumers a single location for all their data needs. In addition, your Data Science and Analytics professionals will have access to the raw data they require for modeling and predictions. Apex Consulting Services has been designing and building Data Warehouses for over 25 years, and we’ve been leaders in implementing Data Lakes in our customers’ environments since the emergence of “Big Data”.

Migration, Integration, and Virtualization

ETL/ELT tools such as Talend, Attunity, Informatica, DataStage, and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) remain core data migration and integration tools within the enterprise. Apex has over two decades of experience in data migration and systems integration utilizing a broad range of tools and technologies. Allow us to simplify your integration and migration projects by bringing the expertise needed to get your data done right.

Master Data Management

Your organization needs a single enterprise-wide view of your customers, accounts or products. Where can you find this data and how can it be used? Master Data Management tools can simplify complex data environments by reducing redundancy, eliminating incorrect data and standardizing data.