RFI_--_School_Meal_Payment.pdf

ARMY & AIR FORCE EXCHANGE SERVICE

P.O.BOX 660202

Dallas, Texas 75266-0202 214-312-2011

Dear Sir or Madam, 25 MAR 2014

The Exchange, formally known as the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) is requesting information from the industry regarding their interest in submitting a proposal for a School Meal Payment Software for Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools. There are roughly 100 schools, supporting 50,000 students in OCONUS regions only.

The Exchange is a joint non-appropriated fund instrumentality of the Department of Defense (DoD) with a dual mission to provide quality merchandise and services to its customers at competitively low prices and generate earnings which provide dividends to support Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) programs. In addition to strengthening troops’ quality of life, the Exchange saves authorized shoppers money with an average overall savings of 20 percent compared to the competition. Customers can enjoy exchange benefits in many ways, with the greatest value being the Exchange’s pledge “We Go Where You Go.”

When military members deploy to remote locations around the world, the Exchange is right there with them, offering products and services to bring Soldiers and Airmen a taste of home. The Exchange also supports deployed troops with programs such as “Gifts from the Homefront” and “Help Our Troops Call Home.” These programs allow any American to show support for those fighting for freedom by sending gift certificates or prepaid phone cards to deployed troops.

The Exchange is the 43rd largest retail organization in the U.S., with annual revenue of $10.3B and employing more than 40,000 civilian and military personnel. The Exchange is a multi-channel retailer, offering products to authorized customers via retail stores, catalog and online. The Exchange operates retail and convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants, theaters, vending and other businesses on military installations in all 50 states, five U.S. territories and more than 30 countries. More than 18 million items are available through the Exchange Online Store and Exchange Online Mall with an average savings of 10-20 percent. The Exchange supports an extremely mobile customer base. The internet provides the ability to extend Exchange benefit to customers worldwide, regardless of where they are located.

The desired requirements are outlined in attachment 1. Your responses may be used to further evaluate and/or refine our requirements.

If you are interested in this potential upcoming procurement, please provide:

1. Responses to the desired requirements (attached Excel spredsheet) and how you meet these.

2. Please provide a brief summary of your company including:

a. How long you have been providing this technology?

b. List of major customers using this technology.

3. Is your company interested in receiving our Request For Proposal (RFP) should we issue one for this effort? If so, please provide contact information for your company.

Please feel free to add any additional information that the Exchange needs to consider for a School Meal Payment Software. Your responses may be used to further evaluate and/or refine our requirement.

Again, this is a Request for Information only. The Exchange is not seeking a firm price quote. However, the Exchange does want to understand how the industry prices these solutions.

Responses to this RFI are required by close of business 16 Apr 2014 via email to:

burkhardts@aafes.com. The solicitation will be issued only to those companies that respond to this request.

Sincerely, Attachment 1: School Meal Payment Software

Requirements

///signed/// Sarah Burkhardt Contracting Officer

Please provide Responses in column D

Response

a. Which data sources do you integrate with?

b. Can data sources and schema be easily changed?

c. Does the solution offer a wide variety of integration including web services and messaging?

d.

Does the solution include tools to support extraction, transformation and load processes for data load?

e. Can import processes be automated, including rules to test for exceptions?

g.

How is the initial data imported to get started? How does this differentiate from an incremental data load once the tool is operational?

h. Do I own and control my data differently based on if or how the tool is hosted?

a. Please order the solution types from lowest to highest price?

b. For each of the solution types, define band width requirements

c. Is the data center centralized?

a. i. Timing

b. ii. Challenges

c. iii. Risks

a. What is the average implementation timeline?

b. Is implementation of solution considered simple or complex?

c. Is there an additional cost for implementation/configuration. If so, how is it calculated?

d. Can a third party provide configuration/implementation services?

e. Who are your software partners and integrators?

a What should a client look for in a school meal program software?

b. Do you provide a thorough analysis of all aspects of the current system (hardware/software)?

c. If so, when, and which clients?

d. What services did you provide?

a.

What kind of Support Level Agreement (SLA) do you offer? What is included and what would be included at additional cost? (e.g. Response time, Access method, VPN, Remote Desktop, WebEx, etc.)

How is the solution implemented for clients?

What can I expect in the way of upgrades?

Do you provide consultation regarding integration with various Management Systems?

SUPPORT

Type of Support (options, pricing, technical or business)

Question

Does your company have a General Services Administration (GSA) contract?

Do you currently have any other Government contracts? With whom?

What are the standard features and key benefits offered with your solution out of the box?

Describe additional features that you currently support, and the advantages they offer

What is your experience with integrating your system with a customer's in-house database and multiple platforms?

Describe what your current customers are using your system to do?

Explain how the administrator is able to configure and update content within the system.

What is your solution architecture/type?

How extensive are your solution integrations features?

Have you acted as a consultant to other school districts?

Do you provide implementation/configuration services?

b.

What are the responses rates you offer customers our size (100 cafeterias supporting 50,000 students, world wide)?

c. How are you rated by customers? Provide Feedback?

d. What are your support limitations, i.e. world wide, hours of operation, on site support ?

e.

Do you have a support knowledge base/blog/community forum or applications that are shared by customers (parents, technical, non-technical, etc)?

a. What type of support do you typically offer during the first two months after "go live"?

b. How many of your resources are needed during a typical implementation?

c.

List and describe training and manuals available for all aspects of the solution? (i.e. videos, manuals, parent training, technical support)

d. How many Exchange employees are needed to support this solution after go-live?

a. What type of information can the parent access once accessing their account(s) b.

Will the student's financial record be immediately updated regardless of whether funds are added at the post, the school, or online?

d.

Can parents designate funds for uses other than school meals (i.e. snack machines, yearbooks, incidentals)?

f. How does a child access funds (cafeteria POC, vending, manual allocations, on-line access, etc.)

Describe the type of training you provide.

a. Prebuilt metrics reporting (i.e. graphs, charting, etc)?

b. Dashboard functionalities

c. What kind of Exception reporting is your solution capable of?

d. Can reports be generated linking students by a unique identifier(i.e. Birthdate, last 5 of SS#)

e. Are summary and detailed reports available providing qty of students, per school, per region?

f.

Are summary and detailed reports available providing qty of meals sold at full price, reduced price, and free?

g. Ability to track and report on productivity per plate rate

h. What other relational metrics does your solution provide

a. Ability to provide a detailed report of credits and debits

Describe the parent's method(s) to access their account(s).

Describe your solution's ability to assign user functions and levels of access (i.e. end user, support, technical, real time/batch)

Does your solution provide invoicing functionality?

Describe end user information available

What type of canned reports do you offer?

What are the limitations of your ad-hoc reporting?

Ability to automate a periodic email transmission to parents

Provide any ROI information or success stories you have from clients that purchased your School Meal Program software. Provide References and contact information.

REPORTING

Is your system capable of delivering auto-generated reports?

Describe your license structure (i.e. enterprise, individual, user license available)? Are the individual licenses named or concurrent?

Would you provide a dedicated full-time project manager to work with the Exchange Project Team on the School Meal Program software

USERS

b.

Ability to provide the student's account status and a forecast of when funds will be depleted at the current rate of use.

a. Automated and manual notification of action required, due to a deficient account balance b.

Automated replenishment notification sent to the parent/guardian when their child's account has dropped below a defined threshold level?

c.

Ability to send adhoc email to parents/guardians regarding information about their child and/or account

a. Licensing Fee (dependent on users? Dependent on company size?

b. The cost if the software is purchased, installed and managed in-house.

c. Hosted solution.

d. Flat fees or transaction fees.

e. Annual Support and Maintenance.

f. Implementation fees.

g. In addition to regular pricing, provide cost of a host based solution and service levels.

h. Other costs (Reports, Interfaces, Conversions, Extensions).

a. Ability to update employee names/records shown in drop boxes

b. Ability to add food items at the local school level

c. Ability to change prices at the local school level

d. Ability to update teachers names shown in drop boxes

e. Ability to update homerooms shown in drop boxes

f. Manage inactive student records

Local Administrative Control availability

What other security measures should be considered in a School Meal Program software?

Describe your solution's ability to utilize picture IDs instead of PIN

Describe your solution's ability to utilize fingerprint access to the child's account, instead of PIN

Describe user access and authentication requirements (include the levels/types)

Does your solution have a Centralized Database management capable of instant updates

If internal role-based security is included, please provide a general description of provisioning/de-provisioning capabilities.

Describe how administrative privileges defines the area and audience to which the user has access

Ability of manual and automated transmission of emails to parents/guardians

Is your software compatible with smartphones/mobile devices?

PRICING

Please respond to the following questions regarding pricing, for budgetary purposes only. In your response, please provide industry or list prices.

FUNCTIONAL

What does your 5 year/10 year roadmap look like for your solution?

Describe your process for adding and removing schools, and how long does it take to complete.

Describe your process from the time the contract is awarded to when work and implementation.

What feature(s) makes your product superior to the competition?

Describe security patching cycles for your software.

If externally-hosted systems are used to transmit store or process sensitive data, describe the method and encryption level used by your

If data is externally-hosted, are your systems periodically scanned and tested for vulnerabilities. If so, please describe the method and frequency

What security measures does your software utilize?

Is your software capable of protecting Personal Identity Information (PII)?

Can data be exported to analytic tools such as Excel?

SECURITY

How is online security managed?

g.

Manage the transfer of student record from one school to another school by Local School

Administrators h.

Manual email capability to single or group of parents with access through administrative privileges.

Menu Planning and Nutrient Analysis:

a. User friendly interface for department staff to operate effectively and efficiently

b. Meet USDA’s nutrition standards and dietary guidelines

c. USDA approved for Administrative Reviews (AR)

d. Complies with the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) guidelines

e. Works with 150+ simultaneous users

f. Easily allows for menus and ingredients to be added, duplicated or modified g.

Provides web based Food Production Records with all information required by USDA & TDA regulations

h. Provides a recipe and menu costing tool to ensure cost control and efficiency

i. Ability to identify the common food allergens on ingredients and/or recipes as determined by the

Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004 (FALCPA)

a. Track goods ordered, received

b. Track goods used, and spoilage

c. Effective training and seamless implementation of Inventory Management process

d. Fully integrates with Menu Planning to reduce data entry and eliminate redundancy

Ability to integrate Menu Planning with available inventory for efficiency of stock on hand

e. Fully integrates with district’s financial planning system

f. Works efficiently with 150+ simultaneous users

g. Maintains real time accountability of all inventory procedures including ordering, purchases, costs, product usage, quantities on hand, receiving, adjustments, and transfers

h. Includes a Warehouse Management Module that allows for planning and maintaining distribution routes, provides detailed inventory reports, and tracks quantities on hand and on order

i. Ability to identify and track USDA donated foods

Point of Sale (POS):

a. User friendly for department staff to operate effectively and efficiently

b. Integrates fully with our districts student enrollment system c.

Provides real time data communication for updated eligibility and sales information to all serving lines d.

Wireless capabilities that has global availability anywhere an internet connection is found

e. Serving lines continue to work if the servers or network goes down f.

Offers secure online payment system so parents can easily add money on student accounts

g. Prevents overt identification and over claiming of meals h.

Provides fully customizable, nonproprietary touch screen POS’s with flexible item and meal pricing by grade i.

Offer a variety of student identification methods including but not limited to barcode scanning, classroom rosters, and keypad number entry

Perpetual inventory management capability?

j.

Ability to identify students with life-threatening food allergies and/or food intolerances k.

Generates audit-ready summary and/or detailed reports for daily, weekly, and monthly date ranges for a site, site group, or total group

l. Provide cash controls such as but not limited to electronic reconciliation of cash sales

m. Effective training and seamless implementation process on POS

o. Approval of free/reduced lunch price controlled by administrative privileges at multiple locations

Application Processing:

a. User Friendly for department and district staff to operate effectively and efficiently

b. Integrates fully with our districts student enrollment system

c. Complies with federally mandated regulations

d. Provides online and hard copy applications

e. Online application availability to multiple sites and simultaneous users

f. Efficiently processes free & reduced meal applications

g. Ability to certify multiple family members in a household

h. Ability to scan meal applications and process online

i. Ability to process meal eligibilities using Direct Certification imports

j. Ability to track the status of applications selected for verification k.

Ability to update all serving lines with eligibility results from newly processed applications in real time

l. Ability to generate application result notification letters and adverse action letters

m. Effective training and seamless implementation process on Application Processing

Any specific technical requirements needed to operate your software?

Any technical lessons learned from previous implementations?

TECHNICAL