Request_for_Information_(RFI).docx

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Subscriptions and Systems Integration (SI) Support Services for the Omnichannel Customer Communication System (OCCS) Agency: Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) Target NAICS Code: 541519 – Information Technology Value Added Resellers / Other Computer Related Services Anticipated Contract Type: Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) Anticipated Period of Performance: One (1) 12-Month Base Period plus four (4) 12-Month Option Periods (up to 5 years total)

1.0 PURPOSE & DISCLAIMER

This Request for Information (RFI) is issued solely for market research, planning, and information-gathering purposes pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 10. This is not a Request for Proposal (RFP), Invitation for Bid (IFB), or solicitation for commercial items. This notice does not constitute a commitment, implied or otherwise, that the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) will issue a solicitation or subsequently award a contract.

The Government will not pay for any information submitted, nor will it reimburse any administrative or operational costs incurred by interested parties responding to this RFI. All costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested party’s expense.

The primary objective of this market research is to:

Assess industry capabilities to provide commercial Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscriptions and specialized professional systems integration services to maintain and enhance DeCA’s Omnichannel Customer Communication System (OCCS).

Evaluate technical approaches for migrating legacy digital assets from Bynder DAM to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets.

Gauge vendor capabilities for deploying, administering, and securing embedded Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities within Salesforce Service Cloud under Department of Defense (DoD) cybersecurity frameworks.

Solicit industry feedback regarding acquisition packaging, specifically evaluating the advantages, risks, and cost trade-offs of procuring SaaS software subscriptions and Systems Integration (SI) services as a combined solution versus two separate procurements.

2.0 BACKGROUND & OPERATIONAL CONTEXT

The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) operates a global network of 235 commissaries located in 45 states, 13 countries, and two U.S. territories, operating approximately 3,000 checkout lanes (including self-checkouts). Headquartered at Fort Lee, Virginia, DeCA generates over $4.6 billion in annual sales and employs more than 14,000 personnel. DeCA provides groceries and household goods at significant savings to Active Duty, Reserve, and National Guard service members, military retirees, service-disabled veterans, and their authorized family members.

To deliver superior customer service and proactive brand engagement to this global patron base, DeCA operates the Omnichannel Customer Communication System (OCCS). OCCS is an enterprise SaaS digital ecosystem integrating customer relationship management, digital engagement, creative campaign planning, and digital asset governance into a unified operating environment.

The OCCS technical ecosystem is built upon four interconnected functional pillars:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – Salesforce Service Cloud: Serves as the central operational hub for capturing, tracking, and resolving patron inquiries across web forms, mobile channels, email, phone, and social media, handling approximately 30,000 cases annually. This platform requires embedded Artificial Intelligence (Salesforce Einstein / Agentforce capabilities) for intelligent routing, sentiment classification, generative agent responses, and case summarization.

Social Media Management & Engagement – Sprout Social: Provides multi-channel scheduling, brand listening, sentiment tracking, and community management across platforms including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest. The platform is bi-directionally integrated with Salesforce Service Cloud to seamlessly transform public and direct social interactions into actionable CRM cases.

Marketing Work & Campaign Management – Adobe Workfront: Manages the end-to-end lifecycle of DeCA marketing campaigns, promotional flyers/circulars, review and approval workflows, creative proofs, and cross-functional team collaboration between DeCA headquarters, regional commissaries, and commercial vendor partners.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) – Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets: Serves as the centralized enterprise digital repository for brand photography, high-resolution vector artwork, promotional collateral, audio/video assets, and circular templates. A primary technical requirement under this effort is the complete, risk-free extraction and migration of all existing digital assets, metadata taxonomies, and folder hierarchies from DeCA's incumbent legacy Bynder DAM repository into Adobe Experience Manager Assets.

3.0 SCOPE OF TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

The Government is examining commercial capabilities across two functional tracks:

3.1 Track 1: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Subscriptions (Authorized Resellers) DeCA requires authorized commercial software resellers capable of delivering flexible, scalable SaaS subscriptions with usage-based tracking, transparent true-up/down mechanisms, and monthly active-usage reporting across the following pillars:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Pillar – Salesforce Service Cloud:

License Quantity: Baseline of forty (40) administrative/user licenses at contract start.

Usage-Based Tracking & Downward Scaling: Invoiced based strictly on active monthly usage, accommodating modular add-ons and step-down seat structures (or optional sub-CLINs) to allow progressive descoping as enterprise systems consolidate.

Core Case Management: Multi-channel inquiry ingestion across mobile web, email, phone, and social media, handling ~30,000 cases annually with 10-year cloud retention.

Automated Case Categorization & Routing (AI): Real-time NLP parsing of inquiries (e.g., store operations, pricing, CLICK2GO) with dynamic queuing.

Sentiment Analysis (AI): Real-time classification (positive, neutral, negative, urgent) for immediate supervisor escalation of critical concerns.

Generative Case Response Drafting (AI): Knowledge-base-grounded response recommendations with mandatory human-in-the-loop review before dispatch.

Automated Case Summarization (AI): Instant generation of structured interaction summaries upon case escalation or closure.

Next-Best-Action & Intelligent Knowledge Recommendations (AI): Contextual surface of policy guidance and troubleshooting steps to assist service agents.

Predictive Workload & Resolution Analytics (AI): Forecasting of case resolution times and queue volumes to optimize staffing.

Systemic Issue & Feedback Clustering (AI): Clustering patron feedback across stores to identify emerging product defects or regional supply chain bottlenecks.

Multilingual Translation (AI): Real-time bi-directional NLP translation for non-English customer interactions.

Real-Time Anomaly & Volume Alerts (AI): Automated notifications triggered when negative sentiment or volume spikes exceed standard thresholds.

AI Governance & Security Mandates: Strict isolation of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) within FedRAMP/ATO boundaries; zero public model training using DeCA data.

Social Media Engagement Pillar – Sprout Social:

License Quantity: Baseline of twenty-five (25) software licenses at contract start, tracked and billed on actual monthly active usage.

Unified Social Inbox: Multi-channel monitoring and engagement across Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Multi-Tiered Governance: Granular approval workflows between marketing leads, store directors, public affairs, and legal reviewers.

Social Listening & Sentiment Analysis: Broad web and social listening to track brand perception, commissary operational sentiment, and community topics.

Paid Social & Competitive Benchmarking: Campaign tracking, engagement reporting, and automated performance comparison against commercial retail standards.

Integrated Social AI Capabilities: AI-driven optimal send times, automated copy variation drafting, conversational topic clustering, and volume spike detection.

Native Salesforce CRM Integration: Bi-directional synchronization to convert social direct messages, mentions, and comments into Salesforce cases with preserved context and synchronized response dispatch.

Marketing Work Management & Digital Asset Management Pillar – Adobe Workfront & AEM Assets:

License Quantity: Baseline of forty-two (42) combined licenses covering Adobe Workfront and Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets, billed on monthly active usage.

Cloud DAM Storage Baseline: Minimum high-performance GovCloud storage pool of 6 Terabytes (TB) with modular multi-terabyte expansion options.

Marketing Campaign Work Management (Workfront): Centralized project intake, visual Kanban and Gantt scheduling, creative proofing, and automated review/approval routing.

Enterprise Digital Asset Management (AEM Assets): Scalable cloud repository, enterprise metadata taxonomy, controlled vocabularies, version control, and Digital Rights Management (DRM) for campaign collateral.

Creative AI Features (Adobe Sensei): Automated smart tagging of imagery and video, content-aware smart cropping for multi-channel formats, and AI-assisted assembly of commissary sales circulars binding regional pricing.

Native Adobe-to-DAM Sync: Seamless publishing pipeline linking Workfront project deliverables directly to AEM Assets repositories.

3.2 Track 2: Overall Systems Integrator (SI) Professional Services The Systems Integrator will serve as the technical lead responsible for architecture, deployment, agile configuration, platform integration, Bynder DAM migration, and continuous cybersecurity compliance:

GovCloud Administration & Secure Hosting:

Provision and maintain the multi-platform SaaS architecture within GovCloud hosting accredited at FedRAMP Moderate (DoD IL4) or FedRAMP High (DoD IL5) in compliance with the DISA Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (SRG).

Enforce FIPS 140-2/3 cryptographic standards for all data at rest and data in transit, ensuring strict protection of PII and CUI.

Establish and maintain Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) protocols with automated failover and regular backup validation.

Legacy Bynder DAM to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets Migration:

Audit & Asset Inventory: Comprehensive pre-migration cataloging of all Bynder creative files, asset categories, user groups, and custom metadata fields.

Extraction & Ingestion: Programmatic bulk extraction of creative assets (vector files, imagery, video, documents) and secure ingestion into AEM Assets without loss or data corruption.

Metadata Harmonization & Taxonomy Mapping: Transformation of legacy Bynder metadata tags, copyright terms, and folder taxonomies to align with DeCA's target AEM schemas.

Data Integrity Verification: Execution of automated checksum audits and asset count comparisons to ensure 100% data integrity before decommission.

Zero-Disruption Cutover: Execution of a planned cutover window preserving uninterrupted creative operations, concluding with a formal Bynder Decommissioning and Migration Sign-off Report.

Agile Sprint Configuration & Multi-Platform Integration:

End-to-end configuration and sustainment of bi-directional API synchronizations connecting Salesforce Service Cloud, Sprout Social, Adobe Workfront, and AEM Assets.

Change management support through DeCA’s Technical Review Board (TRB) with required advance notifications (14 calendar days for standard releases, 4 hours for emergency security patches).

Continuous fine-tuning, prompt optimization, and governance monitoring for embedded Salesforce CRM AI models and Adobe automation rules.

Tiered Helpdesk Support & Operational Service Level Agreements (SLAs):

Tier I Escalation Coordination: Workflow interfacing with the DeCA Enterprise Service Desk (DESD) and Remedy ticketing platform for initial customer issue routing.

Tier II Application Support: Rapid resolution of functional system bugs, user provisioning, role-based security assignments, and data synchronization issues.

Tier III Engineering Support: Advanced developer and cloud engineering support, API patch development, and vendor platform technical escalations.

System Capacity & Performance Thresholds:

Support an operational baseline of 5 concurrent core administrative users.

Average system login times under 5 seconds; average page load times under 3 seconds.

Deliver 99.9% production system availability (24/7/365), excluding approved maintenance.

Incident cap of no more than two (2) unplanned service degradations per month, with all critical defects resolved within 24 hours.

Cybersecurity, DoD RMF Compliance, and Continuous ATO Lifecycle:

Deliver technical Information System Security Officer (ISSO) support to the DeCA ISSM and Authorizing Official (AO) IAW DoDI 8500.01, DoDI 8510.01 (RMF), NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5, and DISA SRG.

Direct authoring, updating, and continuous maintenance of all cybersecurity baseline artifacts within the DoD Enterprise Mission Assurance Support Service (eMASS).

Assembly of the complete initial Security Authorization Package (SSP, SAP, SAR, CMP, Continuous Monitoring Strategy, POA&M) in coordination with 3PAO evaluators.

Comprehensive management of continuous monitoring, monthly POA&M vulnerability closures, and periodic 3-year ATO Renewal / continuous ATO re-authorization packages.

Full compliance with DoD Manual 8140.03 / DoDD 8140.01 cyberspace workforce credentialing for 100% of contractor technical personnel prior to project kickoff.

Training & Operational Knowledge Management:

Role-based curriculum development and hands-on delivery (Superuser, Administrator, General User tracks) across Salesforce CRM (including AI agent features), Sprout Social, Adobe Workfront, and AEM Assets.

Delivery of initial onboarding training prior to go-live, followed by recurring quarterly refreshers and release updates.

Creation and continuous maintenance of an indexed operational knowledge base, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and administrative playbooks to empower self-service resolution.

4.0 REQUESTED INFORMATION & VENDOR CAPABILITY STATEMENT

Interested parties are requested to submit a capability statement addressing the questions outlined below. Respondents may submit responses covering Track 1 only, Track 2 only, or a Comprehensive Solution covering both Tracks.

4.1 Corporate Profile (All Respondents)

Company Details: Organization name, physical address, point of contact (name, email, telephone), CAGE Code, and Unique Entity Identifier (UEI).

Business Size & Socioeconomic Status: Specify your business size under NAICS 541519 (size standard: $34.0 million or 150 employees for Value-Added Resellers). Identify any socioeconomic designations (e.g., Small Business, 8(a), HUBZone, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business [SDVOSB], Woman-Owned Small Business [WOSB]).

Contract Vehicles: Identify all existing Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs) or Federal Supply Schedules held by your firm where these software licenses or services are available (e.g., GSA Multiple Award Schedule [MAS], NASA SEWP V, DoD ESI, NIH CIO-SP3/4, or NITAAC). Provide vehicle contract numbers.

4.2 Track 1: Software Subscriptions & Licensing (Authorized Resellers) Reseller Authorization: Provide formal verification of authorized reseller / partner tier status for Salesforce, Sprout Social, and Adobe.

Pricing Structures & Downward/Upward Scalability: Describe commercial licensing structures for the required baseline counts (40 Salesforce Service Cloud, 25 Sprout Social, 42 combined Adobe Workfront & AEM Assets). Detail how your commercial billing model supports monthly active-usage tracking and downward scaling/descoping of licenses (e.g., monthly option CLINs or step-down seat structures) without penalty if enterprise systems consolidate.

Salesforce CRM AI Licensing Packaging: Explain commercial packaging, license dependencies, and consumption/credit-based tiers for Salesforce Einstein and Agentforce capabilities in federal GovCloud deployments.

DAM Storage Scaling: Describe standard commercial options and cost models for scaling AEM Assets storage beyond the initial 6 TB allocation.

4.3 Track 2: Systems Integrator & Support Capabilities (SI Services) Bynder DAM to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets Migration Experience:

Describe your firm’s past experience executing programmatic migrations of enterprise digital asset repositories, specifically extracting assets and taxonomies from Bynder DAM and ingesting them into Adobe AEM Assets.

Detail your approach to schema cross-walking, metadata harmonization, version history preservation, and automated checksum data validation.

Salesforce CRM AI Implementation & Governance:

Detail your technical capability to configure, customize, and tune Salesforce Einstein / Agentforce AI capabilities (automated triage, sentiment detection, generative drafting, predictive analytics).

Explain how your implementation safeguards PII/CUI, prevents unauthorized model training, and aligns with DoD AI Ethics and security mandates.

FedRAMP & DoD IL4/IL5 Cloud Security & Engineering:

Detail your experience architecting, managing, and sustaining SaaS integrations in GovCloud hosting environments accredited at FedRAMP Moderate / DoD IL4 and FedRAMP High / DoD IL5.

Cybersecurity, eMASS, and Continuous ATO Renewals:

Describe your experience acting as technical ISSO support, developing full RMF Security Authorization Packages, maintaining controls within eMASS, and managing successful ATO renewals across multi-year contract lifecycles.

Confirm your team’s compliance with DoD Manual 8140.03 cyberspace workforce credentialing standards.

Tier II/III Support & SLA Management:

Outline your help desk framework for Tier II and Tier III support, including workflow integration with external government service desks (e.g., DeCA DESD Remedy). Provide typical commercial SLA performance benchmarks for uptime (e.g., 99.9%) and resolution of critical defects.

Agile Configuration & Change Management:

Describe your sprint management practices and approach to preparing change packages for federal Technical Review Boards (TRBs).

4.4 Track 3: Market Feedback on Acquisition Strategy

Acquisition Model Trade-offs: From an industry and cost-efficiency perspective, what are the advantages, risks, or administrative impacts of separating the SaaS software license procurement from the Systems Integration services procurement versus issuing a single, bundled solicitation for both?

Mitigation of Coordination Risks: If licenses and SI services are awarded separately, what industry-standard mechanisms or Operating Level Agreements (OLAs) should the Government establish between the reseller and the systems integrator to avoid support finger-pointing?

Single Prime Efficiencies: If your firm offers a combined turnkey solution (reselling licenses while executing SI services), what quantifiable cost savings, administrative simplifications, or operational efficiencies does DeCA realize?

Contract Structure Recommendations: Are there recommended CLIN structures, incentive arrangements, or commercial terms that DeCA should adopt to streamline the provisioning of AI consumption credits, active-user license flexibilities, and tiered storage expansions?

5.0 RESPONSE INSTRUCTIONS & SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Format Requirements:

Submissions must be delivered as a single searchable Adobe PDF document.

Page limit: Not to exceed fifteen (15) pages total (standard 8.5" x 11" page layout, 1-inch margins, minimum 11-point font).

Exclusions from page count: Title page, Table of Contents, Executive Cover Letter, Acronym Index, Authorized Reseller Verification Letters, and Section 508 Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs).

Section 508 Compliance: All proposed software capabilities must comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C. 794d). Vendors are encouraged to attach standard VPAT/ACR documentation as non-counting appendices.

6.0 SPECIAL ACQUISITION PARAMETERS & CRITERIA