CITY OF CLEVELAND DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

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Elfreda Franklin
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1 Proposals are due on September 15, 2017 by 12:00 p.m. The last day for questions is Wednesday September 6, 2017 by 12:00 p.m. An additional addendum will be released shortly thereafter with the answers. Sign-in sheets from the pre-proposal conference held on August 22, 2017 are attached. Additional Information: 1. EBPP - The current site uses SSO (single sign on) to seamlessly move from the water portal to the vendor hosted payment site. DPU desires that the same experience continue to be presented to the customer base. This means that if SSO is not utilized the login will occur on the vendor site. So, the vendor site would need to host the water consumption charts including both daily and hourly usage charts. Usage charts are currently hosted on the CWD web portal. It is anticipated that an API call would be used to get the data from CWD when a chart is requested by a user rather than a batch feed of the consumption data. 2. Bill Print The file extract included in the RFP package is representative of the current flat extract file used for CWD and NEORSD. The next iteration of the bill extract file will likely be an XML format file. Timing of this change is unknown at this time, but it makes sense to sync with the new contract. Bill Print/EBPP Questions and Answers: 1. Please provide a Word or Excel version of the RFP, specifically Appendices B and C. A-Appendices B and C will be provided in the addendum in Word format. We will also include Appendix A. If you receive this addendum through the City s website, you will then need to request the Word documents from Simon Mastroianni at simon_mastroianni@clevelandwater.com. 2. Can the fee table be recreated for proposal submission? A-Yes. As long as you keep the same headings etc., you can re-create the fee table for your submission. It needs to match what we have in content but the formatting can be different. 3. Would the City accept a nationally certified FBE to meet the 10% subcontractor utilization goal? 1

2 A-Only CSB s certified by the City of Cleveland can be used to meet the goal. Those vendors must be located in Cuyahoga County or a County contiguous to Cuyahoga County. 4. Please confirm the number of billing cycles for CWD on a monthly basis. A-CWD Bills every week day. 5. Are NEORSD's estimated volume included in the CWD volumes provided in Appendix D? A-Yes, NEORSD estimates are included in Appendix D. The file structure for NEORSD and CWD are the same but there is one file for each entity each day. The structure of the CPP data file is different. 6. Does The City of Cleveland have agreements with Fiserv/Checkfree and FIS/Metavante for distribution of bills to the financial institutions or does Kubra maintain those distribution agreements? Please explain. A-Kubra maintains these relationships. The City has a separate agreement for merchant services. 7. Will answers to questions be provided throughout the RFP question window or will they be provided as a single document after (ending September 6)? A-Answers will be provided prior to September 6 th. Any additional questions that are prior to the deadline, will be answered by after the last day for questions. 8. What is the motivation to proceed with an RFP for EBPP and Bill Print as there are current vendors in place? A-Those current contracts are expiring and we are required to put these out for bid. The Bill Print contract expires on 6/30/18 and the Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment contract expires on 7/31/ Who are the current vendors today for each component? A-The current vendors are SourceLink for Bill Print and Kubra for EBPP. 10. Are you happy with the service of the current vendors? A-We do not answer questions regarding our relationships with our vendors. 11. When do the current contract(s) expire? A-See question What are the City s decision timelines after the submittal date? 2

3 A-See question When do you plan to announce a short list? A-See question When do you plan to see formal presentations from the short list vendors? A-See question When does the City plan to announce a successful candidate? A-See question When does the City expect the new systems to be in place? A-At least 1 month prior to the contract expiration dates to be able to test the interfaces and to confirm readiness. a. Can you please explain the relationship with the current provider? A-See question 10. b. What are some of the important requirements that have been met? A-See question 10. c. What are some of the important requirements that have not been met? A-See question 10. d. Is there any reason to change providers? A-See question There is a limit of 75 pages for the RFP response. If the proposer is bidding on both EBPP and Bill Print and Mail and submits a separate summary work plan for Print and Mail, can this supersede the 75 page limit? A-The 75 page limit will remain. The limit does not include any appendices or attachments/exhibits. 18. Will the responses to Appendix B and Appendix C be included in the 75 page limit? A-No. 19. Can we provide summarized answers in Appendix B and C and provide deeper clarification as an Addenda? A-No. 20. Are we able to get the Appendix A-C in a format that we can type on and insert into our presentation? A-See Question 1. 3

4 21. Who is the current Print/Mail Vendor for the City of Cleveland DPU? A-See question May I please get the current bill print and mailing pricing as they relate and are set out in the RFP? This would include, but not be limited to: the cost of each component, service, NCOA, postage, inserts, set-up charges and any additional Programming Charges. A-You will need to make a public records request. 23. When DPU refers to "4/4 color" are you asking for full color duplex digital print? A-Yes, however CPP bills and all letters are simplex. 24. What is the monthly quantity for NEORSD bills? A-Roughly 440,000 per month for CWD, and 320,000 per month for NEORSD. 25. What time of day is data transmitted? A-CPP at 10:00AM, CWD/NEORSD at 1:00AM. 26. Will DPU accept the use of standard generic double window outgoing envelopes and single window remittance envelopes (as long as they are 24# paper)? A-We are open to this but would need to review and approve any impact to the document design. Note that the offset printing on the outside of the envelopes differs. 27. Can samples of the mailing, late notice and remittance notice envelopes be provided? A-No. 28. Why does DPU require a local postmark for letters? Is it to mask the fact that production is taking place outside the local area? Is it due to time sensitivity? Can DPU s indicia or permit be used instead? A-Time sensitivity. 29. How does DPU view out of state production? A-Mailing velocity is important to DPU because it impacts days revenue outstanding. Some of our letters are time sensitive and we would like capture any potential postal discounts for mailing from our SCF. 30. What is the per unit pricing from the incumbent bill print and mail provider? A-See question 22. 4

5 31. Is the current contract for bill print and mail 3 years with 2 optional years? A-The current bill print contract is a 2 year contract. It expires on 6/30/ Is DPU satisfied with the current service provided by the EBPP and bill print and mail providers? A-See question Does the 75 page response limit included attachments / exhibits? A-See question What is the motivation for going to RFP? A-See question In the General RFP there are places where you talk about history/structure of three operating systems (CWD/CPP/WPC). Are NEORSD/ WPC interchangeable? A-No. WPC is included on sewer bill and is division within the Department of Public Utilities. NEORSD is a separate entity who DPU provides billing services for. 36. When a customer receives all services do they receive one bill? A-No all separate bills. Three unique bills, different charges can potentially be on different bills. Each bill can have inserts. 37. Do the sewer volumes match closely to water volumes? A-Close but less. 38. How will you be answering questions? A-Questions will be released in the addendums. They will be sent out via s and posted to city website. 39. Do you have any pain points or challenges with current vendor? A-No. This is all part of the process to award a contract because current one is expiring. 40. Do you charge convenience fees? A-No convenience fees for credit cards. 41. Do you have multiple accounts being settled? A-We have two bank accounts, one bank. 5

6 42. Are envelops available to see what you currently use? A-No. Processing would like to have heavier envelopes, specified on RFP 43. What about sizes, inserts? A-Tend to do a standard 8.5x11 trifold. 110lb index for the cards. 44. What do you mean move to production in pilot? A-We want to see the vendors approach for how we can transition from one to the other. We will evaluate the vendors proposed approach. It will probably be a soft launch. 45. Are you looking to outsource call center or how to interface from your call center? A-No. 46. Are there any scenarios where you see the customer calling the selected vendor? A-No. 47. Can you elaborate on the perf? A-Some documents are multi pages, but it is a relatively low count. Propose alternatives and we will review the case. 48. Is there any difference between the ways your electronic bills are presented, are they processed any differently? A-They are payment files that are processed during a nightly batch. The electronic bills are PDF s generated by the bill print vendor. 49. Is it run like an elock box or bill pay consolidator versus a traditional bill pay? A-Kubra filters and consolidates some files. Separate files, separate deposits. One file is sent for both entities. 50. Does your current provider offer real time evaluation for ACH? Is that of interest? A- No, but it is of interest. 51. Can you describe your settlement process for card payments when a consumer makes a payment through any of your channels? What is the process to get those payments to you? A-Our current vendor handles transactions made through the web portal. ACH and credit cards are all one settlement made to the depository. 52. Do you want credit card processing to be a part of this bid? 6

7 A-Our credit card processor is city wide. We could go out on our own but not something we are looking to do. 53. What is your paperless adoption? A-Low, maybe 17%, but we are trying to grow that now that monthly billing is in place. Marketing campaign to push that. 54. Is enrollment process handled through vendor or portal? A-Portal, we do not default to paperless when people enroll in the portal so that might be the reason its low but want to keep giving consumer option. 55. Are there applications where you want to use iframe or frame relaying situation (page four)? A-We were not specifically saying iframe, it was a figure of speech. 56. What are you using for the single sign on? A- The scheme uses a Token, salt & hash. The portal is where there will be emphasis. We will release more details regarding the portal in an addendum. Portal should give control to customer to relieve call center and provide selfservice and provide real time information. 57. Section 3.1 touches on strategy, can you prioritize the points? A-They are all equally important and high priority. 58. Do you have any exception bill or any processes you would like to put into place? A-We would like to get away from the review and pull process but CPP still has it. 59. Is CPP maintaining PCI Compliance? A-Yes. 60. What has prompted Cleveland DPU to distribute an RFP at this time? A-See question What changes or enhancements not supported by your current provider, would Cleveland DPU like to enable? What are customers asking for? What can be improved? Please list. A-Our requirements are what is listed in the RFP. 62. Would you be open to a five-year contract agreement for the proposed services? 7

8 A-We have authority for a 3 year contract with two one-year options to renew. 63. How many total residential and commercial customer accounts do you have? Please provide for each entity (CWD, CPP, NEORSD). A- CWD commercial 16000, CWD residential , NEORSD commercial 12000, NEORSD residential , CPP commercial 6000, CPP residential Are all the printed bills for all Cleveland DPU entities created by the same third-party provider? If not, please explain. A-Yes. 65. How many customers are enrolled in e-bill that you would migrate? A-CWD: 222,40r accounts in 189,624 UserIDs, NEORSD: 68,950 accounts in 52,602 UserIDs, CPP 54,689 accounts in 49,371 UserIDs. 66. What are the next steps after RFP responses are received? A-See below for next steps and approximate time frames: Proposals Due on Sept 15 th Short listed vendors contacted by early October Oral interviews mid to late October Selection Mid November Contract(s) by end of How many vendors will be selected to move to the next round/short list? A-It will depend on the results of the scoring. There is no specific number. 68. Can you confirm this does not fall under any type of "prevailing wage" A-This does NOT fall under any type of prevailing wage requirements. 69. The RFP appears to separate the EBPP services from the Bill Print and Mailing services. Can we bid on the EBPP portion only, or must we provide alterative solutions (or a partner) for the Bill Print and Mailing services? A-You can bid on one or both. 70. Is there a cut-off period for asking questions? A-Yes, 9/6/17 at 12:00 p.m. 71. Will addendums be ed to me or posted on the website? 8

9 A- Via and posted to the city s website. 9

CITY OF CLEVELAND DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

CITY OF CLEVELAND DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL The proposal due date is Friday, September 22, 2017 by 12:00 p.m. Answers to questions received by the last day for questions: 1. Please confirm the sizes of the Inserts requested in the Fee Table for