REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS DATA PROCESSING, PRINT, AND MAIL SERVICES

Transcription

1 REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS DATA PROCESSING, PRINT, AND MAIL SERVICES DUE: December 10 th, 2018 by 5 p.m. City of Red Bluff 555 Washington Street Red Bluff, CA Contact: Sandy Ryan Finance Director ext sryan@cityofredbluff.org TABLE OF CONTENTS PROJECT INTENT PROPOSAL REQUIREMENTS AND CONTENTS SCOPE OF WORK: INSTRUCTIONS SCOPE OF WORK: QUALIFICATIONS SCOPE OF WORK: DATA PROCESSING, PRINTING, AND MAILING PRICING TABLES EXHIBIT A: INDEMNIFICATION AND INSURANCE EXHIBIT B: BILL AND ENVELOPE SAMPLES

2 PROJECT INTENT The City of Red Bluff ( City ) is requesting proposals from qualified vendors ( vendor ) to provide data processing, bill print and mail services. Each month, around the 18 th, approximately 4700 residential and commercial accounts are billed for water and sewer services. Each month, around the 20 th, approximately 900 residential and commercial accounts are mailed 15-day late notices for water and sewer services. Each month, around the 1 st, approximately 500 residential and commercial accounts are mailed 48-hour late notices for water and sewer services. Each month, around the 18 th, approximately 100 residential and commercial accounts are billed for various accounts receivable services. Each year, in December, approximately 1500 residential and commercial accounts are billed for business licenses. Each year, in March, approximately 600 residential and commercial accounts are mailed late notices for business licenses. Current Process: Print and Mail 1. Each of the processes above are currently printed by City of Red Bluff staff and picked up by the current vendor for processing, sorting and mailing. This is done 3 times per month. 2. Our current billing software is NEMRC (New England Municipal Resource Center), and the type of files that can be exported from this software are XML, delimited, PDF. 3. Types of documents are as stated above, regular statements, 15 days past due statements, 48 hours past due statements, accounts receivable statements, business license statements, and business license past due notices. Regular statements are mailed in a green envelope, with a green return envelope inside. 15-day late notices are mailed in a pink envelope, with a pink return envelope inside. 48-hour late notices are mailed in a blue envelope, with a blue return envelope. Accounts receivable, business licenses, and business licenses late notices are mailed in a grey envelope, with a grey return envelope inside. 4. Currently there are no suppressions. We would like to refrain from sending return envelopes to AutoPay customers. 5. Bills are mailed via USPS presorted first-class mail by permit in 1 day after statements are picked up. We would like the statements mailed the day after file creation. 6. Bill messages and bill inserts are included as follows: each 48-hour late notice has a letter inserted with the late notice; 3 to 4 times per year, the monthly water/sewer statements have a flyer inserted with the billing statement; each business license statement and business license late notice has a letter inserted with the mailing. PROPOSAL REQUIREMENTS AND CONTENTS 1. PROPOSAL SCHEDULE The anticipated schedule is below. If it becomes necessary to change any part of this schedule, all RFP recipients will be notified. RFP published November 9 th, 2018 Proposal due December 10 th, 2018 Complete screening and ranking December 12 th, 2018 Selection of vendor December 18 th, 2018 Contract approval December 18 th, 2018 Project start date January 1 st, 2019 CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

3 2. PROPOSAL CONTENTS The proposals submitted for this project by the vendor are to include the sections described below and must address all requested information. Any additional information that the vendor wishes to include should be included in an appendix to the proposal. SECTION 1 Introduction Provide a brief description of the vendor and a statement of qualifications for performing the requested services. The proposal shall be signed by an official authorized to bind the vendor and shall expressly state that the proposal is valid for 90 days. SECTION 2 Scope of Work Respond to all requirements defined in the Scope of Work. If any of the requirements cannot be supported, those items should be listed as exceptions. For exceptions, provide a recommendation for an alternative approach. Provide a description of the required tasks for the implementation and post-production support. Include the tasks needed to complete the project and any recommended additions to the requirements. Also document assumptions used in development of the work tasks, including assistance needed from City staff, and required hardware and software. SECTION 3 Project Cost Refer to the Project Cost table provided. SECTION 4 References Provide a description of projects similar in nature and scope that the vendor has completed in the last five years. Include client names, addresses, and telephone numbers. Also provide a list of customers who stopped service prior to the original contract expiration date, with the reason for the contract termination. Also, please list how many government agencies have discontinued your services for because of a quality, production, or breach of contract issue within the last 5 years. SECTION 5 Conflicts of Interest Vendors submitting a proposal in response to this RFP must disclose any actual, apparent, direct, indirect, or potential conflicts of interest that may exist with respect to the vendor, management, or employees of the vendor or other persons relative to the services to be provided. If a vendor has no conflicts of interest, include a statement to that effect in the proposal. 3. PROPOSAL SUBMITTAL Submit three (3) copies of the proposal to: City of Red Bluff Finance Department 555 Washington Street Red Bluff, CA ATTN: Sandy Ryan The deadline for submittal is 5 p.m. on December 10 th, Proposals delivered after the deadline or to the wrong location may be rejected and returned un-opened. CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

4 4. PROPOSAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS Assurance of designated project team: In order to assure that the designate project team is used for the project, the City shall have an unconditional right of refusal for any departure or reassignment of, or substitution for, any member of the designated project team. The City will not pay any costs incurred by the vendor in preparing or submitting the proposal. The City reserves the right to modify or cancel, in part or in its entirety, this RFP. The City reserves the right to reject any or all proposals, to waive defects or informalities, and to offer to contract with any vendor in response to any RFP. This RFP does not constitute any form or offer to contract. 5. SELECTION PROCESS Subject to approval by City, the selection of the most highly qualified vendor will be based upon the following criteria: Methodology and work plan Understanding of the project Completeness of proposal submitted Direct experience and qualifications of project team and vendor Information obtained from references Total project cost 6. INDEMNIFICATION AND INSURANCE Please refer to Exhibit A for Indemnification and Insurance Requirements. 7. INQUIRIES In order to receive a response from the City prior to the proposal due date, questions regarding this project must be received in writing by letter or on or before December 3 rd, 2018 by 5 p.m. Questions will not be answered by telephone. Address written questions to: Sandy Ryan 555 Washington Street Red Bluff, CA sryan@cityofredbluff.org SCOPE OF WORK: INSTRUCTIONS All requirements in the following Scope of Work must be provided solely by the vendor. Sub-contracting any parts of the solution to another vendor will be deemed non-responsive and the proposal rejected. Proposers must respond to all Scope of Work requirements listed in the following sections. The word must in a requirement indicates a required feature, and the word should indicates a desired feature. Vendor must provide a description on the areas of the requirement that are marked N (No) or P (Partial). The vendor must clearly indicate whether or not each requirement will be provided in the solution for the City. Please respond with Y (Yes), N (No), or P (Partial) answer, as defined using the criteria below. CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

5 Y (Yes) indicates the item will be supplied as specified and is part of the vendor s base price proposal N (No) indicates the item will not be supplied P (Partial) indicates that the item will not be supplied as specified, but may be provided by vendor in a partial way. The Functional Requirements/Scope of Work Requirements must be completed using the above designations at the start of each requirement answer below each requirement with vendor discussion/explanation verbiage after the above letter designation if applicable. For evaluation, requirements that are left blank will be assumed to be unavailable as specified. SCOPE OF WORK: QUALIFICATIONS A. Experience: 1. Vendor must have a national footprint with multiple print and mail production facilities that are operated by the vendor (not contracted out to another vendor). 2. Vendor must have been in continuous business for a minimum of 7 years and under the same principal ownership for a minimum of 2 years. 3. Vendor must have at least 20 or more biller clients in the utility sector. 4. Vendor must print/mail from a California facility in order to achieve 1-3 day delivery from the USPS. B. Security, Compliance and Disaster Recovery: 1. Vendor must be Red Flag Rules compliant per the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA). Indicate Y/N/P: 2. Vendor must be SSAE16 audited with either a SOC 1 Type II or SOC2 Type II report. 3. Vendor must have a comprehensive Information Security policy and complete set of procedures. Vendor must provide details on policies and procedures in the response. 4. Vendor must have a disaster recovery plan to process City billing if the main facility becomes inoperable. Provide locations and information about all disaster recovery facilities. 5. The vendor must allow periodic site visits by City personnel. C. Customer Support 1. Vendor must provide unlimited customer support to City personnel during vendor s business hours. CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

6 2. Vendor must provide a dedicated project manager for implementation and ongoing change request support after project go-live. Additional support representatives must be available as well to perform routine support work such as canceling a file uploaded in error or pulling a printed document before it s mailed. 3. Vendor must provide weekly status updates during all project implementations. 4. Vendor must provide an online, two-way communication tool for City staff to open support tickets. Support tool must include the ability to assign an open or closed status. SCOPE OF WORK: DATA PROCESSING, PRINT AND MAIL A. File Transfer, Data Processing, Printing, Quality Control: 1. Vendor must have the ability to accept daily bill files using an HTTPS upload or a standard FTP or SFTP transmission with PGP encryption support. City staff must be able to log into the vendor s server and transmit the files 24/7. 2. Vendor must be able to accept City files in their current format, as the City may be unable to change the bill file format without manual intervention and/or a modification to the billing system. Vendor must be able to handle data files that are flat files (ASCII), PDF files, CSV files, etc. 3. Vendor must be able to process multiple data files that all contain data related to the same batch upload. For example, some utility billing systems create more than 13 data files that all relate to one cycle of utility bills to process. Vendor must have prior experience with these types of implementations and live clients today who send more than one data file per batch of bills. 4. Vendor must have at least three full time programmers on staff who can perform complex implementations and transform legacy billing data into modern-looking bills. Programmers must have the ability to work around limitations with legacy data during document processing. 5. Vendor must backup all client document processing programs at least once per week and also perform monthly backups. Vendor must be able to restore a backup copy if a live document processing application has any sort of issue that makes restoring to backup necessary. 6. The vendor must provide a web-based interface to: o Track the status of job types through the production process o View reports o Manage inserts o Process exception or special handling of documents o Manage ad hoc messages displayed on job output o Upload test files o Contact vendor customer service CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

7 7. Vendor must provide the City the ability to view and approve sample bills online before they are printed and mailed. Included with the sample bills must be a summary of the total counts of printed bills, suppressed bills, and a count of any inserts included with the batch. 8. Vendor must mail documents within one business day of receipt of file transfer. 9. Vendor must have the capability to suppress the printing of bills and/or envelopes for certain customers, based on City requirements. Suppression could be on a one-time or ongoing basis. 10. Vendor must be able to produce City utility billing, accounts receivable billing and business license billing in the current format, propose a new bill format and/or provide a bill re-design included in the implementation. 11. Vendor must configure the remittance stub to work with the remittance processing equipment and software used to process the incoming checks. 12. Vendor must be capable of presorting documents and including the Full Service intelligent mail barcode (IMB). 13. Vendor must provide an interface that will allow the City to update requirements for bill messages and bill inserts on an ad-hoc basis. Interface must allow the City to include/exclude inserts and messages based on City requirements including customer type, account number, or other parameter within the data file. 14. Vendor must have in place and provide as part of the response a comprehensive Quality Control plan for ensuring the data, printing and mailing is error free. Please describe. 15. Vendor must provide a process of pulling a bill from live production file. Vendor must indicate in the response whether fees apply. 16. Vendor must have mailing equipment that can keep track of mail piece sequencing to prevent mailing errors and explain how redundancy is achieved in the event of equipment failure at the facility. 17. Vendor must have the printing technology to support roll fed production inkjet printing technology that can print transactional documents such as bills and letters in full color (CMYK) at a price point that is cost effective for transactional document printing. CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

8 B. Materials 1. Vendor must support the following paper stock: bills are 8.5 x 11, 24# white paper stock, with perforation. 2. Vendor must be able to provide: a) A single window #10 mailing envelope with the City s address in the top left corner, in green, blue, pink and grey, utility billing templates, accounts receivable templates, and 24# white paper stock. (see Exhibit B) b) A #9 return envelope with the City s address in center, in green, blue, pink, and grey. (see Exhibit B) 3. Vendor must provide the ability to print inserts, newsletters or other notices to be included with regular mailings. 4. Vendor must agree to receive shipments of inserts and store/warehouse all forms and envelopes used to process the City s bills. 5. Vendor must be able to perform intelligent/selective inserting based on customer type or other parameters provided in the data. 6. Vendor must be able to optionally print 8.5x11 inserts on demand. These inserts must print inline with the bills and letters as additional pages and folded and inserted by the mail inserter instead of being printed and folded separately. On demand insert printing should be available to support simplex and duplex printing, black or grayscale printing, and full color printing. C. Archived Documents 1. Vendor must be able to archive, as PDF files, document images. PDF images must be available on the same day that data files are processed. 2. Vendor must supply an online interface to the City to view the document images produced. Must be capable of indexing at least 5 data fields for searching via online interface. Vendor must provide details about the interface capabilities. Screen shots of the interface Search capability Print capability Process for viewing archived bill images Process for ing archived bill images to specific customer addresses 3. Vendor must be able to store document images for 24 months. 4. Vendor must be capable of taking static PDF images from the City of inserts, notifications or newsletters and include them with the bill image that is archived. CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

9 D. USPS Presort and Mail 1. Vendor must either produce and deliver mail to the USPS from a DMU (Detached Mail Unit), or be enrolled in USPS Seamless Acceptance. 2. Vendor must mail via presorted First-Class mail to maximize postal discounts. 3. Vendor must use the USPS Full-service Intelligent Mail Barcode for all outgoing mail pieces. Vendors must pass on the $0.003 discount per mail piece applied by the USPS for all Full-service IMB barcoded mail pieces. 4. Vendor must provide the NCOALink service. 5. Vendor must be able to provide proof of delivery to the USPS on an as-requested basis. 6. Vendor must be able to match multiple bills destined to the same customer and mailing address in the same batch. Matched bills must be inserted into one appropriate size envelope and metered first-class separately, and delivered to the USPS at the same time as all other bills are delivered. 7. Vendor must prepay for postage on the City s behalf and bill the City for actual postage used on a monthly basis. 8. Vendor must be able to optionally provide outbound USPS tracking data for individual mail pieces. Vendor must provide an interface in its online account management portal to facilitate searching for and viewing tracking data for individual mail pieces. The tracking data source must come from the USPS (IMb Tracing data). E. Reporting 1. Vendor must provide an confirming receipt of file transmission for data processing. 2. Vendor must provide daily production confirmation reports. This report should contain the following details, at a minimum: Number of bills received for processing Number of bills printed Number of suppressions Postage presort breakdown including actual rates Inserts used and insert counts Total $ value of bills contained in data file 3. Vendor must provide an NCOA or ACS Move update report that includes customer name, account number, previous address, updated (new) address. CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

10 Project Cost: Data Processing, Printing, and Mailing Provide a cost proposal for print and mail development, implementation, and ongoing maintenance. This section adheres to the provided table form. Identify all costs to be billed to the project, including out-ofpocket expenses such as travel and office support. Initial and Ongoing Professional Services Fees One-Time Implementation Fee Includes all phases of the project prior to the production phase: initial programming, testing, and implementation. Professional Services Charges For requested programming changes after initial implementation. Cost of Materials Statement Paper Stock Cost 8.5x11, 24 pound paper stock with a micro-perforation, and template as shown in Exhibit B. Outgoing Envelope Cost Pre-return addressed single window #10 envelope in green, blue, pink and grey. Return Envelope Cost Pre-addressed single window #9 envelope in green, blue, pink and grey. Flat Envelope Cost Applies only to multi-page bills that do not fit in the standard single window #10 envelope. $ One-Time Fee $ Per Hour $ Per Sheet $ Per Envelope $ Per Envelope $ Per Envelope Service Fees Per Page Bill and Letter Service Fee Includes file transmission, data processing, presorting, duplex printing, mail preparation (folding, inserting the bill or letter page and the return envelope into an outgoing envelope), and delivery to the USPS. Additional pages priced at the same rate (envelopes are priced separately in the materials section above). Please provide pricing for each type of printing listed. The number 1 means black or grey. 1/0 represents one color (black), simplex printing. 2/2 represents two color (black plus one highlight color) duplex printing. 4/1 is full color printed on the front, greyscale on the back. 4/4 is full color duplex printing. Inline Inserting Printing, per page price for inserts printed on demand as additional pages. Handwork Fee For householding when there are too many pages to be inserted by machine. For example if multiple bills are grouped together into one envelope or box to reduce the average per page postage amount. These high page count sets can either be inserted into a #10 envelope, flat 9x12 envelope or a box. Optional Marketing Insert Fee Charge for inserting client-provided marketing insert. For example: Newsletter. $ $ $ $ $ Per Page 1/0 or 1/1 2/0, 2/1, or 2/2 3/1, 3/2, or 3/3 4/1 4/4 $ Per Inline Insert $ Per package $ Per Additional Insert CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

11 Optional Move Update Service Fees NCOALink or ACS service. Optional Archive Fee Images must be stored in PDF format for 24 months. Optional Electronic Inserts Cost to include image of the inserts in the archive PDF Optional USPS Outbound Mail Tracking Cost to provide outbound mail tracking $ Per Reported Change $ Per Archived PDF $ Per Insert $ Per Mail Piece CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

12 EXHIBIT A: INDEMNIFICATION AND INSURANCE General Liability Insurance The vendor shall obtain comprehensive general liability insurance from one or more insurance companies licensed to do business in the State of California with a "Best Guide" rating of "B" or better or, in the alternative, an unlicensed company or companies with a rating of "A," which provides coverage for bodily injury, personal injury and property damage liability in the amount of at least $1,000,000 combined single limit for each occurrence. Said insurance coverage shall be evidenced by a certificate of insurance with policy endorsements and shall be executed by an authorized official of the insurer(s). In addition to the limits of coverage provided hereinabove, policy endorsements shall be attached to the certificate that also provide that: "The City of Red Bluff, its officers, boards and commissions, and members thereof, its employees and agents are covered as additional insureds as respects to any liability arising out of the activities of the named insured." (B) "The insurance coverages afforded by this policy shall be primary insurance as respects to the City of Red Bluff, its officers, officials and employees. Any insurance or self-insurance maintained by the City of Red Bluff, its officers, officials or employees shall be in excess of the insurance afforded to the named insured by this policy and shall not contribute to any loss." (C) An unqualified statement that "The insurer will provide to the city at least thirty (30) days prior notice of cancellation or material change in coverage." Professional Liability Insurance The vendor shall obtain professional liability (errors and omissions) insurance, with a minimum $2,000,000 limit, from one or more insurance companies licensed to do business in the State of California with a "Best Guide" rating of "B" or better or, in the alternative, an unlicensed company or companies with a rating of "A" providing coverage for services rendered to city under this Agreement. Said insurance coverage shall be evidenced by a certificate of insurance and shall be executed by an authorized official of the insurer(s). EXHIBIT B: BILL AND ENVELOPE SAMPLES CITY OF RED BLUFF RFP FOR DATA PROCESSING, 2

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