Awarded to Eden Smith Consulting Ltd

Start date: Saturday 9 November 2019
Value: £99,200
Company size: SME

VisitBritain / VisitEngland

VisitBritain / VisitEngland Data Strategy

19 Incomplete applications

13 SME, 6 large

22 Completed applications

16 SME, 6 large

• Published: Tuesday 9 July 2019
• Deadline for asking questions: Tuesday 16 July 2019 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Tuesday 23 July 2019 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: The work will be made up of 4 separate components which will be split into separate lots for the purpose this tender;; Lot 1 –Exec Education and buy-in; Lot 2 -Data governance and support for existing projects; Lot 3 –Development of Data Strategy ; Lot 4 –Data architecture and options analysis
• Latest start date: Thursday 15 August 2019
• Expected contract length: 18 months
• Location: London
• Organisation the work is for: VisitBritain / VisitEngland
• Budget range: Maximum budget of £100k split over the current and next financial year

About the work

• Why the work is being done: VisitBritain/VisitEngland play a unique and critical role leading the growth of tourism and providing expertise, leadership and insight to government and the tourism industry. With a mission to build on tourism’s record of success, to make tourism more successful and productive for the economy. ; ; Therefore, this work is being commissioned to develop a data strategy for how VisitBritain/VisitEngland will achieve this ambition and initiate a data programme of work to implement the strategy.
• Problem to be solved: The problem VisitBritain/VisitEngland faces is how to build consensus on releasing value from the existing data landscape. Moreover, there is a need for an integrated approach to releasing the value from data.; ; To address this problem we plan to initiate 4 pieces of work, however at this stage it is not clear that the final activities in the plan are definitely needed, hence the tender has been broken down into 4 lots, after completing lot 1 and 2 for example it may become evident that lot 3 & 4 are not needed
• Who the users are and what they need to do: As a senior manager or Director I need to understand how data can assist the delivery of the 5-year strategy, so that we fulfil an aspiration to be more data-centric, to increase online presence and use data in a live and dynamic way to deliver for customers, support decision making, moving from backwards looking reporting to predictive, agile and insight driven organisation providing leadership to the tourism industry.; ; As a data programme manager I need a tools options analysis associated with the data architecture, so that an assessment can be made about the limitations and cost trade-offs of the options.
• Early market engagement: Findings from the early market engagement have shown we need the following work ; Lot 1 ; The activity involved in this lot will involve the planning, preparation and execution of a workshop with the Directors. The activity will be performed in conjunction with the core VisitBritain team.; Lot 2; Initiate principles of structured approaches to data management and governance, finding approaches to embed data governance and best practise initially into key initiatives such a eCRM, Data Visualisation and the development of a new tourism product exchange platform. The other activity required as part of this lot is to complete a data risk assessment and identify mitigating actions to the risks, and provide direction on engaging with the rest of the organisation.; Lot 3 ; Develop the data vision and strategy to provide the direction and priorities for improved data management. Focusing on the data vision and ambition aligned with the 5-year strategy, understanding the current state maturity and identifying the building blocks and people related change to transform the data landscape. ; Lot 4; Develop an outline of the technical and operational solution that will enable VisitBritain/VisitEngland to implement the strategy.
• Any work that’s already been done: As part of a problem investigation activity performed in March 2019 the following problem areas or data related changes have emerged, these are categorised into the areas of ; ; 1. Decision making -ensuring the provision of trusted, integrated and robust data to support decision making; 2. Partnerships –Developing further mutual exploitation of data, information and insight across the partnership networks; 3. Commerciality -Using data more effectively to drive a commercial focus to activities can improve efficiency; 4. Efficiencies –removing duplication of data, silos of inaccessible data, poor data quality and high levels of manual processing of data
• Existing team: The supplier will be working with the core data programme team, including Head of Digital, Head of Analytics, Data Programme Manager, Head of PMO, Marketing Director, Business Services Director
• Current phase: Not applicable

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: VisitBritain/VisitEngland, ; 4th Floor, ; 151 Buckingham Palace Road, ; London, ; SW1W 9SZ
• Working arrangements: Vendors will need to build a good relationship with senior management, especially to present the value of data (including relevant case studies and best practice examples) to VisitBritain/VisitEngland Directors to ensure the data strategy is prioritised through the business planning process for development, with the appropriate resources allocated to ensure buy in and successful adoption across all. This process should include participation of Directors to build a sense of ownership and accountability for the Data Strategy. Directors should then be able to cascade the strategy to their teams, and senior managers able to have data conversations with their teams

Additional information

• Additional terms and conditions: We will use the standard terms and conditions.; ; We intend to use just 1 company for all 4 lots, however we would want to receive an individual quote per lot.

Skills and experience

Buyers will use the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience to help them evaluate suppliers’ technical competence.

• Essential skills and experience:
  • Experience of delivering similar projects
  • Evidence of recognised industry thought leadership around data
  • Proven experience in executive visioning and working with executives and gaining executive buy-in
  • Proven experience delivering options based on an analysis of potential tools that should be used to support at data strategy and options around their implementation
  • Experience of preparation and delivery of executive workshops
  • Proven experience around data governance and implementing governance
  • Previous experience using frameworks to build a strategy and roadmap
  • Ability to demonstrate what tools or models can be used for assessing VisitBritain’s data maturity
  • Ability to deliver a conceptual architecture to meet lot 4 requirements
  • Ability to deliver a logical architecture to meet lot 4 requirements (I.e. detail of systems but not data fields)

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 3
• Proposal criteria:
  • Ability to demonstrate what tools or models can be used for assessing VisitBritain’s data maturity
  • Skills and expertise to deliver all 4 lots
  • Evidence of previous projects that are similar in scope, industry or sector
  • Approach and methodology
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Display the ability of working with executives to demonstrate value of data
  • Global travel / tourism experience
  • Exceptional stakeholder engagement skills
  • Example of a similar project in public sector experience
  • Share knowledge and experience with VisitBritain/VisitEngland team members, in order to up-skill the team
• Payment approach: Fixed price
• Assessment methods:
  • Written proposal
  • Presentation
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  60%

  Cultural fit

  20%

  Price

  20%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. noting the 4 "Lots", are all Lots to be awarded to one Supplier? Would another description of "Lots" referred to be Work Packages or SoWs?: Yes, all Lots are to be awarded to one supplier. A lot could be referred to as a Work Package
• 2. Can the successful supplier also bid for any future work/solutions, etc?: Yes, the successful supplier can also bid for future work
• 3. You refer to a Directors workshop in Lot 1. Can you confirm if there is a set date for this workshop to take place?: This is scheduled for 9th,10th September
• 4. 1. What are their current ways/tools for tracking the strategy initiative?2. How many users contribute on that tool / how many individuals are involved to carry out and deliver the initiative?3. Is the project to be delivered 100% in London?: 1. The strategy initiative is being tracked through reporting to a Digital Governance board; 2. Currently this report has an audience of 12-15; 3. The project will be based in London however some stakeholders are based in different countries
• 5. What roles they are you expecting and what size do you envisage the team being?: Roles are are looking for will be in consultancy capacity, there is no upper or lower limit to the team size
• 6. What is the rationale for the 18 month period for this piece of work?: 18 months is the upper limit, it is expected the period will be between 12-18 months. This also allows VisitBritain/VisitEngland to spread the costs over 2 financial years
• 7. Can you confirm the size of the existing data programme team and whether there is an incumbent in post?: There is no incumbent in post.; The existing team is made up of 9 team members
• 8. What is the size of community that you’d expect us to engage with across the organisation?: 10 Senior Managers (Directors and CEO); Project team of around 10-15 staff
• 9. What benefit does Visit Britain expect to unlock through this project?: The benefit VisitBritain/VisitEngland would like to get is building consensus on releasing value from the existing data landscape, and consequently building an integrated approach to releasing the value from data. ; We want to be able to answer the following questions;; - How do we ensure that data is gathered consistently?; - How do we know what data means?; - How do we use it to make decisions or act?; - How do we ensure that data/insight is appropriately accessible to all who need it?
• 10. Why is Visit Britain struggling to reach a consensus on digital strategy?: The focus of this work is more on the data strategy than digital strategy, however, challenges include ;; 1. Data silos across the organisation ; 2. Limited understanding of the value of data sharing data across teams; 3. Low levels of data skills; 4. Lack of governance around data and data standards
• 11. If the selected partner makes strategic recommendations – will they also be considered to implement said recommendations?: If they have the technical capability to perform the implementation, yes. However this would be a separate tender
• 12. What is the expected value of your data? Have initial values been calculated?: We have not calculated the value of our data, at this stage it would be difficult to estimate the value
• 13. Who is ultimately answerable for this project and the business owner?: The project has joint sponsorship between the Business Services Director and Marketing Director. They are both the business owners
• 14. Given that the exec workshop will be on the 9th/10th September, when will you be appointing the successful company?: We aim to appoint the successful company by mid-August
• 15. Can you provide indicative timescales for completion of each of the 4 lots?: Lot 1 - Mid August - End September; Lot 2- September - December; Lot 3 - December - April 2020; Lot 4 - December - April 2020
• 16. What are your expected data volumes and number of sources?: We do not have a calculation on volumes, however we have about 50 social media channels and 12 web channels.; There are also other corporate applications such as Events Management Systems, CRM, Email marketing tools, HR system, Finance System that will form part of the sources in scope
• 17. Who did VisitBritain conduct the Early Market Engagement Project with? Is that company also responding to this tender?: VisitBritain/VisitEngland did a piece of work with Carruthers and Jackson in March of this year, which was a consultancy piece following a tender process.; ; We do not know who is responding to this tender until the closing date
• 18. What are the typical data types we might expect to receive?: Types of data will be;; ; -Structured, an example of which is data in our e-commerce database; -Semi structure , example is SML type files; -Unstructured, an example is marketing campaign assets, such as video or images
• 19. We understand some previous work has been carried out by Carruthers and Jackson in March 2019, can we have sight of this early work?: The work carried out by Carruthers and Jackson was used to inform and shape this tender. There is no further information in the report by Carruthers and Jackson that would be of additional use for applicants for this tender. ; We cannot share the report due to the IP associated with the report.