Awarded to Digital Dragons Global Ltd

Start date: Friday 1 September 2017
Value: £25,000
Company size: SME

York St John University

Consultancy Services: Corporate Information Systems Data Mapping and Futures

10 Incomplete applications

9 SME, 1 large

20 Completed applications

19 SME, 1 large

• Published: Friday 21 April 2017
• Deadline for asking questions: Friday 28 April 2017 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Friday 5 May 2017 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: A Corporate Information Systems and Data mapping exercise, with recommendations for future action, is required. The exercise is required to define the systems used at York St John University, if and how they fit together, and their suitability.
• Latest start date: 22/05/2017
• Location: Yorkshire and the Humber
• Organisation the work is for: York St John University
• Budget range: A maximum budget of £25,000 inclusive of VAT and expenses is allowed for this work

About the work

• Why the work is being done: Corporate Information Systems is one of the themes being developed in the Digital Strategy for York St John University 2017-22. Our CIS landscape is unclear, diverse (including supplementary services around core CIS) and loosely integrated, reflecting years of incremental growth. The relationship between systems, data and business workflows is not wholly understood. This presents a significant business intelligence challenge, and leads to inconsistency in the interpretation of data, process inefficiency and problems in understanding where best to invest in the future.; A system mapping exercise is required to define the systems in use, how they fit together, and their suitability.
• Problem to be solved: Identify range of CIS in use, and hosting/management arrangements; Identify business processes involving workflow and data storage/manipulation outside of a CIS; To map these visually; Identify each system's primary business function ; Identify whether systems are fit for purpose; Identify upgrade paths for systems; Identify data entities and interfaces ; Identify areas of concern, duplication of effort, data integrity risks; ; Propose how issues identified should be addressed; Identify where systems should be linked; Identify opportunities for consolidation/combination of systems and where manual processes could be subsumed; Produce overarching systems roadmap for update/replacement; Provide indicative costings; Recommend technology direction to achieve the above
• Who the users are and what they need to do: As an institution, we need to understand our data and corporate systems landscape and be in a position to increase process efficiency and generate consistent, reliable and actionable business intelligence.
• Existing team: The supplier will be working alone, but will have access to process area expertise within the institution, and IT teams involved in corporate informations system management and development. The University also has project managers and business analysts who may work alongside the supplier.
• Current phase: Not started

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: York St John University; Lord Mayor's Walk; York; YO31 7EX
• Working arrangements: It is expected that the work will take place predominantly on site through face-to-face discussions and examination of systems, but some of the work may be completed remotely.

Additional information

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:
  • Have experience in analysing corporate information systems, data and workflows
  • Have experience of business process analysis and re-engineering
  • Have case studies or reference sites of similar works

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 7
• Proposal criteria:
  • Proposal Methodology
  • Prior Experience as an Organisation
  • Reference Sites and Case Studies
  • Experience and Skills of Specifically Proposed Staff
  • Value for Money
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Be willing to work collaboratively with in-house staff
  • Be comfortable working at all levels of the organisation to CEO level
  • Have some understanding of the specific range of systems and processes that apply in Higher Education
  • Be comfortable proposing revolutionary change to systems and processes if necessary
  • Can work in an environment which may not have all the answers - be comfortable with uncertainty and inertia
  • Is unafraid to make specific recommendations
• Payment approach: Fixed price
• Assessment methods:
  • Written proposal
  • Case study
  • Work history
  • Reference
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  45%

  Cultural fit

  20%

  Price

  35%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. 1. The output from this project will result in both a technical gap analysis, a business process/function gap analysis against future requirements and the mapping of existing systems. Is any one more important than the other?: Our order of priority is:; ; 1. Mapping of existing systems, data, integrations; 2. Technical gap analysis; 3. Recommendations based on the above two items; 4. Business process gap analysis; 5. Recommendations based upon (4)
• 2. 1. Have previous projects identified at a functional or organisational level a desired future direction or gap analysis for any of the applications currently in use and if so is this information available?: Previous projects have not established any desired future direction or state.
• 3. Where existing systems will not fit the intended future requirements is the vendor expected to identify replacements?: No, the vendor is not expected to identify specific replacement systems, future procurement exercises will select these from the market. The vendor is expected to advise on suitable approaches (best-of-breed versus consolidated ERP, technical measures that should be considered for integration and business intelligence, key features for new systems, etc)
• 4. Does an IT Technology Strategy document exist. When was it last updated? Is it available? Is an update expected as an output?: There is no such document in existence, though the University has some preference for managed/cloud/"as-a-service solutions". It is expected that this work produce recommendations on direction for future systems.
• 5. What are the current production systems, their versions, release dates and source vendor?: Too numerous to list in this answer, and to some degree this work is expected to help us catalogue these; however a non-comprehensive list of key systems in use are:; ; - Finance: Safe Topaz Financials; - HR: Bond; - Payroll: Safe EMS; - Student Records: Tribal SITS; - CRM: Hobsons Radius; - BI: Tableau; - Estates Management: Archibus; - Library Management System: Capita Alto; - ICT Helpdesk: Sunrise ITSM
• 6. Of the those [Corporate Information Systems], how many were developed in house or specifically under contract versus purchased off the shelf? Are these included in the project?: The majority of main corporate systems are commercial, off-the-shelf systems with in some cases tailoring and configuration to our working practices. Some minor business functions, and almost all integrations, are bespoke in-house developments. All of these are in scope of the project.
• 7. Has a project of this type been done previously, if so how long ago, what decisions were taken, what recommendations were implemented? Is this information available for review?: A project of this type has not been done before. We do have some systems documentation around the functionality of our systems, the data held in them, and the integrations between them, and this will be made available to the supplier to provide a starting point.
• 8. Are data, process maps and the report expected to be delivered in a specific product or format?: No, any reasonably standard, readable and comprehensible format which the University can take forward and maintain.
• 9. Can you provide an estimate of the number of CIS currently in use at the University?: There are around twelve major corporate information systems, plus an unknown number of small supplementary systems (e.g our job applications system is not a part of our HR system), bespoke developments, or business processes occurring outside of any formal system.
• 10. Do you have a target date for the completion of this exercise, given the start date of 22/05/2017 and the stated maximum budget of £25,000, inclsuive of VAT and expenses?: We would not expect the project to run for more than 6 months.
• 11. Can you make available a copy of your current Digital Strategy to potential bidders?: This document is a work in progress and cannot be released until it has been approved by the University's governance processes; unfortunately this will be after the closing date for this bid.
• 12. These exercises typically range from 4 weeks to 12 weeks depending on the number of stakeholders and scope of exploration. What would be the time frame you are looking at?: We have no specific timeframe in mind. The example given would be acceptable to us.
• 13. Could you elaborate on the vision for taking up this exercise. and the expected outcome in terms of the deliverable. We typically provide a asessment report with the "AS-IS", "TO-BE" architectures, 3 yr. roadmap, IT strategy and governence and also TOC/ROI as the case may be. What is the size of the stakeholders that would participate during the exploration phase (user workshops)? What are the deartments that might participate in this exercise? Are you expecting any business process re-engineering during this exercise? Do you want to also include the infrastructure (hardware) assets as a part of the scope?: The assessment report proposed would appear to meet the requirement.; Stakeholders expected to be included in consultation will include the current Applications Development and Management team and Projects/Business Analysis team (9 individuals), Directors of department (approximately 10) covering Finance, Registry, Student Recruitment, IT & Library, Estates and various other.; Proposals for business process re-engineering may be welcomed, the re-engineering need not be delivered within this engagement.; Hardware and infrastructure considerations are out of scope.
• 14. I note there are three questions to be answered, each with 100 words. Is this the only form of response, or are you also looking for an additional more detailed response?: The nature of the response is constrained by the digital marketplace system, over which we have no control. We hope to be able to follow up with promising bidders based on an initial evaluation of their submission through this site.
• 15. Would you be able to allocate a permanent member of your staff to act as assistant to the contractor of choice, please? Ideally, someone with overall knowledge of how your organization works.: We will allocate a single point of contact individual who can facilitate access to other specialists in the institution and provide background and institution-specific information. This would not be on a full-time dedicated basis.