Awarded to Olive Jar Digital

Start date: Wednesday 1 May 2019
Value: £1,198,980
Company size: SME

Department for Education (DfE)

Get into Teaching Information Service (GiTiS) CRM: Live Public Beta - maintenance and development

8 Incomplete applications

5 SME, 3 large

6 Completed applications

5 SME, 1 large

• Published: Monday 18 February 2019
• Deadline for asking questions: Monday 25 February 2019 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Monday 4 March 2019 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: Live Public Beta phase: a multi-disciplinary, co-located agile team required to develop and maintain a CRM service, which will be used to offer support and encouragement, to people considering getting into the teaching profession.
• Latest start date: Monday 15 April 2019
• Expected contract length: Initial completion date of February 2020, with an option to extend by a further 6 months.
• Location: North West England
• Organisation the work is for: Department for Education (DfE)
• Budget range: The maximum budget is £800K (exc VAT) for the initial period of the contract until 31 January 2020.; The maximum additional budget for any extension for from 1 February 2020 until 31 July is £480K (exc VAT).; Funding beyond 01 February 2020 is subject to internal approvals.

About the work

• Why the work is being done: DfE is responsible for ensuring that there are sufficient teachers throughout the country. Teacher recruitment is challenging, and a top education priority.; ; To this aim, we run the Get into Teaching Information Service – this combines direct marketing (email and SMS) with contact centre services and adviser support.; ; We’ve built a new CRM and aim to launch this as a live Public Beta at the end of March 2019. This service will help us better understand and support candidates for teacher training. It will also: ; • improve data processing; ; • increase the flexibility of our approach; and ; • enable efficiencies.
• Problem to be solved: We are seeking a supplier with the skills and capability to maintain and develop the live Public Beta service from 1 May 2019 and to transition the support and maintenance to an internal team. ; ; We have a potential backlog of improvements which will need to be further researched and prioritised. These include: ; • enabling users to self-serve for reporting, analysis and insight; ; • enabling call centre agents to be able to transfer live calls to external advisers by integrating with a third party platform; ; • Integrating the CRM with webchat and other services.
• Who the users are and what they need to do: The CRM will support the following user needs:; ; As a contact centre, I need to offer inbound, outbound and one to one advisory services, so that candidates are supported and encouraged to apply. ; ; As a DfE manager, I need data on user engagement and success so that I can make strategic decisions on teacher recruitment. ; ; As a Direct Marketer, I need to deliver email, SMS and outbound call campaigns, so that candidates are well informed and encouraged to apply. ; ; As an Event Manager, I need to monitor interest and quality of events, so that I can measure the event success.
• Any work that’s already been done: We worked previously with Olive Jar during the Discovery, Alpha and the Beta Build stages.; ; We are on track to launch a Release 1.0 of the Public Beta CRM Service on 31 March 2019 and Olive Jar will support and stabilise the service in the first month of its operation and handover to any incoming supplier.; ; Release 1.0 was developed in accordance with the Technology Code of Practice and the GDS service standards.; ; Shortlisted suppliers will receive a detailed information pack containing further information.
• Existing team: DfE will provide: ; Senior Responsible Owner ; Deputy Service Owner ; Product Manager ; User Support Agents ; ; The supplier is expected to provide the team roles required to maintain and develop the live Public Beta service to meet GDS service standards. For example, user researcher, delivery manager, developer etc.
• Current phase: Beta

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: Co-located working from DfE's Manchester office; Piccadilly Gate, Store Street, Manchester, M1 2WD.; ; Some travel to other DfE sites, and the call centre (Bristol and Manchester) to meet users is expected.; ; Expenses must be included in the contract sum as there is no separate budget for this.
• Working arrangements: This is a project that has been delivered in an agile way, meeting GDS service standards and in accordance with DfE programme, architectural, technical and security principles, standards and governance.; ; The supplier will be expected to continue delivering the project in this way.; ; This will be a live service, therefore technical support may be required, out of core hours.; ; We will manage the project using Statements of Work, one per product release, each specifying outcomes that must be delivered on a capped time and materials basis.
• Security clearance: Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) is required for all team members. This will need to be in place before the team starts. ; There will be handling of individual level and aggregate level data which is official sensitive. ; The supplier will also need to be compliant with DfE's Departmental Security Standards.

Additional information

• Additional terms and conditions: All IPRs (as defined) in the Project-Specific IPRs and the Deliverables shall vest in the Buyer unconditionally and immediately upon their creation.

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:
  • Significant experience of developing a Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM system that has met user needs through a user-centric/UX design.
  • Significant experience of building CRM services using Microsoft Azure cloud.
  • Experience of integrating a CRM service with contact/call centre services, and other external APIs, such as; GOV.UK Notify, SendGrid etc.
  • Demonstrable experience of working in an agile way, including building and working from a backlog, reprioritising and working with stakeholders to deliver incremental value.
  • Evidence of supporting a live service that requires service support out of core hours (e.g. evenings or weekends).
  • Significant experience of delivering a live Public Beta service in an agile way, and in accordance with the Technical Code of Practice, including the Government Digital Standard (GDS) (https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/service-standard).
  • Demonstrable evidence of assessing and mitigating security and privacy issues and ensuring GDPR compliance.
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • Knowledge of DfE digital services and the department’s architectural approach.
  • Evidence of ability to communicate progress effectively, to engage a wide set of users across government audiences including senior level stakeholders in Show and Tells and other key meetings.

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 4
• Proposal criteria:
  • Demonstrate strategy to identify and manage risks and dependencies for a live Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, hosted on a Microsoft Azure platform, with a user centric design.
  • Proposed team structure and expertise, including how the team will work with DfE team members and justification for each role.
  • Proposed approach and estimated timings for delivering the service backlog, demonstrating flexibility and ability to pivot resource in response to service issues/outages and how value for money will be achieved.
  • Demonstrate plan for handover, including knowledge transfer, ways of working, gaining familiarity with the existing systems.
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Experience of working within government departments that are yet to fully embrace agile ways of working, or are new to digital delivery.
  • Experience of working in multidisciplinary Agile teams within Government.
  • Experience of working with operational delivery and policy colleagues, and communicating effectively with key stakeholders and users.
• Payment approach: Capped time and materials
• Assessment methods:
  • Written proposal
  • Presentation
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  70%

  Cultural fit

  10%

  Price

  20%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. The co-located team that will be enabled, is this requirement to have the team centrally based in one location or would a remote function work with weekly/ bi-weekly face to face meetings?: There is a requirement that the team will be centrally based in the DfE Manchester office. Some remote working will be acceptable as an exception, with prior agreement by the DfE Product Manager, and as long as project outcomes are not affected.
• 2. Is the current instance of Dynamics 365 hosted on Azure (cloud SaaS) or does DfE have its own VM instance within Azure IaaS?: DfE has its own VM instance in Azure IaaS.
• 3. Is there any requirements for further user research within the GiTiS CRM project?: There is a continued need to gather and act upon user research, particularly in the early period of live service.
• 4. What Marketing solution has been used within CRM to achieve the outbound email and event management processes?: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing App.
• 5. Will the maintenance activities regarding BAU system be included in the SOWs or will the SOWs be for additional backlog development?: The SOWs will include both maintenance activities and additional backlog development.
• 6. Is the Digital Agency that implemented the Alpha & Private BETA phases expected to bid for the Beta to Live?: During a live procurement, we are not in a position to know or comment on whether the incumbent is planning to bid.
• 7. "Knowledge of DfE digital services and the department’s architectural approach."Could the DfE provide documents with details about DfE's digital services and the architectural approach?: DfE digital services should follow a consistent architectural approach where possible. We prefer Ruby on Rails applications but accept C# or Node.JS. We host on a DfE instance of Azure Cloud Platform using AppService, their PaaS. We store our code on Github and promote builds into Azure using either Travis or Azure Devops. We expect data to be hosted in an Azure managed database such as postgres. We prefer a microservices architecture based on RESTful API's for more complex services.; Shortlisted suppliers will be provided more information, in advance of the written proposal and presentation stage.
• 8. Is there any integrated telephony solution? If so what is this and how is it used within the solution?: The supplier of our contact centre service uses a telephony solution called 'Avaya' - we will not be directly integrating with Avaya, instead the Dynamics 365 CRM will integrate with a piece of middleware called 'TP Workspace' which will then integrate with Avaya. The integration allows inbound and outbound call agents to make and receive calls to and from candidates.