Organisational/digital strategy and redesign of two pilot services

Tender description

Summary of the work Nottinghamshire County Council wishes to partner with an expert in designing services for the digital age in order to i) make significant financial savings and improve customer satisfaction in two pilot service areas, and ii) produce an exciting transformational organisational/digital strategy Expected Contract Length Up to 6 months Latest start date 13/03/2017 Budget Range Approximately £100k Why the Work is Being Done The Council needs to make savings and improve customer satisfaction. It wishes to take a design approach to transformation in order to make significant and accelerated progress to meet these key aims. It also wishes to pilot a service design methodology to make rapid improvements in two services (to be identified). This work will directly contribute to the Council's Strategic Plan. Problem to Be Solved Need for a strategic/design approach to transforming services and the wider organisation. Need to make significant financial savings to assist with £54m budget gap. Need for co-production with service users to ensure the best customer experience Who Are the Users As the chief executive, I need to make significant financial savings whilst also improving customer satisfaction - so that residents get best value for money from their council tax and have high satisfaction with services. As a service user, I need my needs to be met as quickly and easily as possible - so I can have the best quality of life Early Market Engagement Meetings have been held with three potential suppliers to discuss their approach and credentials in relation to: organisational design and transformation; digital development and improvements; and how service design has improved specific services. This included case studies of work which suppliers have undertaken for other organisations. This early market engagement has helped shape our thinking and shifted our focus from redesigning existing services to make them more efficient, to considering the art of the possible to redesign services end to end, back to front and in all channels. By truly putting the customer at the heart of defining the problem, this is expected to lead to the potential for more fundamental organisational transformation. Work Already Done Within the last year, the Council has recently completed its Digital First project which made improvements to key digital platforms (e.g. its website), channels (e.g. it’s social media profiles) and some customer journeys (e.g. report a pothole). Existing Team The supplier will be working with the Corporate Leadership Team, a range of in-house support services (e.g. Communications and Marketing Team) and two pilot services (to be confirmed). Working with additional suppliers at different stages of the process has not be ruled out depending on business needs Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • Proven track record of service design (6%) • Extent of success in use of various service design methodologies at each stage of the service design process - Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver (5%) • Evidence of user research, customer testing and co-production (4%) • Ability to find and deliver digital services and solutions that meet the GDS Digital Service Standard criteria (3%) • Coaching and development of senior leadership team and other in-house staff (6%) • Ability to produce a strategic/digital roadmap for a large, complex organisation (4%) • Evidence of financial savings achieved through service design (4%) • Evidence of end to end, integrated (front to back) and multi-channel/touchpoint delivery (3%) Nice to Haves • Evidence of delivering at scale (2%) • Experience of designing services for users with low digital literacy (2%) • Ability to prototype service improvements (3%) • Experience of holding innovation labs (2%) • Ability to engage with people at all levels of the organisation and different types of service users (2%) • Any added value the supplier will bring to the project (4%) Work Location County Hall, Loughborough Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham NG2 7QP Working Arrangments A large part of the work will require face to face delivery. If project requirements are met there is flexibility on how many days a week should be worked on site. The supplier will need to work in partnership and be co-located as required with a multi-disciplinary team and be willing to do a skills transfer to the organisation. The supplier will need to follow the GDS Service Manual (e.g. agile delivery aligned to scrum methodology). All reasonable travel and expenses costs should be accounted for in the contract price. Any additional expenses will require prior approval before being reimbursed. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Overall technical solution and approach - including high level delivery plan, approach, methods, timescales, risks, dependencies and quality (3%) • Proposed team structure - including CVs of key members (2%) • Reference contract and case study examples (2%) • Value for money - how the proposal will optimise costs and generate savings (3%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Approach to transfer of skills, knowledge and experience (5%) • Approach for working with co-located, multi-disciplinary team. Willingness to work with other suppliers if needed (1%) • Ability to engage and work with users at all levels internally and externally (1%) • Transparent and collaborative working when making decisions (1%) • Ability to solve complex problems (3%) • Willingness to challenge the status quo (2%) • Ability to develop digital services using agile methodologies (2%) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 15% Price 25% Questions from Suppliers 1. Please may I ask how much time will be required onsite? It is not possible to quantify in terms of hours as this will depend on the supplier’s proposal in terms of how they will deliver the outcomes required, but as mentioned in the specification we envisage the majority of the time will be required on site. 2. Please can I check how the early engagement was organised? Were these current suppliers? if these 3 suppliers have already been engaged, they may have a better understanding of your requirements then a new potential supplier to the project? Early engagement was not with current suppliers and was done on a fact-finding basis as part of researching digital transformation generally. The detailed project requirements and criteria were not used during the early market engagement, as the market engagement helped inform the nature of the project. It’s not possible to engage with all suppliers within the Digital Outcomes and Specialists framework, especially given resource and time constraints. The full project requirements and criteria have been made available to all suppliers under the Digital Outcomes and Specialists framework. 3. Does the work have to be carried out wholly onsite? No, but we envisage that the majority of work will need to be delivered on site – the nature of this will depend on the supplier’s proposal. 4. You mention that "Meetings have been held with three potential suppliers to discuss their approach and credentials" - will these three suppliers be eligible to bid for this requirement or are they potential partners for a larger package of work to deliver new digital services for you? The three suppliers were found through a general research process. Our understanding is that some are eligible to bid and some are not. The project being tendered is not currently intended to be part of a larger package of digital services work – the scope of this project is considered a large package to support council transformation/digital development. 5. Is the outcome of this opportunity purely focused on the design of the services in order to drive efficiency and improve customer experience; or, does it also include a review of the underlying IT infrastructure that supports that service and where financial savings can also be found? The primary focus of the work is on how we can redesign services in order to improve efficiency and customer experience. If this uncovers further potential for savings in IT infrastructure, this would also be looked at separately but does not fall within the scope of this work. 6. The documentation specifies in the section on Early Market Engagement that meetings have been held with three potential suppliers to discuss their approach and credentials. Can you confirm who those suppliers are and how their input has influenced this procurement? Please refer to the responses to questions 2 and 4 above. 7. How many citizens do you serve? We deliver 440 services to 796,200 people 8. Are you able to provide further information on the two services or likely areas? No further information is currently available 9. Is the approximate budget of £100k including VAT? The budget of approx. £100k excludes VAT 10. How do you currently measure customer satisfaction? The Council has an Annual Residents’ Satisfaction Survey. Many individual services have a variety of ways to measure customer satisfaction – whether through surveys, focus groups, social media engagement or other means 11. What is the data you have on the 2 existing services? E.g. numbers who use the services, different channels, drop-offs, cost to serve etc.? The existing two pilot services have not yet been identified 12. Do you receive regular customer feedback through any existing channels? Yes – the Council overall has a variety of channels for customer feedback including an Annual Residents’ Satisfaction Survey, customer service centre (telephone calls), social media channels etc. Many individual services have a variety of ways to measure customer satisfaction – whether through surveys, focus groups, social media engagement or other means 13. Will the 2 pilot services be linked (in the same service area) or are they completely separate? They are likely to be completely seperate 14. Would the selected vendor have access to a finance team/expert to develop financial modelling to evidence potential cost savings? Potentially – the Council’s financial team is likely to be involved in the project, however, direct access to such resource for financial modelling is not necessarily guaranteed 15. What type of team skills and number of internal teams/in-house staff are you considering in order to skill transfer? This will depend on the nature of the project as it evolves and the two pilots chosen, however could include (but not limited to) colleagues from areas of business such as transformation, digital, ICT, customer service centre etc 16. Do you expect to end up with a ready to go solution or alpha version prototype that demonstrates the experience? Given the scale of the project we would most likely expect an alpha version prototype, however we are keen to discuss the possibilities for accelerated delivery with the supplier contracted 17. Do you expect the chosen agency to deliver an alpha prototype of the service? See response to question 16 18. Do you require the vendor to explore the entire service offering in order to provide a digital strategy for that? We expect the vendor work with us to explore and understand an overview of the whole Council’s service offering in order to provide a corporate transformation/digital strategy – plus an in depth knowledge of the two pilot areas 19. Are you anticipating a digital strategy that creates a vision, or are you looking for actionable operation modelling and redesign? It would be ideal if the strategy contains all these elements. We would expect the chosen supplier to work with the Corporate Leadership Team to develop/create a vision