Digital Services - Development Capability Partner

Tender description

Summary of the work A team is needed that can build and implement Chelmsford City Council's digital services within the MS Dynamics 365 platform to agreed work packages. This work will include implementation and documentation of Chelmsford City Council 'software factory' development process and provide full training and coaching for the existing internal team. Expected Contract Length 18 months Latest start date 04/04/17 Budget Range £0.5 - £1.6m Why the Work is Being Done We require up front delivery support to help implement our digital strategy and 3-year roadmap. Our aim is to exit legacy contracts and technology and to implement a Microsoft Cloud (Dynamics 365 and Azure) platform-based environment. This will mean retirement of most, if not all, legacy applications alongside delivery of new features and the transition to a digital services delivery model. We are seeking a single supplier to support us in growing internal digital capability and help design and deliver early proofs of concept during an 18-month period. The delivery pipeline includes a number of time and cost-boxed work packages. Problem to Be Solved The Council's in-house team does not have the capacity or the capabilities to fully design and manage end-to-end digital services as yet. Within 18 months, we want to transition to a fully functioning 'software factory' approach having been trained in Microsoft Cloud technologies with initial services having been designed and configured in the Dynamics 365 platform. A range of skill sets will therefore be needed throughout an 18 month pipeline of work that will provide the technical design and development skills to support a single Dynamics 365 platform, deliver business process and service improvements and fully documented documentation and training. Who Are the Users As a Customer Services Manager I need to manage complex customer information with all customer details in one place so that important issues aren't missed. As a resident of Chelmsford, I need to be able to see what services are on offer from my Council so that I can request these through my phone or online As a member of staff I need to be able to access my documents and email whereever I am so that I'm not limited to being at my desk to work. Early Market Engagement We have conducted early market engagement in a number of ways. This early market engagement has helped shape our thinking and given us a broad understanding of the different models we might adopt to deliver our digital roadmap. We have looked at a full spectrum of solutions from complete outsourcing of our technical requirements to a mixed economy of internal and external skills. We have met with a number of Microsoft partners. We have now reached the conclusion that the best all round solution is for us to build internal capability by using specialists alongside our internal teams to allow us total control of the implementation and costs associated and to assure a long term legacy for the Council. Work Already Done The digital vision and strategy has been approved by the Management team and the investment case will be delivered for full Cabinet approval in April. Our in-house team have begun scoping work on a number of proofs of concept including business analysis. We do not require digital transformation strategy skills as part of this brief. Existing Team Chelmsford City Council's existing team is structured along traditional local government ICT lines. Our team consists of service management, system administrators, GIS and data experts and security and infrastructure support. There is little or no experience in cloud based digital service delivery or in user experience, business process re-engineering or software development. Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • Have demonstrable experience of implementing 'software factory' processes and documentation • Have demonstrable experience of successfully understanding user needs and designing services to support them. • Have demonstrable experience of implementing a whole platform approach with minimum integrations to legacy applications • Have demonstrable experience of user centric development and how this is balanced against business and technology considerations. • Have demonstrable experience of building digital solutions for the leisure, arts and heritage industry within an MS Dynamics environment • Have demonstrable experience in MS Dynamics 365 solutions • Have demonstrable experience of working with Microsoft technologies including Azure, Office 365 etc • Have demonstrable experience of successfully developing using a pragmatic Agile and other programme methodologies and practices. • Have demonstrable experience of supplying cross-functional agile teams to deliver defined outcomes • Have demonstrable experience of successfully and collaborative working with existing teams, coachingt and mentoring, particularly those with limited agile development experience • Have demonstrable expertise in automated testing and DevOps approaches • Have demonstrable depth of resource and expertise in supplying the following roles: delivery lead, agile BA, developer, QA, lead developer/architect • Have demonstrable experience in data migration, particularly from legacy systems commonly used in local government Nice to Haves • Have demonstrable experience of successfully and collaboratively working, coaching and sharing knowledge with Public Sector and commercial client teams • Have demonstrable experience of scaling up and down teams within the delivery pipeline • Have demonstrable experience of providing a broad range of digital skill sets beyond technical skills • Have demonstrable experience in data compliance and security Work Location Civic Centre, Duke St, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 1JE Working Arrangments We would expect full-time engagement from our chosen supplier team to meet our desired outcomes, and we particularly value the capacity to mobilise resources quickly and flexibly. We value very highly co-located integrated teams and face-to-face dialogue in the spirit of the service standard. We are seeking a supplier that can scale up and down through the life of the contract. We will expect the supplier to deliver to our agreed work packages c 15 across the project. Travel and expenses remain the responsibility of the supplier. Security Clearance Not required Additional T&Cs Standard call off contract No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Ability to mobilise team quickly and in line with agreed work packages • Technical solution • Approach and methodology • Proposed team structure • How the approach meets Chelmsford City Council's needs • Depth of knowledge and experience in latest versions of Microsoft Dynamics/AX and Azure • Approach to training and development of the in-house team Cultural Fit Criteria • Demonstrate a willingness to coach and mentor the team alongside their specialist role • Demonstrate willingness to continually articulate the benefits of our approach • Demonstrate desire to leave a sustainable legacy (documentation, cultural change etc) • Be flexible • Be collaborative and generous with their knowledge and experience • Be resilient in the face of resistance to change Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Hi With the scaling up and down of staff and the high flexibility requirements, would the council be interested in an independent Digital QA to test the finished product at a technical level? We test that all specifications have been met. Currently being use by CCS on TP2? We certainly have a requirement for QA and testing throughout, but we'd like to see this included as an integral part of the programme and you should consider this in any response. 2. Dial in details for our conference call 11.30am 8th March. Conference call details:UK landline: 0844 4 73 73 73UK mobile: 8 73 73Your PIN: 266283 3. Is this Dynamics 365 opportunity Operations (formerly Dynamics AX) or Sales or Service (formerly CRM) The latest version of Dynamics 365 integrates these functions that were previously AX and CRM. We are using the Enterprise plan (Plans 1 and 2) which includes as standard: Customer Service, Operations, Project Service Automation, Marketing, Sales with Field Service to be added shortly. 4. Hi. Can I confirm that for next Thursday we only need to submit our answers to the questions in this application? What are next steps after that for preferred supplier? When will we need to present proposed project costs? That's correct. We aren't asking you to to give individual project costs at this stage without having more detail on what each project entails. We will assess the value for money criteria based on your proposed approach to answering our requirements ie how you demonstrate that you will be able to meet the overall requirements within the timescales. The next steps for the preferred supplier will then be to enter a discussion about the detailed outcomes we require for each work package and the affordability of these within the Council's budget. 5. Can you please provide a rough overview of the applications estate? i.e. how many applications, overview of the current application architecture and host platforms? We estimate over 200 individual applications at the moment, but a smaller number that are used across the Council estate. These include Civica's Comino (document management +), iDox Uniform, iTrent for HR, ESRI, Academy for Revs and Bens and Capita for finance. With a few exceptions, these are hosted on premise. 6. Please could you provide an outline of the scope / content breakdown of the 15 work packages? If they are not broken down in the work packages, could you also provide what Services are in scope? We are in the process of scoping the work packages, but we are defining these as 'capability drops', for example to configure a booking system or a case management system, or standard forms template. Once we have built/configured a standard capability it can then be adapted for use by other services. All services are in scope and include: Service requests, customer service platform, a customer account/dashboard, leisure management, theatre bookings, case management, taking payments, Planning applications etc. 7. Please could we have a list of all legacy systems intended for replacement and data migration? Plus a list of all legacy systems anticipated to require integration? There are over 200 applications that we will be replacing within Dynamics 365, but it's important to note that this is not simply an exercise in data migration and integration (although there will be a transition period of parallel running). We have listed above some of the larger, more complex systems that the Council uses. The key for us is to define new user-driven digital experiences, re-engineer the processes that sit behind them, design the Dynamics solutions and work out how best to migrate our existing data with minimum integrations. 8. Please could you confirm if the Council would accept part of the services being sub-contracted to a third party supplier (a subsidiary of and fully owned by our business)? Yes, where this is in line with the standard requirements in the Digital Outcomes and Specialists 2 call off contract and you can demonstrate that this will meet our needs to the desired standard.