Replatforming City Lit's website from Magento 1 to Magento 2

Tender description

Summary of the work We're London's most popular adult education college (over 5000 courses/60,000 enrolments p.a). We need to replatform our Magento1 website to Magento2 Commerce, and provide ongoing support for BAU and development. We're passionate about delivering an outstanding, frictionless UX for students, alongside simplifying processes, integrations and bespoke code for internal users. Expected Contract Length 2 years. (Go live in May 2020 and then on-going support for BAU and additional features thereafter). Latest start date Tuesday 1 October 2019 Budget Range Up to £160k in year 1 for the replatform (inc VAT). In year 2, up to £160k (inc VAT) for the completion of the replatform. Why the Work is Being Done Our Magento 1 platform will be desupported in June 2020, meaning we need to migrate to M2 (Enterprise/commerce version). This also gives us a fantastic opportunity to make use of the functionality and features of M2 to provide our users with an improved, personalised, frictionless online journey, from searching, browsing, to buying to reviewing a course. Problem to Be Solved We need to migrate our existing processes, bespoke code and third party integrations into M2. Some elements will require a simpler 'lift and shift' approach, whereas others will need rebuilding completely. We welcome this as we've found that ongoing development is complex, time-consuming and expensive, partly due to: - a complex integration with our student records system: Tribal ebs. - a complicated checkout due to our data collection for our funders - bespoke code in Magento admin to enable bespoke business processes and flexible MOTO part payments. We also want an easier way to make changes to our website in-house. Who Are the Users We've over 100 user stories so below reflects a small selection: - As a student, I can browse, search, book and pay for a course online. - As a Management Information Services (MIS) user, I can see and manage full data synchronisation between Magento and ebs, for customers, courses, orders, payments and inventory. - As customer services, I can manage a full history of orders and payments, take bookings and full/partial payments via Magento admin. - As a marketing user, I can change landing pages myself without the need for a web developer, e.g. format, change image, update content. Work Already Done As we are migrating from M1 to M2, and not rebuilding our site from scratch, we intend to keep our IA as is. We have recently completed some work on UX, CRO and have rebranded within the last year so we anticipate that UI and UX work will be at a minimum. Existing Team Our project team comprises of our in-house marketing team with knowledge/experience in UX, CRO, web content, email campaigns, paid search and performance marketing. The successful agency will need to work with other internal users and stakeholders: - Management Information Systems Staff - Enrolments/Student Experience - Academic/departmental staff We will have an in-house project manager to help coordinate sprint planning and day-to-day contact, and we work with a separate agency which manages our SEO. The appointed agency may also need to work alongside our third party app suppliers to manage these integrations, e.g. Tribal, Stripe, Zendesk, SLI Systems, Drupal, dotdigital. Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Have experience of migrating platforms from Magento 1 to Magento 2 for clients. • Have experience in developing websites using Magento 2 Commerce. • Have experience of delivering large-scale websites as part of a large multidisciplinary agile team with a full complement of roles: IA, UX, PMs, technical development and UI design. • Have experience of providing a flexible digital product that our internal teams can update and build upon in terms of UX, UI and content to accommodate evolving business requirements. • Have experience of integrating Magento 2 with complex third party apps and databases through APIs and bespoke data feeds. • Have experience of reviewing, adapting and creating simple and clean, tailored code to manage bespoke business processes within the Magento 2 backend. Work Location Our team is based at City Lit, 1-10 Keeley Street, London, WC2B 4BA Working Arrangments We are seeking a web / digital development agency with whom we can work in a fully collaborative manner to achieve the defined outcomes. We anticipate a mixture of off-site and on-site working, with regular face to face and conference call meetings taking place. A London-based agency would be our preference. We would like to embrace agile work practices, with work taking place in regular sprints, and incremental elements delivered, tested, and signed off. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Relevance of proposed technical solution • How the approach/solution will drive better engagement, UX, and improve conversion rates • Demonstrate agile working practices/environment using good management practices/platforms e.g. JIRA • Demonstrate relevant skills and expertise of the team and ability to work as a collaborative partnership • Estimated timeframes: proposed programme for a migration go-live date of May 2020 • Relevance of identified risks and proposals for mitigating against them • Demonstrate how the project will be kept on track, meet requirements and delivered to time and to budget. • How the approach or solution meets internal user needs • How the approach to testing, quality assurance and ongoing support meets user needs Cultural Fit Criteria • Demonstrate how you will work transparently, collaboratively and share your approach with us • Demonstrate how you will work with clients with different levels of technical expertise, including stakeholders at all levels throughout the project • Demonstrate how you will act as a ‘partner’/extension of City Lit's team: looking out for us, on our side and working to get the best interest for us • Demonstrate how you will seek actionable feedback from us Payment Approach Fixed price Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 15% Price 25% Questions from Suppliers 1. Are you fully committed to Magento 2 for the new platform, or are you open to exploring other suitable eCommerce platforms at the start of the project? We have already undertaken a discovery phase of exploring alternative eCommerce platforms to Magento and are now committed to migrating to Magento 2. 2. Could you confirm your expectations for submission at this stage?Do we need only complete the question in the 8 questions on the portal before the closing date of Monday 2 September?And then at a later point if we are lucky enough to be one of the 3 shortlisted supplies we need to submit:• written proposal• case study• reference• presentationor do you require a written proposal, with case studies and references to be submitted (if so how?) before the closing date of Monday 2 September? At this stage, we only need suppliers to address the criteria via the portal. After 2nd September, the shortlisted suppliers will need to submit their written proposal, case study, reference and presentation. We can provide more information/templates for this at the second stage.