Student Intervention Platform/Open/PRO/2021

Tender description

The OU requires a Student Intervention Platform (SIP) to enable improved new student conversion and increased student retention through better targeted campaigns and interventions. There is no existing provider of a SIP, so this will be a new piece of technology that is being procured. Some existing technologies are in place at the OU that might be incorporated as part of a provider platform or proposal, including web analytics and personalisation software. The OU feel that technology platforms exist in the form of Marketing Automation (MA) and Multichannel Marketing Hubs (MMH) that could support the development of this end-to-end operational framework. Lot 1: The OU requires a Student Intervention Platform (SIP) to enable improved new student conversion and increased student retention through better targeted campaigns and interventions. This platform needs to support more efficient planning, development, execution and evaluation of interventions via the automation of workflow. This should be enabled through an intuitive point and click, non-technical user interface. Interventions will need to be coordinated in a consistent way across key communication channels, including the OU website, email, SMS, outbound calling and direct mail (DM). In addition, the platform needs to provide the basis for more personalised approach to interventions, allowing data science derived intelligence to be integrated into intervention activities alongside rules-based criteria. These data points should also be available to trigger interventions when important behaviours are detected, with dynamic content delivered based on profiles or target segments. The platform will also support the collection of effective web data capture, with different devices and IDs converted into a single "customer" record through identity management functionality. This data should be easily linked into wider analytical data sources to continuously refine subsequent interventions. There is no existing provider of a SIP, so this will be a new piece of technology that is being procured. Some existing technologies are in place at the OU that might be incorporated as part of a provider platform or proposal, including web analytics and personalisation software. The contract is for an initial period of 3 years and may be extended by the OU for further periods up to a maximum of 5 years in total at its discretion. License volumes may vary up or down over the term of the contract and additional modules offered or introduced by the supplier in the future may be purchased as part of this contract following the initial implementation. Any additional purchases relating to this solution will be made with the successful supplier under this contract to ensure technical compatibility, consistency and continuation of supplier support. There is no restriction on the spend value of additional purchases as this will be governed by the OU’s available budget.