UK SBS - DDaT22345 - Innovate UK EDGE Website

Tender description

Summary of the work Maintain a service (refer to ‘Problem to be Solved’) aimed at innovative small businesses looking to grow. The service helps users find exploit innovation, source funding and enter new markets. We need office hours cover support to continue to iterate the service. We also need a 9-5, Monday-Friday SLA. Expected Contract Length Initial 2 years with the option to extend for a maximum of 6 months Latest start date Friday 10 March 2023 Budget Range The budget for the initial 2 year period should not exceed £200,000.00 excluding VAT. The budget for the optional 6 month extension (if invoked) will not exceed £40,000.00 excluding VAT Why the Work is Being Done Innovate UK EDGE is a service to help innovative businesses grow and scale, in the UK and globally. Innovate UK EDGE is a bespoke digital and face-to-face service with 400 specialists who help clients exploit their innovation, source funding and enter new markets. The website was re-branded and refreshed in 2021, and in 2022 has undergone significant remedial work to its technical infrastructure. We now need to improve and fix its technical integrations and also continue unfinished work on its usability. Problem to Be Solved Simplifying and streamlining Salesforce, Govdelivery and GovNotify integrations for e.g. a broader, clearer email marketing experience, a clearer, more trackable way to enquire about our services, a simpler and more purposeful customer profile/account (aiding CRM usage). Plus EU and Konfer partnering database platform integrations Building out the site into a platform to deliver aspects of the service (e.g. to allow registration for a password protected community / access to an information repository) All work is to be underpinned by robust user research and analysis. Accessibility compliance will be factored into all development, as well as ongoing SEO changes. Who Are the Users As a growing business, We need to re-evaluate our structure and processes, so the business is more strategic, structured for long-term success and avoid common pitfalls along the way. As a growing business, I need to identify funding sources and assistance with my broad offer, so I can create the strongest applications without it taking my attention away from running the business. As a growing business, I need a partner with specific international market experience who can help us to structure our offer and connections to help us deliver, so we can continue to achieve our ambitions. Early Market Engagement Not Applicable Work Already Done The site has been in public beta since 2021. https://innovateukedge.ukri.org/ This year we have focused on rebuilding the environment. We use AWS Fargate tasks to run Drupal and the Zend Framework on Apache Web Server behind an application load balancer. Auto-scaling enables the solution to cope with changing demand and keep hosting costs down. Scheduled tasks also run as AWS Fargate tasks. Further detailed technical information is available to shortlisted suppliers. Recent front-end work includes accessibility-focused component updates and new content types. All work is intended to improve the lead generation conversion funnel (getting the right businesses to contact us). Existing Team The in house team consists of the following: - x1 Product Owner. - Content and admin support from 1-2 marketing/comms team members when required - Arms length involvement from UKRI’s Web Ops, Security and Governance teams Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Demonstrate your team’s experience with UX and user testing. (6.5% weighting) • Detail your team’s experience in producing demonstrable, measurable results from deployed changes. (6.5% weighting) • Detail your team’s experience of successfully implementing 3rd party APIs. (9.75% weighting) • Detail your team’s experience working with the latest version of Drupal. (6.5% weighting) • Demonstrable your team’s experience of technical SEO enhancement and how you ensure you keep pace with or exceed industry standards. (6.5% weighting) Nice to Haves • Detail your experience of participating in a Government Digital Service service assessment. (6.5% weighting) • Detail your experience of identifying and mitigating risk to digital service. (3.25% weighting) Work Location Remotely and Polaris House, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN2 1FL. Working Arrangments The supplier team must be based together (no traveling to site at the budget holder's expense). Security Clearance Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). IUK will sponsor the successful supplier through this process if the clearance isn’t already in place. Additional T&Cs Innovate UK EDGE reserves the right to trigger a break in the contract at the one year point if organisational priorities significantly change and the services of the supplier are no longer required. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Demonstrate how your proposed team’s technical expertise will ensure the successful delivery of this project. (4% weighting) • Demonstrate how your technical solution, approach / methodology meets our user needs. (4% weighting) • Provide details on identified risks and dependencies and a plan for mitigation. (3% weighting) • Detail the suggested size, shape and make up of the proposed team, demonstrating how this team structure will maintain the ability to deliver the services. (2% weighting) • Detail your contingency plan for sickness/absence within the team ensure delivery of services is not impacted. (1.5% weighting) Cultural Fit Criteria • Demonstrate your team’s ability to deliver results in an open, collaborative, agile way according to the principles outlined in the Government Service Design Manual. (5% weighting) • Demonstrate how you successfully solve problems and your approach in doing so (5% weighting) • Demonstrate your attitude towards making mistakes (5% weighting) • Demonstrate the capability to build good relations with diverse counterparts at the client organisation (5% weighting) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Can you confirm that there is no hosting requirements for this opportunity. There are no hosting requirements for this opportunity. 2. Do you require development tasks to be in included in the support offering, or as a separate workstream? Innovate UK EDGE requires a supplier to work with us on both the maintenance and development of the website, which includes identifying and developing improvements alongside routine support. 3. If we have multiple case studies for an individual question / requirement, would you be happy for us to provide more than one example as evidence? Yes, happy for more than one example as long as the response is within the stipulated words limit. 4. Please could you outline the procurement timetable for this opportunity? We assume you are asking about the award stage timetable as the timetable for the shortlisting stage is already available to you on the contract notice. 23rd December 2022 - Invitation to participate in assessment stage/unsuccessful letters issued, 23rd, 24th and 25th January 2023 - Presentations to take place, 13th February 2023 - Estimated Award date. 5. Are you working with any other consultants on your third party integrations for this platform (ie, do you have a technical lead for Salesforce)? No specific integration consultants, some in-house expertise. 6. Have you carried out an SEO audit of the platform? Are you looking to solve a compliance problem here or optimise the site’s performance? We have not completed an SEO audit recently, there are clear areas for improvement regarding optimising the sites performance. 7. When was the current website originally built? What security controls are currently in place and when was the site last security tested? The site was originally built c. 2017. There are imminent updates on the security controls and this has recently been tested in-house. 8. Could you please share more information with us regarding Konfer, and how it is applicable to UKRI EDGE? We plan to integrate live information from Konfer into the UKRI EDGE site. 9. Are there any known shortcomings with the current CMS? What are your main pain points? We find the current CMS adequate for our needs, however there are areas for improvement but we do not want to detract from front-end development. 10. Do you intend to keep the existing hosting arrangements (AWS Fargate tasks to run Drupal and the Zend Framework on Apache Web Server behind an application load balancer.) If so, can we assume that infrastructure maintenance and support is handled by them or another supplier? Can we expect to be given full admin access to the production instance? Yes, we plan to keep the existing hosting arrangements which are managed by UKRI. Full admin access will be provided. 11. Can you provide more information about the envisioned “EU and Konfer partnering database platform integrations”? These integrations will pull data to display on the site. 12. Do you have specific timescales for the project that we need to consider? No critical timescales/milestones at this point. 13. Do you have any specific requirements for user research / discovery phase? User research will be done on an ad-hoc basis. 14. Have you conducted an accessibility audit of the platform recently, or are you looking for us to conduct one and implement fixes? We have recently completed and implemented an accessibility audit.