DATE: October 15, 2013 REPORT NO. CS TYPE OF REPORT CONSENT ITEM [ ] ITEM FOR CONSIDERATION [X]

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1 DATE: October 15, 2013 REPORT NO. CS TO: FROM: Chair and Members Committee of the Whole Operations and Administration Hazel English Director of Information, Technology Services PREPARED Jan Chalk BY: Manager of Business Solutions 1.0 TYPE OF REPORT CONSENT ITEM [ ] ITEM FOR CONSIDERATION [X] 2.0 TOPIC Pre-Approved Solicitation Designation for the Customer Relationship Management Software Solution Project 3.0 RECOMMENDATION A. THAT City Council APPROVE the City s Customer Relationship Management Software Solution project as Pre-Approved Solicitation as per the City s Purchasing Policy. 4.0 PURPOSE The purpose of this report is to obtain Council approval for the Customer Relationship Management Software Solution project as a Pre-Approved Solicitation as per the Section 1.06 of the City s Purchasing Policy. 5.0 BACKGROUND The rules for determining whether or not it is Council or staff that must award particular procurements and contracts are generally contained within Table One in Section 3.01 of the Purchasing Policy, as interpreted in conjunction with the definition of the term preapproved solicitation in Section 1.06 of this Policy.

2 Date: October 15, 2013 Page 2 Table One of the Purchasing Policy specifies methods through which Goods and Services may be acquired and what conditions must be satisfied for their award. Accordingly, High Value Goods and Services ($250,000 and over) can either be awarded by Council or may be awarded by department staff (in consultation with Purchasing Division staff) with the appropriate signing authority if it is within the approved budget and the acquisition is a Pre-approved Solicitation. The pre-approval process is a very effective method for reducing administrative costs associated with the awarding of public Request for Proposal solicitations. Preapprovals are consistently used in Public Works tenders. Similarly, for projects where factoring in timing for negotiations and Council Approval may impact a key project start date, the pre-approval has also been utilized. An example of this situation is the City s Fire and Police Two-Way Radio Upgrade project. Council s approval of the a wa r d would be sought through a separate report if there is any irregularity in the Proposals, the recommendation for project award was not in compliance with the Purchasing Policy, or there are insufficient funds in the approved budget. 6.0 CORPORATE POLICY CONTEXT This report is consistent with the Brantford Community Strategic Goal 4: Excellence in Governance and Municipal Management and in particular the long-term desired outcome of The City of Brantford will be known for its open and accessible government. This report also fulfills the Strategic Financial Plan objective : To focus on cost efficient and effective service and program delivery. 7.0 INPUT FROM OTHER SOURCES Input for this report was received from discussions with the City s Manager of Purchasing, Manager of Corporate Policy/Management Practices, Information Technology technical and management representatives, Senior Management Team, and the Customer Service Task Force. The City s Legal Division will also be consulted and directly involved in finalizing the contract for services with the preferred vendor. 8.0 ANALYSIS In 2011 the City of Brantford embarked on a Customer Service initiative to assess and evaluate the current state of customer services within the organization, to research leading practices and to make recommendations that would allow the City of Brantford to become a leader in Customer Service Excellence. The result was a Customer One Customer Service Strategy which puts the internal and external customers at the centre of service delivery and recognizes that customer service excellence is no longer just the responsibility of the front-line staff, and must receive commitment at all levels within the City of Brantford.

3 Date: October 15, 2013 Page 3 The multi-faceted implementation plan of the approved strategy crosses all areas of the City. A key action in the Information Technology plan is obtaining a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution that can capture all customer interactions including: requests for information or service, suggestions and complaints. The purpose of this Project is to implement an: external customer (citizen)-focused, full-service delivery model allowing customers to track the status and resolution of their issues supporting the complete range of service channels: Contact Centre(s) (calls, mail, , text), in-person (walk-in and kiosks), self-service (web and mobile devices) and social media currently in a distributed environment across the corporation, with the capability of supporting centralized call handling. The CRM will be used to manage a service/information request from start to finish through integration with work order and other back-end systems. With integration to back-office applications, elimination of duplicate staff effort, scripting customer interactions to provide consistent service, and the ability to capture and track customer transaction history, the end result will be increased customer satisfaction and improvements in operational effectiveness and productivity. Departments and services will migrate to the Customer Relationship Management system following a multi-phase approach over a period of two years. The business processes for each service will be analyzed and documented prior to implementation in CRM with the view to identify improvement opportunities in service delivery. The project has been split into two phases, with Phase I being the engagement of a consultant to work with the City s Project Team to: a) Migrate the City s current Service Directory to the CRM counterpart b) Replace the City s current mybrantford online requests with a CRM Citizen selfserve portal c) Implement representative services in CRM with full setup and configuration The Consultant will provide knowledge transfer to City of Brantford staff to implement the balance of the services in Phase II for a fully functional and supportable Customer Relationship Management solution across all City services. Services for Phase I have been selected representing phone, walk-in and self-serve channels with high customer interaction and integration to back-office systems. Each commission identified recommended services for the initial project phase, which were then evaluated and approved by the Senior Management Team. Finalizing the Request for Proposal requirements and implementation strategy reflected extensive background research including site visits with neighboring municipalities utilizing Customer Relationship Management solutions, initial investigation and

4 Date: October 15, 2013 Page 4 recommendations from the Customer Service Task Force, and examining numerous recent Requests for Proposals. The overall project timing, objectives and scope of Phase I services were also reviewed with the Customer Service Task Force as part of ongoing IT updates which will continue during the course of the CRM project implementation. The Request for Proposals document was issued on September 6, 2013 and is scheduled to close on October 17, The technical evaluation of Proposals is expected to be quite complex and involves a number of City staff. The evaluation criteria include a demonstration of the proposal solution followed by a site visit (within the local area or via webinar) to view the Proponent s system in an operational situation. The Purchasing Manager, serving as the Purchasing representative for the CRM Request for Proposal process, jointly developed the Request for Proposal document with IT and will oversee the submission and all three steps of the evaluation process. Staff is expecting to complete the evaluations no earlier than November 25, Projects of this scope typically require several weeks to finalize contracts. Assuming no delays in the review process, the contracts could be finalized in late December. However, the award of the project would be delayed till January 27 th, 2014, if Council approval occurs at the end of the Request for Proposal process. Internal IT CRM project resources are now in place and the assignment of user department resources is also based on the anticipated project start date of January An overall twoyear timeframe has been established for completion of all services. Discussions with the Purchasing Manager and the Customer Service Task Force identified the preapproval option to allow the project to commence in January 2014 and not be delayed a month till February Since the value of the Proposals is anticipated to be in excess of the $250,000 threshold (High Value Goods and Services $250,000 and over), the award of the project requires Council s approval. Staff is requesting Council s approval of Customer Relationship Management Software Solution project as a Pre-Approved Solicitation so that the award of the project can occur prior to January FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS Implementation of a Customer Relationship Management solution is an approved project in the 2013 Capital Budget. The overall project budget of $1.5 million, allocated in the 2013 Capital Project Funding envelope, covers CRM software, implementation, services, hardware, staffing and contingency. Based on the Routine Execution of Documents By-Law , if approved as a Pre-Approved Solicitation, the contract would be executed by the General Manager, Corporate Services and the City Clerk.

5 Date: October 15, 2013 Page CONCLUSION Staff is recommending that Council approve the City s Customer Relationship Management Software Solution project as Pre-Approved Solicitation in order to proceed with the project as expeditiously as possible. Hazel English Director of IT Services Darryl Lee General Manager, Corporate Services In adopting this report, is a by-law or agreement required? If so, it should be referenced in the recommendation section. By-law required [ ] yes [ X ] no Agreement(s) or other documents to be signed by Mayor and/or City Clerk [ ] yes [ X ] no Is the necessary by-law or agreement being sent concurrently to Council? [ ] yes [ ] no