REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS UTILITY WATER, WASTE WATER, RENTAL BILLING SOFTWARE SOLUTION. ADDENDUM No. 1 Page 1 of 11

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1 REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS UTILITY WATER, WASTE WATER, RENTAL BILLING SOFTWARE SOLUTION Reference RFP Addendum Issued: June 20, 2012 ADDENDUM No. 1 Page 1 of 11 This Addendum forms an integral part of the Request for Proposal Documents for the above, first issued by the Purchasing Division on June 8, 2012 and the revisions and additions noted herein and any attachments shall read in conjunction with all other documents. This Addendum shall, however, take precedence over all previously issued Request for Proposal documents where differences occur. This Addendum is issued prior to the Proposal closing date for the purpose of clarifying, amending or revising certain information contained in the Request for Proposal Document. The following changes, clarifications and/or substitutions shall be incorporated into the pertinent sections of the Request for Proposal Document. Bidders are reminded to list all the Addenda received and considered in preparing their Proposal in the appropriate space(s) in the Form of Proposal Step EXTENSION OF CLOSING DATE The Request for Proposal closing date is extended to on or before 2:00 p.m. Local Time on Thursday, July 5, The reason for the extension is to give Proponents more time to prepare their Proposal. Sealed Proposals in a clearly marked envelope are to be delivered to the RECEPTIONIST, Purchasing Division, located at 1 Market Square, Lower Level, Suite 120, Brantford, ON, N3T 6C8, on or before 2:00 p.m. Local Time on Thursday, July 5, Page 1 of 11

2 2. (Q.) QUESTIONS & (A.) ANSWERS RE: page 53 of 91 Section Cashiering System Q1. It is mentioned that you currently accept credit/debit card payments. Who is your payment merchant that provides real time authorization/clearing of these transactions? You mention RecLik in Section , however in the interface section (Section 6.0 on page 56) this appears to only apply to PAP. A1. Moneris provides this for us. Appendix A: Q2. E8 - Ability to enter stop and start dates for individual fees on an account. - Are you referring to start/stop dates on rates, or some kind of other charge? If other charges, can you specify the types of charges. A2. We would like the ability to enter start stop dates on rates, however, by this statement we were referring to other charges. Ie, if a charge was for a particular charge for only 4 months, ie recurring other charge. Appendix A: Q3. G Ability to maintain an unlimited number of meter data. - By meter data are you referring to an unlimited number of fields/data elements for a meter or are you referring to an unlimited number of meter records? A3. Meter data will reside in Avantis, which needs to be viewable and in some cases editable in your system through to Avantis. As well, meter data information will need to reside in your system which is specific only to a customers location. The proponent system must be capable of an unlimited number of meter records/accounts. Page 2 of 11

3 Appendix A: Q4. J9 Provision for data entry correction of any distribution errors. - By distribution errors do you mean errors in the general ledger accounts to which a transaction is posted or do you mean correction of how a payment is allocated (e.g. based on business rules payment was allocated to water however the user wants to override and allocate the payment to sewer AR - like noted in requirement J3)? A4. This refers to distribution errors of how a payment is allocated based on business rules. Q5. Would it be possible to get a one to two week extension to the RFP deadline. A5. See Section (1) above. Q6. A6. Regarding Section : Describe how the Proponent s solution could work with Moneris Point of Sale Terminals? Can we receive additional information on these terminals? Are there Kiosks that allow customers to pay their bills at remote locations? Do the terminals provide additional services to the City s customers? The Moneris POS terminal are used at our customer service front cashiering desk. The city does not have stand alone kiosks. The Moneris web site is Q7. Is the City open to a longer software demonstration? In order to cover off all aspects of the software as requested under Section 4.1.5, a full day demonstration would be preferred. A7. Unfortunately, no, we can only have a half day demonstration, which will include Q&A. Page 3 of 11

4 Q8. Can the price submission document be modified if it does not exactly match our pricing model? Can a separate pricing matrix be submitted that would complement the form provided by the City? A8. The price submission sheet Cannot be modified. The Form of Proposal: Costing (Step 3) must be the exact reproduction of the City s issued Form of Proposal: Costing (Step 3) as included in the RFP, In order for the City to objectively evaluating each Proponent price submission. Q9. There is a mention of users who use the system, but only 10 licenses mentioned in the RFP. Should the bid be based on 10 or 15 concurrent user licenses? A9. Subject Mater experts - they can change settings/rates-2 CSR Users (These are Customer Service Reps)-9-(including cashiers) General Users (Read only, reporting, managers, engineering. water staff)-9 Technical Admin - Administration purposes, assigning users, passwords, verifying backups concurrent users. Q10. Requirements for the proposal are quite extensive to complete in time allotted. Would the City consider an extension of one to two weeks, thus ensuring a more thorough response could be provided? A10. See Section (1) above. Q11. Is there a budget for the project? A11. There is not a specific budget; however, funding is available as this is a key City initiative. Page 4 of 11

5 Q12. Page 4 indicates a requirement for CSRs to see Work Orders and Inventory from the City s current systems (assuming Avantis). Please clarify expectation. Will CSRs need to view the Work Order/Inventory housed in Avantis from within the proposed CIS solution? Alternatively, is the expectation that this information will be the same in both systems via interfacing and CSRs will view this information solely from CIS. If alternate approach, please advise on expectations regarding scope of interface. A12. It is the City's desire to see work orders/inventory via an interface into your proposed system. It is also the desire of CSR s to initiate work orders through your system to our targeted system Avantis. Q13. The proposed solution suggests an interface to the City s current eservices solution. Would the City consider another alternative to the existing eservices and a replacement with a new Customer Web Presentment Portal? A13. Yes, the City would consider an alternate solution, so long as the solution has a look and feel of our mybrantford site. Q14. Does the current online eservice solution include comprehensive billing and payment history or just current bill and consumption history? A14. The current system will allow a summary view and detailed view of current billing and consumption. The customer will be able to pull historical data (in summary only) for the past 18months. We would be open to a Proponent s solution which offered our customers a means to view historical billing and payment history. Q15. Does the City have a target project start or completion date? A15. Start date is, work will commence upon award of the Contract and completed by the 1 st Quarter of See Section (2) of the Sample Vendor Agreement. Q16. A16. Regarding Data Conversion, is the expectation to commence at zero balance? Does the current system allow for payment and billing history to be exported by utility type? It is unlikely we will start at zero balance, we are looking for a vendor to provide their best practices on transferring from one system to another. The city has IT staff available who will pull information from data bases given any input criteria. Page 5 of 11

6 Q17. A17. Clarification required on item I22. (Ability to send a specific file type (ie CSV) to retail customer). Will these items be in their own billing batch? No, items may not necessarily be in their own billing batch, we would like the ability to extract data by various customers, multi-property owners or locations. Q18. Clarification required on item J2. (System automatically generates the appropriate journal entries for internal accounts). Please provide an example of a journal entry for an Internal account. A18. Amounts owing by City departments should be automatically to be paid by virtual transfer from City Bank account with the appropriate journal entry to the City Department general ledger account. Q19. What kind of API s/web services does the City s current systems that they are looking to integrate with our proposed solution have (Avantis, etc )? Avantis - has published API's and web services which will permit the creation of work requests and work orders, for example, into the system. The APIs are available as part of the Avantis solution and the web services are provided through DataPilot which is a separate product available through MaxEAM. A19. JDE - JDE provides a number of Z tables or interoperability interface tables into their system. For integration from Daffron into JDE we currently use the Z-table approach and load these on a batch process. GIS - ESRI provides a wide variety of integration and development environments for accessing our GIS data. eservices - We have implemented DotNetNuke as the WCM for our egovernment solutions. This is a.net solution and integration via web services is available. Q20. A20. Can the City provide their IT security guidelines and policies so that we can ensure compliance? Our policies and guidelines are in the process of being updated and will be provided upon award to the Successful Proponent. Page 6 of 11

7 Q21. A21. Which system does the city wish to use for updating metering inventory? The proposed solution where the meters reside and then update their system or their Avantis system? Metering inventory will be remain in Avantis, interface through to proponent system is desired. Q22. There is a question regarding the ability for Automatic approval process routing to manager. Please clarify intent of requirement. Is there an intent for all transactions to be routed to Manager? A22. The intent is for all refunds, adjustments, transfers and billing corrections. Q23. Page #4: How many years of historical data need to be migrated into new CIS system? A23. Currently estimate reads are based upon historical data and average data by a customer s account using 1-2 years of historical data. New account creations use estimate data for deposit amounts. Q24. What is the retention period of data for regulatory compliances? A24. Current plus 6 years Q25. A25. Page #15 Proponent's Responsibility, point #2: Does this mean that the project has to be executed only in City's premises or can be executed from Proponent's offices as well? Proponents can build offsite and depending upon stages of Project, the City has technology available for Proponents to access systems remotely. Obviously certain stages will require onsite attendance, cutover, training, requirements gathering just to name a few. Page 7 of 11

8 Q26. Page #28 Step 1 References: Are The References necessarily be within Canada? A26. No, the references do not necessarily need to be in Canada, but it would help for consistency of understanding the Canadian Municipal markets and provincial taxes and regulations. Q27. A27. Page #53 CIS Billing System: What is the driver to move away from Daffron CIS System or Daffron is still considered for the new CIS system? The opportunity to move into a newer platform for City services arose as a requirement for regulatory and compliance issues, thereby splitting the electrical and water services. Q28. Please confirm the total customer base. Is it or 32000? A28. We have 32,448 water wastewater locations, and 3623 rentals Q29. Please confirm no. of permanent and temp user licenses required. A29. Subject Mater experts - they can change settings/rates-2 CSR Users (These are Customer Service Reps)-9-(including cashiers) General Users (Read only, reporting, managers, engineering. water staff)-9 Technical Admin - Administration purposes, assigning users, passwords, verifying backups concurrent users. Q30. A30. Could you please provide the sample bill copy for consolidates services for water and waste water. The Samples are attached. Page 8 of 11

9 Q31. A31. For integration services, is there a preference between P2P and SOA based integration? We currently have a mixture of both types, preference given to SOA for new systems. Q32. A32. Multispeak is industry standard for integration and essentially adopted for small utilities. Do you have plan to adopt the same? At this point in time we have not had a requirement to adopt the Multispeak standard, we are not opposed to the Vendor providing such a solution. Q33. Which IVR Brantford is using? A33. The City does not currently have an IVR system in place. Q34. How many rates are there? A34. Currently we have over 60 rates, and are looking to expand. Q35. Would the Brantford consider cloud computing? A35. The City of Brantford has considered cloud computing; however not for this Project. Q36. Please specify analytical & reporting tools on consumption. A36. The system should be flexible enough to allow users to create adhoc or standard reports using data captured within the system and your analytical tools. We use Qlikview to interrogate data bases. Payment history reports, Consumption history reports, Top water user reports, Average usage by rate codem Customer consumption report, Billing Statistics reports, Usage Variance Reports Page 9 of 11

10 Q37. What is the standard regulatory reporting requirement for Ontario. A37. We need to extract billing/consumption information by class and customer. Q38. A38. In meter reading, what are the activities that are being done manually that needs automation? Service representatives are taking incoming meter reading files and manually moving between servers folders. Q39. How the customer calls are being handled? What is the team size and the timings? A39. There are 4-6 CSR's taking inbound calls during normal business hours, 8:30-16:30 Q40. Are the documentation of Daffron CIS the customizations done available? A40. The Daffron CIS is highly customized primarily for electrical services. Q41. Is there any list of standard reports known? Are the details ready and can be made available? A41. Reports are run, weekly, monthly, annually and semi-annually. It is expected the Vendor during the requirements gathering phase will work with the customer service department to identify all the reporting requirements. See (Q & A36) Q42. What are your reporting needs? Please provide samples. A42. Reports are extracted to show consumption and billing amounts. Page 10 of 11

11 Q43. Are the funds already allotted for this project? A43. Funding is available for this project. Q44. Are there any budget risks? A44. There is always budget risks, however, this is a key initiative for the City of Brantford Q45. What is the expectation from the helpdesk support is it 24x7 or 24x5 or 16x5. A45. The expectation is timely responses and remediation of technical problems. The Vendor may choose how best to fulfill this need with any service level agreements they wish to provide. END OF ADDENDUM NUMBER 1 RECEIPT OF ADDENDA MUST BE ACKNOWLEDGED ON THE FORM OF PROPOSAL STEP 1 Solomon Wedderburn, C.P.P./CSCMP Buyer Purchasing Division Finance Department Page 11 of 11

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