How To Write An Oor Ebusiness Ebusiness Solution

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1 Q1. Is it a mandatory requirement to be an Oracle ebusiness Certified Partner or will you accept proof of successful implementations with Oracle, i.e., can use pre-existing setups and application security in the Oracle E-Business Suite? Response 1: Oracle Certified Partner status is a requirement. If desired, the Offeror may take exception and provide a self-described alternative to the requirement. Q2. Page 47, 2. Proposed System Architecture, a. System Hardware requests a description and diagram of (1) All proposed hardware and specifications. Is it the intention of the City that the selected supplier house the hardware on the City s site or is it to manage it remotely, e.g., in the Cloud so that the City does not have to manage it? Response 2: The City will manage its own hardware and will not operate in the cloud". Q3. Scanning devices. Does City of St. Petersburg intend to leverage existing scanners? How many scanners are there today? What portion of the invoice volume is being scanned? Response 3: Current scanners are small scanners that are being used beyond capacity. There are two people doing the scanning today. As of this year they are scanning the entire volume of the inbound invoices. Q4. Please describe what is meant by 3-way Blind Match in the PO invoice process description. Response 4: This means that the person doing the receiving does not have visibility of the invoice. Q5. City of St. Petersburg currently uses Oracle EBS approval hierarchy. Is it your preference to also leverage the Oracle EBS approval hierarchy or is an external hierarchy preferred? Response 5: Currently this is on paper. The offeror should provide best practice recommendation. Q6. Please describe how the holds are handled in Oracle EBS. Response 6: Most holds are manually cleared. Receiving holds are cleared automatically by a custom job that is run nightly in the system. Q7. Is iexpense currently in use and would you like the proposed solution capture and attach receipt images to the iexpense transactions? Response 7: iexpense is not currently in use. Offeror should provide vision of how their solution will work with iexpense. Q8. Service invoices are currently processed as a 3-way match. Would you be open to a process where the services invoices are 2-way match and routed for approval to the contact responsible for the services? Response 8: City of St. Petersburg would prefer a 2-way match as described in the RFP. Q9. Credit Memos Can you describe what the objectives or challenges for the credit memo workflow? Response 9: There is not really a good process in place and City requires a process to ensure these are reconciled properly. Q10. RFP mentions lost discounts, please describe what is causing discounts to be missed? Is it invoice cycle time? Response 10: It is a combination of causes including time to receive, time to process and delays caused by invoices on hold. The City has recently changed the process to use the date the invoice was received rather than the invoice date, this is expected to help. 1 of 9

2 Q11. Discounts Is it the intent of City to increase your ability to take advantage of more vendor discounts? Response 11: Yes. Q12. Report: The RFP discusses the need for reporting on Audit Compliance, Accruals and KPI statistics. Are there other reporting requirements that are desired? Response12: Reporting requirements are defined in the Appendix B System Requirements Excel Spreadsheet. Q13. System Monitoring is mentioned. Is the purpose of this monitoring to provide system health alerts such as database table sizes and server up time to send out notifications in the event that a part of the system is down? Response 13: Yes, that is the objective for system monitoring. Offeror should provide tools, reports and alerts for this purpose. Q14. Page 19 paragraph 6H discusses original budget and project schedule. Can these documents be made available? Response 14: This statement means that the success criteria of the project will be measured based on the offeror s ability to stay within the agreed project price and schedule as defined in the contracts. Q15. RFP requests that vendors provide pricing for hardware. If the vendor does not deliver hardware, is it acceptable for the vendor not to provide hardware pricing, but only recommendations. Response 15: Pricing is not required. Hardware and system software specifications are required. Q16. Can we get a MS Word copy of the RFP. Specifically it would be helpful to get a copy of Appendix A as it contains a number of tables that require completion in our response. Response16: The documents are available online in Microsoft Office Word Q17. Electronic Delivery: Is City okay with imbedded files in the MS Word delivery? Response 17: Please follow Part B, Instructions to Offeror and General Provisions for submittal. Note that no electronic delivery will be is accepted. Q18. Do you pay invoices with sales tax? If so, can you elaborate on the tax entry process? a. Do you use eb tax? b. Is tax included as a PO line Response 18: The City of St Petersburg is a tax exempt organization in the state of Florida and is not subject to sales tax. Q19. How do you handle freight? a. 3rd party? (not paid at individual invoice level) b. Added to invoice line as miscellaneous line? c. Added to invoice line as freight line? d. Added to invoice total Response 19: Freight is handled several ways. Normally if it is a blanket release, freight is the responsibility of the supplier and not included as part of the billing (PO terms should be checked). If freight is charged, we add it as a separate line (allocated freight) during the time of matching to the PO. 2 of 9

3 Q20. What is the approval process for Non-PO invoices? Is this solution expected to enhance/automate that in any way? Response 20: The Non PO invoice approval process is manual. We will be looking to the offeror to provide an automated solution. Q21. Is the procurement card process expected to have any integration with the imaging solution. If yes, please elaborate. Response 21: We will be looking to the Offeror to make recommendations in areas that makes the most sense. Please refer to SOW for additional details. Q22. Is a success factor the reallocation or reduction of invoice entry staff? If so, please elaborate on expectations. Response 22: It is the City s intent to re-deploy existing accounts payable staff into other finance related areas. The automation process is expected to produce efficiencies and to strengthen internal controls. Q23. What will be the availability of City resources (functional, technical, or DBA) to assist in the effort? Response 23: Offeror to propose what is appropriate for their response to be successful. Q24. What percentage of the work do you anticipate will be performed onsite at the City location? Response 24: Offeror to propose what is appropriate for their response to be successful. Requirements Spreadsheet, General Specifications Q25. Line #9, Integrates with mobile applications for smart phone invoice approval. What type of web accessibility does your VPN provide? Response 25. System should support SSL & TLS or if applicable, Extended Validation SSL. Q26. Is there a preferred single platform (ios, Android, Windows) or is a cross-platform solution desired? Response 26. The City prefers a cross-platform solution. Security: Q27. Line Item #26, Ability to Audit Node. Please provide your definition of Node. Response 27: System/Server Application Architecture & System Administration Q28. Line Item # 30, Interface/export to external system. Please provide examples of these external systems and data to be exported. Are they batch processes, real-time web services or messaging services? Response 28. The solution should provide API(s) that allow batch exports, real-time web services and messaging services. No specific interface/export is defined at this time. 3 of 9

4 Q29. Line Item # 31, Interface/import data from external system. Are you referring to the migration of existing images? Please provide examples of these external systems and data to be imported, as well as their import pattern (batch vs. real-time). Response 29. We currently have images of invoices that may need to be migrated to new solution. We may consider batching check images received from the bank. Business Rules, Workflow, and Monitor Q30. Line Items #81, Route documents for review or approval by: Ad-hoc. Please provide an example use case of an ad hoc routing of documents. Response 30. Additional request for information may cause ad-hoc routing to persons outside the declared approval path. Q31. Line Item #84, Defer to Oracle ebusiness approval paths to route documents. Does the City use AME in your EBS approval process? Response 31: The City has not implemented AP approvals. The City uses both AME and Workflow Builder to meet requirements when approvals are necessary in other areas i.e. purchasing requisitions. Q32. Line Item #85, Route to supplier registration when supplier exception identification/invoice ejected. Is this an internal or external ? Response 32: The system should provide the ability for both internal and external routing when exceptions are identified and/or rejected. Q33. Line Item #89, Use of real-time selection lists and auto-population of fields directly from Oracle data. Please provide additional details for this requirement. Response 33: For example, payment terms, terms date, terms date basis are available from Oracle data, and may or may not be on the invoice, but should be defaulted from system setups i.e. if the invoice does have terms, but our negotiated terms are different, the solution should defer to default terms. Reporting Q34. Line Item #121: Drill-down capability into General Ledger and Procurement applications - Is this expected to be an enhancement to EBS, or is the expectation that the new middleware will connect directly to EBS to gain access to this drill-down ledger information? Response 34: The expectation is that the new middleware will connect directly to EBS to gain access to this drill-down ledger information. General Q35. Are there existing preferred reporting tools in place (Cognos, Business Objects, etc.)? Or will a new BAM dashboard (part of Oracle Fusion Middleware) be acceptable? Response 35: The City uses Polaris Reporting Workbench for EBS ad-hoc reporting. The City will entertain any offeror suggestion for reporting solutions. 4 of 9

5 Disaster Recovery Questions & Responses Q36. Aside from a highly-available, fault-tolerant solution, is an entire Disaster Recovery center (offsite data center) required, which introduces the need to have a DR/remediation process developed and additional hardware/software procured? Or will this be hosted in a primary data center with acceptable outages? Response 36: No, this solution will be hosted in the City s data center. Personnel Q37. Will an independent test vendor be brought into Phase 3 (Validate), or will the same development vendor work with City personnel to collaborate on the test scripts and execution? Response 37: The RFP requests the Offeror to propose a solution for Phase 3. Q38. Will there be City personnel from the long-term support team assisting with or shadowing development during Phase 2 (Design and Development), or will the knowledge transfer to City personnel be an end-of-phase-2 activity to be executed in a condensed period of time? Response 38: Yes, long-term City personnel are available. The offeror should propose best solution to be successful. Implementation Q39. During Phase 4 (Implementation), should the new solution connect directly to the existing production ebusiness Suite system? Or will there be a new EBS delivered at that same time? This question is intended to understand the complexities and dependencies of the final cutover/go-live. Response 39: Connect to existing system. Q40. Part A : Statement of Work, Intent Does St. Petersburg Procurement and Supply Management plan to centralize its operations and is it looking at an SSC provision for the Accounts Payable process? Response 40: We have centralized authority over the entire procurement process. Certain activities such as p-card and less than $10,000 purchases have been delegated to the department directors. Exhibit 1 : Process an Invoice Q41. What is the as is process for batch entry into Oracle (after scan) and do the scanned images of invoices auto align themselves post the scanning action? Response 41: Scanned invoice images are uploaded to the invoice header via the paper clip after invoice entry. Q42. Can you please describe in detail the auto extraction of data from the physical copy of invoice? Are you looking at an intelligent legend based extraction as part of the solution? Response 42: Yes. Q43. Can you please describe in detail the auto extraction of data from the physical copy of invoice? Are you looking at an intelligent legend based extraction as part of the solution? 5 of 9

6 Response 43: Same as number 42 above. Q44. While making payment, a vendor may not exist in the system and then a vendor creation process may follow. Is the vendor creation workflow part of the project? Response 44: Offeror should provide best practice for the solution to be successful. Exhibit 2 : Invoice review, validation and approval Q45. An estimate or a ballpark figure with respect to the number of sites where the proposed solution would be deployed? Response 45: This would be something we would be looking to the offeror to suggest the best solution; however, we do have a centralized payables department and intend on staying with that model. Q46. Does the process flow provided cover all forms of procurements (iprocurement, Non-PO and Purchase Cards)? Response 46: Yes. Exhibit 3 : On hold invoice process Q47. As a best practice organizations are image enabling their ERP's. This would allow the business users to view the scanned copy / soft copy of the invoice through the ERP system Interface? Response 47: Solution must consider segregation of duties and support the blind three way match requirement. Exhibit 4 : Payment process Q48. Post payment approval - is there a requirement to link and store all relevant documents i.e. PO, invoice and other supporting documents, as a docket for future reference? Response 48: The City will entertain all relevant and available functionality. Q49. How many locations receive the invoices? Response 49: The City has a PO Box where all vendor invoices are sent and retrieved. Purchasing card statements are electronically loaded into the system where the purchasing card holder retains the receipts and miscellaneous non-po purchases are handled in various methods. Table 1. Key Indicators Q50. Are these dashboards expected to be part of Business Activity Monitor? Response 50: The RFP does not require a specific tool to present dashboards. The offeror should present best solution for successful project. Recommend Hardware Q51. We understand from the current architecture that the city will need the following environments for the solution: Development/Test, Production/DMZ. Is there a requirement for mobile based transaction access? This may be applicable for approvers on the go. Response 51: This is listed as a requirement of the RFP in the System Requirements Worksheet. Please answer using the worksheet and take exception as noted. 6 of 9

7 Q52. What are the current pain points in the Procure-to-Pay process? Response 52: Invoices submitted without PO numbers; invoices precede PO date; 3-way match for services; need for Engineering and Capital Improvements Department to review invoices prior to payment (construction contracts); need to increase ACH payments. General Process Background Q53. We understand that the process flow provided is the scope of the project. Is this understanding correct? Will it include all three ways of procurement initialization (iprocurement, Non-PO and Purchase Cards)? Response 53: We expect vendors to develop a best practice process which would include process flows of the new one proposed. Q54. The solution being proposed has the advanced methodologies for integration like Web Services, XML, API, and Java messaging services which is supported by Oracle. What is the envisaged methodology for enabling Oracle integration in City? Is there any ESB being utilized currently? Response 54: The Offeror should propose the best methodology and ESB to be successful. Q55. What is the expected timelines and budget for this project? Response 55: The offeror should propose what is appropriate for their response to be successful. Q56. Which other applications will need to be integrated with the solution being proposed? Response 56: The RFP does not require integration to any specific additional applications, other than Oracle EBS. The RFP does require the ability to integrate with other internal/external applications. Q57. The current requirements are of Procure-to-Pay process. However, as highlighted, the solution should be able to meet the future requirements as well (for next 10 years). This is in line with market trends and best practices where solution frameworks are being leveraged across organizations. Is St. Petersburg also looking at other processes in Finance and Accounting Area such as Order to Cash, Records to Report or HR departments going forward? Response 57: This RFP does not contemplate other processes. Q 58. As part of integration Oracle ebusiness Suite, is the solution required to only read the data from Oracle or also post/write the data to Oracle as well? Response 58: All of the above. Q59. Is it mandatory to provide the Hardware and System Software cost? Response 59: No, but it is required to provide hardware and system software specifications. Training Q60. As a best practice "Train the Trainer" methodology is adopted in projects. Is the city open to this approach for training? Response 60: Yes. 7 of 9

8 Q61. Has the City attempted this project in past? If yes, what approach and systems were used? Response 61: No. Q62. To make the solution future proof, the solution should be agile to accommodate dynamic changes. Industry is using workflow platforms which includes components such as Process Modeling Tool, Business Rules Engines, Configurable Reporting Dashboards etc. The key theme is to allow business and IT to collaborate and create/modify solutions without CODING? Response 63: A success factor is to have configurations that may be modified without the need for coding. Q63. Is city open to this approach of agile and future proof solution? Response 64: The City will evaluate all proposed solution. 8 of 9