Bid/Proposal No. P15/9888 Business Intelligence Management

Transcription

1 Answers to Vendor Questions Questions are in black, Answers are in red 1. Who is the Executive Sponsor(s) for this project Information not available at this time 2. Will PCC provide the selected consultant with a PCC employee to assist with project coordination, onsite planning, and communications of this project? Yes, there will be an employee who works with the consultant as part of their job responsibilities. 3. Has any work for a Business Intelligence and Needs Requirement Assessment been conducted in the past? Yes If yes, was an external firm engaged to conduct this work? If so, who: Yes, ASR Analytics If yes, when was the work conducted? Spring 2014 If yes, what was the dollar value of the contract? The award was for $82, If yes, will the results of this study be shared with the consultant selected to conduct this project? Yes 4. Has the College attempted to develop a data governance model in the past? If yes, can the result of this effort be shared? t formally. A key objective of Year 1 is to develop a formal data governance structure. 5. The College s current strategic plan and initiative to Develop a culture of organizational learning, employee accountability, and employee development is described on Page 4 and 5. Is a copy of the current PCC strategic plan available to share? It is online:

2 6. The Project Scope (page 4) describes PCC needs: provide project management and oversight for the implementation of an existing three-year BI plan and extensive on-site support, Has there been any existing project management of this existing plan? If so, has this been provided by PCC or any external consultants? 7. Does PCC have any restrictions regarding the inclusion of a subcontractor(s) on our proposed project team? 8. Did PCC receive assistance from a consultant and/or vendor in developing this RFP? If yes are they eligible to bid on this project? N/A 9. Does PCC have a budget estimate or range for this project that you can share? If yes please provide detail 10. Regarding the need for significant physical presence can PCC please provide any more details around expected amount of onsite time? For example, ½ of total project time? Or 1 person at least ½ time? Etc. We ask that you provide your estimate regarding needed physical presence as part of your response. 11. Does Pima expect the proposal to be solely for services or is there an expectation that the successful vendor would be required to procure and include the cost of any additional software and hardware? te that accurate software and hardware costs would be difficult to estimate at this time until additional requirements would be gathered during the initial phases of the project. Services only. 12. Does the committee expect more cost detail than the format provided in Attachment B, Fee Proposal? 13. Should the cost proposal be provided in a separate sealed envelope from the technical proposal?

3 14. Does Pima require a firm-fix cost proposal or can vendors supply a time and materials cost proposal? Firm Fixed 15. Can you clarify bullet point #8 on page 7? Provide an estimated timeline for completing assessment deliverables after proposal is accepted. Are the assessment deliverables referring to Section 3, Project Deliverables on page 6 and Deployment and Outcomes of the Project on page 8? The timeline would be based on the existing three year roadmap generated from the assessment. Yes, the assessment deliverables do refer to pages 6 and Page 5 Are the Year 1 goals set in stone? Would PCC consider accelerating the goals by moving some Year 2 goals into Year 1? Would PCC consider a more interactive approach which would result in BI being delivered in usable phases starting in Year 1? Yes, PCC is open to considering a different timeline. 17. Page 6 There is a list of deficiencies listed a few questions around some of those: 1. The college has limited dashboard or interactive reporting capabilities Q: Is this due to licensing or some other reason? Partly related to licensing, partly related to a lack of interest by previous senior administration. 2. Little to no training for campus or district staff to use Crystal Reports effectively or to standards. Q: Is PCC trying to use Crystal as an ad-hoc tool? To what degree is PCC using Web Intelligence? Crystal is used in some areas for ad-hoc reports where there is a likelihood the report will become part of the Pima Reports operational report system. It is primarily used for recurring operational reports. Web Intelligence is used by a small number of departments for ad hoc reports, including Planning and Institutional Research. 3. The college started creating infrastructure for BI, but that effort has not been followed through. For example, several Business Object Universes are underused or not used at all. Q: Why is this the case? Lack of senior support for BI and limited staff time. Also, a lack of a long term plan for BI.

4 18. Page 7 Is the college looking for a consulting firm to provide a leadership team and supporting staff for the duration of three years? Does PCC intend to provide developer resources to join the firm s team for the implementation of the solution? Yes. The College is seeking project management leadership for the implementation, supported by key departments at the College (e.g. Information Technology, Planning and Institutional Research) Does PCC have subject matter experts on the various systems and how they are used within PCC? Will those SME s be available as part of the team? Yes and yes Any plans to upgrade to the latest Business Objects release? If so when? We will be upgrading to BusinessObjects BI 4.1 by the end of this year. 19. People and Process Questions: We are hoping to clarify the following staffing questions related to your team so that we can provide the best staffing estimate possible on our end

5 19a. a. What is the expected composition of your organization s project team for this initiative? If possible, an organization chart showing various stakeholders would be helpful. Key functional areas that will be involved include Information Technology, Planning and Institutional Research, Registrar s Office, Human Resources, Finance, campus representatives and others. b. How many of your employees will participate on the project team? Approximately 20, but that may change as needed to ensure project success c. What roles will your team play on the project team? Implementation and support d. What level of experience do these project team members have with this type of initiative and the technologies your organization expects to implement for this initiative? About half the technical team has had experience with BI development (data modeling, ETL, report development). We would need refresher training. On the architecture side, we would benefit from recommendations on best practices for design and implementation. e. What percentage of each project team member s time will be allocated to this project over the course of the initiative (for example, the project manager might spend 100% of his or her time on the project during the project lifecycle, while an end-user representative might spend 30% of his or her time on project activities)? Will vary by team member based on which phase of the project is being implemented. f. Where are these project team members located? If they are located in many regions, what is the expectation around in-person versus remote participation in project activities? Team members are primarily located at a central District Office. 19b. What is your team s expectation relating to consulting partner team composition for the activities outlined in the RFP document? Expect a team composition that includes members with the required skills and experience to ensure success of the project. Specific team composition to be recommended in your response.

6 a. What roles does your team expect consultants to play on the project team? Provide project management for the implementation of the BI system, including initial consultation to get us started on designing architecture and developing schemas and ETL processes (end of Year 1 or beginning of Year 2) b. What level of experience does your team expect consulting team members to have with this type of initiative and the technologies you expect to implement for this initiative? High level of experience, including previous similar projects at other higher education institutions. c. Does your team expect that consulting project team members will be 100% allocated to this project over the duration of the project? We expect adequate time to ensure success of the project. Submit your allocation as part of your response. d. What is your team s expectation about the location where consulting partner team members will perform project work (for example, on-site, remote team participation, other)? Combination of on-site and remote is expected. Looking for a lot of on-site presence. e. Does your team have any expectation regarding consulting rates (minimums and maximums) for roles on this project? 19c. Does your organization use a standard project management methodology (e.g. Agile, Waterfall, etc.) that a consulting partner is expected to employ for the initiative outlined in the RFP documentation?, but for this project we favor using Agile methods. 19d. For this kind of initiative, we often build in-person workshops and meetings into the project plan to help achieve team consensus and to more efficiently develop project deliverables. Is your team open to this kind of approach, or do geographical or other constraints preventing us from using this approach? PCC is open to this type of approach

7 19e. What is the estimated total number of users of the new business intelligence solution? a. In development / pre-production? b. In production In development/pre-production it would be approximately 20 on the core team, with possibly more SMEs added as the project progresses. In production, based on current report usage, we estimate 300 users. We anticipate a need for public-facing dashboards as part of the solution, and the estimated number of users of those is not included here. 19f. What is the estimated concurrent number of users (i.e. users in the system at the same time)? a. In development / pre-production? b. In production? Ten in development/pre-production; 30 in production (based on current metrics) 19g. Please provide a list of the various user roles that will access the reporting system (e.g. administrators, power-users, executives, managers, line of business personnel) All of the above at the campuses and within support central offices. 19h. Please list any ongoing and future projects that may have an impact on this effort. Please state the purpose of that project, and elaborate on the potential impact of that project in terms of timelines, dependencies, and data. Banner XE implementation beginning in Spring/Summer The underlying ERP database architecture will not change significantly, but this may have an impact on staff resources. 19i. What other external vendors do you work with today that may be part of this project as well? Please list the vendor name and purpose they will have on the project? ne 19j. Do you have any offshore resources that will be part of this project team? If so please explain their role on the project. ne 19k. Are there any formal written requirements for the development of reports at this time or will requirements gathering be part of the scope of work? formal written requirements currently. Requirements gathering will be part of the work. 19l. What is the expected start date of this initiative? If it has already begun, at what stage is the project within the three-year BI plan mentioned in the RFP? What is the expected end date of this initiative, assuming a timeline other than three consecutive years? Start date is as soon as possible. End date is no later than three years out.

8 19m. Does the organization have any standards for end user training? What is the expected type of training for this initiative (i.e. on-site classroom)? Training is provided in a variety of ways by the college, including on-site classroom and online. 19n. What is the expected size of the data governance team to be established as part of this initiative? 10 19o. What are the names of the other consulting companies that we are competing with in this RFP process (optional)? Unable to answer this question 19p. What did we forget to ask about people and process that we should have asked? Unable to answer this question 20. Technology Questions Technology-related questions include 20a. What are your organization s current hardware standards? a. Operating system (Linux. Windows, UNIX, etc.) Linux, Windows, Unix, and OS X. Client workstations are predominantly Windows 7 with a small percentage of OS X. Linux and Unix are used in some of the servers as well as some IT work stations. b. Processors Servers range from 4 to 48 core; workstation/laptop standard is currently i7 c. RAM Servers range from 8 to 128 GB; workstation/laptop standard is 8 GB d. Anything else we should know Unable to answer this question 20b. What is your organization s policy / need on a physical versus virtual environment and how does that apply to this initiative? The RFP document references a large VMWare virtual infrastructure? We rely heavily on our virtual infrastructure. Unless there is a compelling reason for a physical environment, it can be assumed that any servers dedicated to the solution will be virtual. 20c. Does your organization usually set up the following standard configuration for its hardware environments (e.g. Development, Test, Production, and/or Disaster Recovery)? If not, how is your organization different and why? We use standard configuration. 20d. Does your organization implement a Single Sign On (SSO) methodology, and if so what vendor/technology is being used today? Is it imperative to use this standard SSO, or is there some flexibility in terms of proposing new SSO solutions? Yes, CAS. However, we have not implemented SSO in our Business Objects Enterprise platform, so this is not a hard requirement. We would be open to evaluating new SSO solutions within the context of the BI solution.

9 20e. Are there any requirements today that demand the need for Secured Sockets Layer (SSL)? If so, is it just for the web/front-end or also at the application layer? We currently use SSL in both web and some application layers. 20f. What, if any, ETL tool(s) does your organization use today? We have used Jaspersoft ETL in transactional environment and are evaluating its utility in a data warehouse environment. 20g. The RFP mentions the following BI reporting tools in place today: Business Objects, Crystal Reports, Webi, Microsoft, and Oracle Forms/Reports. Does the organization plan on continuing to use these technologies? If so, is the expectation that the consulting partner train end users on these existing tools? Given the breadth of technologies currently employed, is it safe to say that the organization employs a best of breed approach? The BI assessment final report recommends leveraging and building upon our current investment in the BusinessObjects platform and related products; we will be following that recommendation for the foreseeable future. We are not quite as attached to our Oracle Forms/Reports. Ideally, we would be phasing those out when possible. It is not our expectation that the consulting partner train end users on these existing tools. We anticipate evaluating and adopting standard end user tools (dashboards, ad hoc reporting, predictive analytics, etc.) using a "best of breed" approach when we arrive at that phase of the three year roadmap. 20h. Is there existing hardware/vm that can be leveraged for the new BI system or will there be a brand new requisition for hardware/vm? Existing hardware/vm will be leveraged unless there is a compelling reason to acquire new equipment. 20i. The RFP mentions a data warehouse as a deliverable for this initiative. Are there any analytical data layers currently present outside of the Banner ERP system that are used for reporting (i.e. data marts, operational data stores)? If so, how mature are these data layer? For instance, are they copies of existing transactional systems or something more? We have a data mart but they are primarily copies/views of the existing transactional systems. 20j. Will the organization be responsible for development of the data warehouse or will the consulting partner develop this? We would expect initial consultation to get us started on designing architecture and developing schemas and ETL processes (end of Year 1 or beginning of Year 2). However, the bulk of the work would be done by PCC staff. 20k. What did we forget to ask about technology needs that we should have asked? Answer: Unable to answer this question

10 Information Questions 21. Information- related questions include: 21a. The RFP mentions legacy reports that may need to be migrated as part of this effort. How may reports exist across the legacy reporting tools today? What percentage of these reports does the organization expect to have in the new BI environment? If possible, please provide a brief description of the reports to be migrated. We have over 800 reports of which are most frequently used. We would consider migrating these The subject of these reports include all areas of Banner (Admissions/Registration, Financial Aid, Finance, HR, etc.) as well as our non-banner systems. 21b. Outside of Banner and the new data warehouse, how many other data sources will be accessed in this new BI environment? Are these transactional systems, flat files, relational databases? We anticipate having the ability to integrate much of our data from non-banner sources into the BI environment. These could be transactional systems, flat files, or relational databases. 21c. The RFP mentions that the college has limited dashboard or interactive reporting capabilities currently. How familiar are the stakeholders with dashboarding concepts? How many new dashboards in total is the organization looking to create? Please provide any other requirements the organization may have for dashboards / interactive reporting. Some limited functionality dashboards have been prepared by the College. The number of dashboards is based on user need; there is no target number. Many student reports are moving to dashboard format. 21d. Does the organization have any standards for report response times or data refresh rates? If so, what are those standards? Regarding reports, no. In the context of a data warehouse, we would expect to refresh data nightly, as a minimum. 21e. What did we forget to ask about information needs that we should have asked? Answer: Unable to answer this