Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) Request for Proposals February 26th, 2015 PROPOSAL DATE DUE: 3-17-2015 5:00 P.M. CST
Request for Proposals Contents Project Overview... 2 Background... 2 Schedule... 2 Contact Information... 3 Submission of Proposal... 3 Late Submission... 3 or Proprietary Information... 4 RFP Amendments... 4 Primary Supplier... 4 Offer Expiration Date... 4 Post-Award Debriefing... 4 Questions... 4 Referrals... 4 No Press Releases or Public Disclosure... 5 Pre-bid Meeting... 5 Ownership of Materials... 5 Errors in Proposals... 5 Supplier References... 5 Pricing... 6 Selection Criteria... 6 Products and Services Sought... 7 Capabilities... 8 Final Proposal Notes... 9 1
Project Overview (KAPS) is soliciting proposals for a Human Resource Information System. Background KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national network of free, open enrollment, college preparatory public schools in under resourced communities throughout the United States. The KIPP model has been heralded by media nationally, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, 60 Minutes, ABC World News, and many more. There are currently 141 locally run KIPP schools in 20 states and Washington, DC, which are serving over 50,000 students. KIPP schools have been widely recognized for putting under served students on the path to college. More than 80 percent of KIPP students are low income and more than 95 percent are African American or Hispanic/Latino. Nationally, nearly 80 percent of KIPP alumni have matriculated to college. As one of the locally run KIPP regions, we at KAPS take a "No Shortcuts, No Excuses" approach to all we do, and combine that with high expectations and a desire for excellence. We look for the same from like-minded vendors. Since 2002, KAPS has empowered underserved students to strengthen the academic skills, intellectual habits, and character traits necessary to thrive in, and graduate from, four year colleges and universities, giving them the freedom to shape their futures and positively affect their communities. Ninety percent of the students we target and serve are low income and come from traditionally underserved ethnic populations in Austin, Texas. To meet the need of Austin s large and growing population of underserved students for high quality college preparatory education, KAPS will expand its network to include ten schools that serve students from Kindergarten through twelfth grade. Our growth plan calls for phased development of two pods of five schools each two elementary, two middle and one high school that will, when fully enrolled, serve a total of 5,280 students. KAPS currently operates nine schools: four middle schools, four elementary schools and a high school. We are projected to have 10 schools open by 2016. Schedule KAPS anticipates that the proposal submission, review and evaluation process for this 2
procurement will take place according to the following general schedule: Activity Date RFP Released 2-26-15 Scheduled pre-bid meeting 3-5-15, 12PM - 1PM, CST Proposals due 3-17-15, 5PM CST Implementation begins September 2015 Contact Information From the time of receipt of this Request for Proposal (RFP) until the announcement of contract award(s), vendors are strongly cautioned to limit any communications with the district to the person identified as the district contact. Any attempt to circumvent the bidding process by contacting other personnel at the district may result in the disqualification of the vendor. All communications should be addressed, in writing, to: Contact: Badri Lakkur Address: 8509 FM 969 Building 513, Austin, Texas. 78724 E-mail: blakkur@kippaustin.org The district reserves the right to reject any and all proposals, to waive technicalities, and to make any and all purchases to the best interest and advantage of KAPS. KIPP Austin will not be liable for any cost incurred by the respondents in preparing responses to this RFP or negotiations associated with award of a contract. Submission of Proposal Proposals shall be submitted electronically via email in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and PDF formats where applicable. KAPS prefers Microsoft Word for the electronic submission. Complete proposals will be received by blakkur@kippaustin.org by 5:00 P.M. CST on March 17th, 2015. Late Submission Proposals submitted after the closing date will not be accepted. KAPS is not responsible for late delivery or proposals lost in delivery. Suppliers must notify KAPS if there is an extenuating circumstance that may prevent on-time delivery. Refer to the RFP schedule 3
for the due date. or Proprietary Information KAPS has no obligation to share proposal material with any other party and will respect any documents or materials that suppliers have clearly marked or Proprietary. However, only those pages that contain the proprietary information should be so designated, not the complete proposal. KAPS is not obligated to maintain the confidentiality of any information that was known prior to receipt of proposal, or becomes publicly known through no fault of KAPS, or is received without obligation of confidentiality from a third party. RFP Amendments KAPS reserves the right to amend this RFP at any time prior to the closing date. Amendments will be issued only to suppliers who are going to complete a proposal. Suppliers must sign and return an amendment acknowledgement form. No other amendments, verbal or otherwise, will be acknowledged by KAPS. Primary Supplier KAPS expects to negotiate and contract with only one prime supplier. KAPS will not accept any proposals that reflect an equal teaming arrangement or from suppliers who are co-bidding on this RFP. The prime supplier will be responsible for the management of all subcontractors. KAPS will not accept any invoices from subcontractors or become part of any negotiations between a prime supplier and a subcontractor. Offer Expiration Date Submission of a proposal will signify the vendor s agreement that its proposal and the content thereof are valid for at least 7 months following the submission deadline and will become part of the contract that is negotiated between KAPS and the successful vendor. KAPS reserves the right to ask for an extension of time if needed. Post-Award Debriefing KAPS will, upon request, offer to debrief suppliers who were disqualified or did not win the contract. This request for debriefing will be accommodated only after the final contract has been awarded. Suppliers may make appointments for a telephone conference with KAPS. Questions Submit questions by email to blakkur@kippaustin.org. No telephone questions will be accepted or considered. KAPS will respond to questions promptly. Referrals Suppliers may not refer or pass on this RFP to another supplier without prior approval from KAPS. 4
No Press Releases or Public Disclosure Suppliers may not release any information about this RFP. The winning supplier may not issue a press release until it has been reviewed and approved by KAPS. Pre-bid Meeting A pre-bid meeting is scheduled for 3/5/2015, from 12PM 1PM CST. Attendance is preferred but not mandatory for anyone wishing to submit a proposal. This pre-bid meeting will be setup online. Interested parties should send an email stating their interest to Badri Lakkur at blakkur@kippaustin.org. A webinar link will be provided to interested parties a day prior to the meeting. Only attendees will be provided a direct response to questions brought up in this meeting. All questions from the meeting will be uploaded to our RFP site as an Addendum. Ownership of Materials All materials submitted in response to this RFP become the property of KAPS. Proposals and supporting materials will not be returned to suppliers. Errors in Proposals KAPS is not liable for errors in supplier proposals. A supplier may correct an error in his or her proposal with KAPS approval. Changes after the submission date may be made only to correct an error in an existing part of a proposal. New material may not be submitted. No oral, telephone, or faxed modifications will be accepted. Supplier References Suppliers shall provide a list of three installations where the supplier has implemented projects similar in size, application and scope to the relevant projects described herein. We will contact these companies and will ask them about your technical capabilities, project management skills, and ongoing support after installation. To warrant consideration for this contract, suppliers and sub-contractor(s) must successfully pass reference checks. Subcontractors with more than 25 percent participation in the project by dollar amount shall provide references. If less than 25 percent, suppliers shall list all subcontractors who participate in the project. The reference account information must be given in the format listed below. 1. Customer/account name. 2. Street Address. 3. City/State/Zip code. 4. Contact name/title. 5. Contact telephone number. 6. Contact e-mail address. 7. Summary of project. 5
8. System description. 9. Number of users. 10. Date system implementation started. 11. Date system was approved for production. 12. Approximate cost. Pricing All prices are to be in U.S. dollars. KAPS is exempt from federal, state and local taxes. Taxes shall not be included in this proposal as KAPS will not be responsible for payment of the taxes. Texas Limited Sales Tax Exemption Certificates will be furnished to suppliers upon written request to KAPS. Selection Criteria Proposals that meet the proposal instructions and requirements will be given a thorough and objective review. Proposals that are late, do not comply with proposal instructions, or take exceptions to mandatory requirements will be eliminated without further consideration. With respect to the products and services being sought, KAPS will evaluate proposals from qualified vendors, taking into consideration the following factors: Cost (30%) - Cost is required to be the primary criterion. This will be based on the breakdown in the cost proposal document (Attachment C). Implementation and ongoing support costs will be included in the overall cost calculations. Business Requirements (30%) - This will be based on the ability to meet all of the requirements as set forth in the Functional Capabilities document (Attachment A). This includes both the general requirements and the module requirements. Technical Requirements and Support (25%) - This will be based on the ability to meet all of the technical requirements, in a hosted solution, as well as to provide guarantees and/or SLA s regarding service availability during times of transient network pathing issues or widespread routing issues. Documentation and disclosure of service infrastructure & platform, including datacenter/hosting presence and upstream providers will be evaluated for elasticity/resiliency of service. This also includes whether or not a vendor can meet all TEA requirements, provide exemplary customer support and training, and has experience supporting Charter schools in Texas. Implementation Plan (15%) - This will be based on the ability to meet our project timeline and on the proposed project management strategy. 6
Oral Presentation and Sandbox - The top respondents will be required to provide an oral presentation of their system, as well as provide access to a sandbox environment, which mirrors the system being offered. The sandbox environment should have a sufficient amount of data loaded in order to mimic a real production environment or have the ability to take a KAPS flat data file to temporarily import into the system. Proposers will be notified by KAPS to provide a demonstration of their system the week of April 6, 2015. The sandbox environment should be available for a minimum of a four week period, and provide various user account levels (e.g., Admin, Manager, and Employee) Products and Services Sought Current state Current # of Employees: 508 Current # Full and Part time teachers: 235 Current # of Students: 4000 Current HRIS System: ADP HRB KAPS Currently operates 4 Elementary, 4 Middle, and 1 High School A new High School will be added for the 2016 school year with a planned first year enrollment of ~150 students Stakeholder interactions: KAPS teachers and staff use the ADP system to maintain their personal information, sign up for benefits, note their education and certification achievements, and request time off. Central Administrator Interactions: Setup company and department structures, salary grades or bands, review jobs or positions, setup back-end structure, run reports. Overall, the organization is in growth mode and anticipates increasing in size over the next 6 years. Scope KAPS is looking for a fully hosted web-based HR Information System to replace the current ADP implementation. In addition to a core migration from the existing product, the engagement will require the development of data interfaces with multiple internal systems to achieve seamless integration that eliminates the need for all manual processes and ensures timely data synchronization. Please be sure you can support the estimated timeline. The chosen vendor must also provide a project manager as the point of contact on their end during the implementation phase. This project manager will interface with the implementation lead/project manager on the KAPS side to coordinate the implementation. The vendor project manager must be able to proactively work with our project manager to manage the project timeline, and schedule a weekly meeting to keep 7
KAPS informed of progress and compliance with final timeline. This proposal must include all implementation costs, including the development of connections to other systems, onsite training, conversion and migration of historical data for the past 5 years. The proposal should include a dedicated project manager that is committed to meeting our deadlines and goals as outlined in our tentative project timeline. This proposal must include a documented business continuity plan to provide system and processing availability in the event of a disaster or other unforeseen event. The hosted system must be fully redundant and have an offsite backup process in place to secure our data every 6 hours. TEA Compliance We are a Charter Management Organization (CMO) in Texas and as such are required to be in compliance with TEA. The proposed system must support all TEA requirements as outlined in Attachment A. Vendors must commit to staying current with all future changes TEA may make to these requirements, and must respond with the required system updates within 7 days for minor changes, and within 30 days for major changes. These timelines begin once TEA has officially announced the changes. Timeline 9/1/2015-4/31/2015 System Implementation (includes data conversion, import, data verification, and multiple testing rounds) 5/1/2015-5/31/2016 Training 6/1/2016 Begin using new system in conjunction with existing system 7/1/2016 Begin using new system full time Capabilities Detailed functional capabilities that we are looking for are provided in the Excel spreadsheet attached to this RFP (Attachment A). Complete the spreadsheet in its entirety and submit it in Excel along with your Bid Response Document. Failure to include the completed spreadsheet in your bid response may prevent your response from being considered. For each of the capabilities listed in the attached spreadsheet indicate the Status of your current solution as: Y - Yes, this is a fully supported capability available in the current version of the product. 8
P - Partially meets this capability. Add a brief explanation in the Vendor Comments column describing exactly what part of the capability is met and what is not. C - Customization necessary to meet this capability. It can be made available by custom coding or configuration. Add a brief explanation in the Vendor Comments column describing exactly what customization is needed to support this capability and if applicable any third party vendor that will support this customization. F - Future. This capability will be provided in a future general availability release within a year of this proposal date. Add a brief explanation in the Vendor Comments column on exactly when this functionality will be available. N - No, this is an unsupported capability/functionality. Add a brief explanation in the Vendor Comments column on possible workarounds. Final Proposal Notes Your Bid Proposal package should include the following documents: 1. A bid response document that includes the following items: A table of contents An Executive Summary about your company and product A brief description of your business continuity plan as described in the Scope A list of three references 2. The completed capabilities spreadsheet in Excel (Attachment A). 3. Your responses to the interrogatory questions in Word (Attachment B) along with the necessary additional attachments if needed for any diagrams or charts. 4. The completed Cost Proposal in Excel (Attachment C). The digital version of your final proposal should be as listed above and sent to blakkur@kippaustin.org. We will not accept a scanned unsearchable PDF. ity: Any information provided in this RFP becomes property of KAPS. KAPS has the legal authority to share provided information with its agents and affiliates, including employees, partners, and 3rd party consultants. 9