Business Requirements

This section of the RFP provides appropriate delivery schedules, specifies the type of contract anticipated (such as time and materials, fixed cost), requests company background and financial information, and gives the requirements regarding price protection.

Several topics should be included in the RFP. Some topics are applicable to all RFPs and others are specific to equipment or software acquisitions. The following topics are applicable to all RFPs.

Delivery-The court should specify the time of delivery (such as 20 days from receipt of order). All equipment should be delivered to the exact requesting agency address (i.e., street address, building, floor, and office) specified by the court. Customized software should be delivered in accordance with the project plan, as developed by the court and the winning vendor. Reports and other project deliverables should be delivered in accordance with the project plan, as developed by the court and the winning vendor. See Business Process Deliverables Example.

The court should specify that all equipment deliveries are F.O.B. (free-on-board, meaning the seller is responsible for any costs, toss, or damage before delivery) to the court's location. This ensures that the vendor bears the risk of loss up to the point of arrival at the court.

Facility Requirements-Vendors should be requested to specify any facility requirements, such as meeting space, office space, phone line access. See Business Process Facility Requirements Example.

Vendor Project Personnel-The court should require that the vendor must not reassign any or all tasks from any specific individual. Additionally, the court should require the vendor to ensure that key staff participants are not reassigned to other projects the vendor may be involved in, without approval from the court. See Business Process Key Personnel Example and Business Process Assignment of Professional Staff Example.

Financial Strength-Vendors should be required to state their number of years in the business. Ideally, vendors should have a minimum of two years experience with court systems. Vendors also should he required to state their annual sales (for the previous two fiscal years), total number of employees. They should also provide an annual report. See Business Process Financial Information Example and CMS Financial Information Example.

References-The court should request three customer references and contact information. The references should have had experience performing tasks similar in size and application to those described in the RFP. See Business Process References Example and CMS Client References Example.

Acceptance-The court should specify the acceptance process for all vendor-supplied deliverables.

Payments-It is suggested that payments for the project be tied to acceptance of project deliverables. For custom software systems payments for the system should be tied to acceptance testing. As each module is accepted, a certain percentage (such as 70 percent) of the cost for the module could be paid. The remaining balance due could be paid when all of the modules are installed and the system passes the final acceptance test as an integrated system. For continuing professional service projects, such as a help desk, payments should be made periodically and tied to service quality for the preceding period.

The cost proposal should contain a statement to the effect that the vendor accepts the following assumptions, criteria, and limitations:

The agreement should be subject to termination for lack of appropriation, as provided in the RFP section described above under lack of funding. See Business Process Availability of Funds Example.
The court should not insure any item of equipment, whether leased or purchased, before acceptance. If the vendor requires that any such item be insured, the vendor should obtain insurance coverage for itself and the court as their respective interests dictate. The premium cost must be either absorbed by the vendor or added to the prices quoted in the cost proposal.
To the extent that maintenance charges or any other rights and obligations of the parties are affected by the degree of use, vendors are to assume unlimited (24 hours per day, 365 days per year) access to their service.
Any item needed for the successful functioning of the proposed project for which no cost is stated in the cost proposal should be included in the stated costs.
In preparing its cost proposal, the vendor should have taken into account any costs or constraints arising out of compliance with the RFP's contract terms.
All quoted prices are guaranteed for a fixed time frame (such as 180 days). See Business Process Time for Acceptance Example and CMS Time for Acceptance Example.

Project Management-As part of their response to the RFP, vendors should be required to describe how they propose to organize their resources to complete the project. See Business Process Methodology Example. The description should include:

The vendor's organizational structure and resources to be used in the project, including major staff responsibilities and functions.
The availability of the vendor to provide on-site project management.

The management portion of the RFP also should specify how the court proposes to manage its portion of the project. In particular, the RFP should alert vendors to the frequency of progress meetings and the need for written reports with respect to the project's status, accomplishments to date, problems, and areas where the court should provide greater assistance.

It is suggested that payment procedures be tied to successful acceptance testing and satisfactory completion of tasks as outlined during the progress meetings.

The following topics apply to equipment or software acquisitions and should be considered for inclusion in these types of RFPs.

Delivery and Installation-The court should request that if a vendor is selected and signs a contract, the vendor will deliver, install, and make the proposed system operational within a specified time period following the contract award (sixty days, for example). It is highly recommended that the vendor submit an installation plan for software and hardware.

For installation to be complete, the system should be fully operational. Peripherals must be attached, the software successfully loaded, and all current on-line systems must be executing properly. All installation and site preparation costs should be identified in the appropriate Cost responses.

Site Preparation-The court should provide the initial installation site work for each agency CPU location. Vendors should provide in their RFP response a detailed environmental plan that, at a minimum, addresses:

air conditioning
electrical and cabling requirements
floor plan
any other physical requirements for installing the CPU and peripheral equipment

Training-Vendors should be requested to provide on-site training for all court users. Recently, some courts have requested that vendors create videotape training sessions. See CMS Training Example.

Vendors should be requested to provide training for system operation as part of the standard installation procedure. The specialized training could include such topics as:

introduction to hardware
introduction to operating system software
introduction to systems administration
introduction to applications software
advanced applications software administration
introduction to network communications
advanced topics in computer network design

Vendors also should be requested to provide technical training on the system hardware and software and to include on-line training and help and a help telephone line.
If possible, the court should request that vendors coordinate the technical training plan with the hardware and software installation plan.

Vendor Support Personnel-The court should request that vendors provide sufficient technical support to implement and maintain the proposed system. Vendors should be asked to supply a list of technical staff who will be assigned to implementation and support and their resumes. The list of support staff should pair names with responsibilities. See CMS Implementation Support Example and CMS Continuing Support Requirements Example.

Documentation-Upon selection, the vendor should provide at least four copies of every technical and operational manual of the proposed hardware, operations software, and software. The court should inquire whether user manuals are available in an electronic format. See CMS System Documentation Example.

System Maintenance-In consideration of a monthly maintenance service contract, the vendor should agree to provide such preventive and remedial maintenance as is necessary to keep the equipment in good operating order and in compliance with warranties. A copy of a preventive maintenance program should accompany every vendor's proposal. Maintenance programs should commence at the end of the warranty period. See CMS Maintenance Program Example.

At a minimum, the vendor's maintenance personnel should agree to keep a performance record for each machine (including peripherals) documenting the nature of malfunctions and time of repair. Signed copies of all records should be provided to the court. All maintenance should be performed by qualified maintenance engineers who are familiar with the equipment. Ideally, the vendor should have a qualified technician working on a problem within four hours of the report. The court should consider if it is desirable to have a two-hour maintenance response time between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm, court's local time. The court also should determine whether twenty-four hour maintenance service will be required and whether maintenance will be needed on weekends.

The court should request that the vendor have backup maintenance resources. The vendor should describe in its proposal the various levels of the escalation procedure and the events that trigger escalation of a problem to each next-higher level.11

The court should request that a vendor propose remote diagnostic capabilities, including a twenty-four-hour hot-line service with a toll-free telephone number.

Finally, the court should insist that an adequate inventory of spare parts be available locally to ensure that systems do not remain down for extended periods of time.

Acceptance Testing-The court should make appropriate arrangements for acceptance testing (sometimes called benchmark testing) of all vendor-supplied deliverables. The tests should be sufficiently detailed to demonstrate the proposed acquisition's capability to meet key criteria of the RFP. At a minimum, the acceptance testing should focus on two important areas:

Functional demonstrations consisting of a series of independent problems. The selected vendor should demonstrate the capabilities of the solution with respect to the functions and features described in the technical portion of the RFP.
Performance demonstrations consisting of a timed problem. This demonstration tests the ability of the vendor's equipment to perform the workload throughput requirements of the court. All problems should be completed satisfactorily within the allotted time frame.

Failure to demonstrate adequately any of the mandatory requirements in either the functional or the performance demonstration would disqualify a prospective vendor during the pre-selection phase. If the vendor had already been selected by the acquisition team, new contract language regarding cure of defects and vendor default would be mandated.

Particular care should be taken during acceptance testing for modular systems that will be installed incrementally over a pre-established time frame. A single module may meet all the requirements of acceptance testing when it is working alone. When it is connected to other system modules, however, the overall performance of the modules may decline significantly. It is suggested, therefore, that acceptance testing be performed independently for each module and then again for the completely integrated system.

Care also should be taken when acceptance testing large systems that employ multiple platforms and a large number of workstations. During pre-acceptance testing, the system generally will have low volumes of traffic, small amounts of data on disk, and few transactions. As a result, the tested response time may be adequate. As large numbers of cases are added to the system after implementation, the system traffic will increase dramatically-along with a correspondingly larger user demand and rapidly growing data files. Response time may degrade significantly. It is important that acceptance testers work closely with vendors to determine if 1) the system has a sufficient amount of memory, 2) it has adequate disk I/O throughput (i.e.. can move information to and from the disk quickly enough), and 3) it has the required processing speeds to operate the entire system with the anticipated number of transactions and volume of data.

CMS RFP Business Requirements

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