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(EBPP) & Bill Printing and Mailing Services AUGUST 2017

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(EBPP) & Bill Printing and Mailing Services AUGUST 2017 CITY OF CLEVELAND, OHIO DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment Services (EBPP) & Bill Printing and Mailing Services AUGUST 2017 1 Table of Contents 1 Introduction and Background 2 Current Environments 3 EBPP Scope of Services 4 EBPP Requirements 5 EBPP Service Level Offerings 6 Current Bill Print Environment 7 Bill Print Scope of Services 8 Bill Print, Insert, and Mail Requirements 9 Bill Print Service Level Offerings 10 Project Schedule and Deliverables 11 Submission of Proposal 12 Qualifications for Proposal 13 Proposal Contents 14 Proposal Evaluation; Selection Criteria Appendix A – EBPP Questions Appendix B – EBPP Requirements Appendix C – Bill Print, Insert, and Mail Requirements Appendix D – Volume Estimates Appendix E - Current Process Flow for CWD EBPP and Billing Extract Appendix F – Sample Bill and Letters Appendix G - CWD File Layout Specifications Appendix H - CPP File Layout Specifications Fee Proposal for EBPP Project Management Fee Proposal for EBPP Operational Costs Fee Proposal for Bill Print Project Management Fee Proposal for Bill Print Operational Costs Reimbursable Expense Policy Required City Forms 2 1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 1.1 RFP INTRODUCTION The City of Cleveland (City), Department of Public Utilities (DPU) through its Director of Public Utilities (Director), is soliciting proposals from qualified consultant firms to provide services for providing online credit card, debit card and ACH payments, E-billing, bill presentation, bill printing, and storage services. DPU seeks to identify a vendor to provide services for providing electronic bill presentment and payment services (EBPP) and bill printing and mailing services for utility bills, delinquent and reminder notices, other letters, bill design and other bill inserts. The purpose of this Request for Proposal (RFP) is to provide qualified Proposers with the information, requirements, and specifications necessary for the preparation of a professional and comprehensive proposal for EBPP services and bill printing and mailing services. 1.2 DEPARTMENT BACKGROUNDS DPU is comprised of the Divisions of Cleveland Water (CWD), Cleveland Water Pollution Control (WPC), Cleveland Public Power (CPP), Utilities Fiscal Control, and Radio Communication. In addition, the department’s General Administration section includes Human Resources, Public Affairs, Information Technology, Security, Safety and Risk Management, and Customer Account Services as well as the City of Cleveland Photography Lab and the City of Cleveland’s local cable access channel, TV20. DPU employs approximately 1,500 and is managed by the Office of the Director of Public Utilities. CWD provides safe, quality drinking water to 1.4 million people in nearly 80 communities across the Greater Cleveland area. The Cleveland Water System is comprised of 5,300 miles of water mains, four raw water intake cribs and four water treatment plants with primary finished water pump stations, 12 secondary pump stations, 13 elevated tanks, and a number of support facilities. CWD currently has more than 427,000 customer accounts in approximately 67 direct service communities. Additionally, CWD provides water to five master meter water systems and emergency standby services to four water systems in Northeast Ohio. CWD is committed to providing customers with excellent service and superior product available at the turn of every tap. WPC is the City’s sewer maintenance division and stormwater manager, responsible for the waste water and stormwater collection systems in the city. The sewer system is comprised of 1,435 miles of sewer lines with approximately 43,500 catch basins/storm drains and 12 pump stations. WPC cleans and services catch basins to reduce street and basement flooding and to prevent water pollution. The sewer collection system transfers sanitary sewage and stormwater to three Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District waste treatment facilities. WPC currently has more than 125,600 customer accounts, of which 96% are residential and 4% commercial. WPC’s mission is to provide superior leadership, 3 excellent customer service and innovative stormwater and wastewater infrastructure management for a safe and sustainable environment. CPP’s 300-megawatt system ranks as the largest municipally owned electric utility in Ohio. CPP provides service to nearly 80,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers. The division employs a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system (SCADA) allowing CPP to monitor and control various electrical components at its 13.8 substation. CPP’s system is comprised of three 138 kV interconnections, allowing access to available electrical power on the market. The 138 kV circuit feeds 36 substations located throughout the city, which in turn, step-down load to a distribution system of 69 kV, 13.8 kV, 11.5 kV or 2300 volts, depending on the substation. CPP’s mission is to provide reliable and economical electric service to City residents and businesses. The City reserves the right to reject any or all proposals or portions of them, to waive irregularities, informalities, and technicalities, to re-issue or to proceed to obtain the service(s) desired otherwise, at any time or in any manner considered in the City's best interests. The Director may, at his/her sole discretion, modify or amend any provision of this notice or the RFP. 2 CURRENT EBPP ENVIRONMENT 2.1 CWD CWD currently accepts online credit card, and pin-less debit card payments online. Billing data is sent to the vendor nightly to their FTP site. The vendor sends back a daily remittance file indicating what payments have been received. The current EBPP vendor stores bill images for display in the customer payment portal. CWD accepts all major credit cards including Discover and American Express. Payments can be made by either setting up an online account which requires a login, or making a quick one-time payment where the customer does not have to log in and key information is not stored. CWD accepts recurring payments through the EBPP. CWD customers also have the option to pay via the IVR system & mobile system. The one-time payment functionality is also used by CWD Customer Service Representatives (CSR) to take customer payments over the phone. The method for taking a customer payment over the phone is the identical process that a customer uses to make a one-time payment. In addition to this functionality, CWD also uses this vendor to process a daily file from Metavante. CWD currently processes 4000-7000 payments per day via its current EBPP vendor. 2.2 CPP CPP currently accepts online credit card, checking and savings account payments and pin-less debit card payments online and over IVR. Billing data is sent to the vendor to be imaged and stored for online delivery and viewing. A billing history of 12 months is kept. The vendor is responsible for the creation of the bill from the extract file. CPP accepts all major credit cards including Discover and American Express. Payments can 4 be made as a one-time payment or setup as recurring payments. Payments from all online vendors such as Metavante and CheckFree are consolidated and sent through one single vendor. CPP customers have obtained improved customer service with this online capability and CPP has attained a nearly 20% adoption rate. That is, nearly 20% of all payments made to CPP come through this online channel, making CPP a Tier 2 processor. The option for credit card payments has also provided customers with the added convenience and flexibility that they have come to expect from all service vendors. This has meant increased cash receipts, fewer and shorter power turn offs, and lower processing payment costs. Both CWD and CPP wish to retain all current functionality while providing our customers with more user experience enhancement and options. 3 EBPP SCOPE OF SERVICES DPU is seeking a professional services contract for providing EBPP services as described in more detail below in the description of services. The scope of this RFP encompasses all tasks associated with the implementation of EBPP services. The proposer is expected to provide EBPP services thru three separate websites/functional areas that must include integration with the same look and feel of the main websites for: . CWD (Current EBPP implementation that would include a potential migration off the existing platform) . CPP (Current EBPP implementation that would include a potential migration off the existing platform) . NEORSD (Current EBPP implementation that would include a potential migration off the existing platform) The following implementation components are to be included by the vendor as part of the RFP and the EBPP implementation: . Needs Analysis and Joint Definition Sessions . Project Management (i.e., vendor provided resource) . System and Design Engineering . Software Programming and Development . User and Acceptance Testing . Dress Rehearsals and Deployment . Production and Pilot The proposer shall provide the following services for the EBPP solution as part of the RFP response: 5 . Data conversion and migration activities as required and necessary to move to a potentially new platform for EBPP for CPP, CWD and NEORSD. Data receipt and routing of core data extract billing files in a flat file format from the billing systems via FTP communication for data parsing extraction and composition. Data extraction and parsing that routes identified data field into a relational database for processing . Storage and Hosting . Customer
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