Request for Proposal

for

IT Help Desk Services

Issued on behalf of: Cuyahoga Community College

Issue date: April 1, 2016

Revised Deadline for Supplier RFP Questions: April 18, 2016

Revised Deadline for Tri-C to Respond to Supplier RFP Questions: April 22, 2016

Revised Response Deadline: April 29, 2016

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Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 3

COLLEGE: MISSION, VISION, AND VALUES and HISTORY ......................................................................... 3

2. RFP OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................................... 3

3. GENERAL CONDITIONS, POLICIES, AND PROCEDURES ......................................................................... 4

5. RFP SCHEDULE....................................................................................................................................... 4

6. RFP QUESTIONS AND CONTACTS .......................................................................................................... 4

7. PREPARATION OF PROPOSAL ................................................................................................................ 5

Proposal Submittal .................................................................................................................................... 6

8. ADMINISTRATIVE AND CONTRACTUAL INFORMATION ........................................................................ 7

Award of Contract ..................................................................................................................................... 7

Pricing........................................................................................................................................................ 7

Rejection or Acceptance of Pricing Proposal ............................................................................................ 7

Delivery of Products and Services ............................................................................................................. 7

Billing ......................................................................................................................................................... 8

Contract and License Agreements ............................................................................................................ 8

Terms and Conditions ............................................................................................................................... 8

Entire Agreement ...................................................................................................................................... 8

Observance of College Rules and Regulations .......................................................................................... 8

9. RFP ADDENDUM A: SUPPLIER / FIRM QUESTIONS .............................................................................. 9

I. Supplier / Firm Information - Questions ........................................................................................... 9

II. Architecture / Business Continuity Questions ................................................................................ 10

III. System Maintenance Upgrades Questions ................................................................................. 11

IV. Security Questions ...................................................................................................................... 12

V. Ticketing Questions ......................................................................................................................... 13

VI. Real Time Dashboards and Reporting Questions ....................................................................... 14

10. RFP ADDENDUM B: PRICE SHEET ................................................................................................... 15

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1. INTRODUCTION

Cuyahoga Community College, also referenced as the College and Tri-C, is issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) for IT Help Desk Services to provide 24/7/365 coverage for requests and incidents from faculty, staff, and students. We are hereby inviting suppliers / firms to respond per the specifications, terms, conditions, and requirements herein. The College is committed to the highest level of stewardship of its public funds. Tri-C is committed to diversity and to supporting Greater Cleveland’s economy. All suppliers are encouraged to do business with the College.

COLLEGE: MISSION, VISION, AND VALUES and HISTORY

Mission

To provide high quality, accessible and affordable educational opportunities and services — including university transfer, technical and lifelong learning programs —that promote individual development and improve the overall quality of life in a multicultural community.

Vision

Cuyahoga Community College will be recognized as an exemplary teaching and learning community that fosters service and student success. The College will be a valued resource and leader in academic quality, cultural enrichment, and economic development characterized by continuous improvement, innovation, and community responsiveness.

Values

To successfully fulfill the mission and vision, Cuyahoga Community College is consciously committed to diversity, integrity, academic excellence, and achievement of individual and institutional goals. We are dedicated to building trust, respect, and confidence among our colleagues, students, and the community.

College History

Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) opened in 1963 as Ohio's first community college. It remains Ohio’s oldest and largest public community college. Tri-C has campuses in Parma, Highland Hills, Westlake and downtown Cleveland, and its Corporate College locations in Warrensville Heights and Westlake provide state-of-the-art facilities and equipment. The College also opened a Hospitality Management Center on Public Square in downtown Cleveland in 2010 and the Brunswick University Center. The College serves more than 52,000 credit and non-credit students annually and offers day, evening and weekend classes, and classes via television, the internet, and independent learning. Tri-C offers more than 800 Distance Learning courses and more than 130 courses at various locations throughout the community.

2. RFP OVERVIEW Tri-C is seeking IT Help Desk Services to provide first level technology support for requests and incidents

from faculty, staff, and students’ calls, emails, and web submissions. Suppliers / firms must provide a

written Service Level Agreement (SLA), which covers security concerns, risks, liability, coverage, and

performance criteria. The IT Help Desk shall be committed to resolving issues and providing solutions at

the first level and in accordance with the SLA.

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The services must be provided so that routine maintenance procedures, troubleshooting, loading

hardware and software revisions, patches, etc. will be performed without disrupting Tri-C’s services. Core

hardware such as processors, power supplies, hard drive systems, network interface cards, etc. must be

redundant and fault tolerant to avoid single points of failure. The system must provide call preservation,

that is, the ability to retain calls in the event of component failure.

3. GENERAL CONDITIONS, POLICIES, AND PROCEDURES The Request for Proposal documents are the property of Cuyahoga Community College and should not be

used by participating suppliers / firms for any purpose other than submitting a response to this specific

RFP.

Any and all other information, such as specifications, quantities, dollar volumes, and paperwork are

considered confidential information and shall be handled accordingly.

1. Any and all names associated with Cuyahoga Community College may not be used for the suppliers / firms endorsement purposes, written or verbal, as a result of this Request for Proposal.

2. During the selection process, suppliers / firms may be requested to come in to present specific information related to their business.

3. Cuyahoga Community College will strive to purchase environmentally responsible products and services to the maximum extent practicable, consistent with the demands of our mission, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and performance with continual improvement toward meeting federally established procurement goals. The College will strive to reduce the amount of solid and hazardous waste generated, as well as strive to reduce the consumption of energy and natural resources.

4. State agencies and state institutions of higher education must procure bio-based products that fall within the designated item categories list in the current version of the catalog compiled by the United States Department of Agriculture and maintained by the Department of Administrative Services on its website. Bio-based products will be considered and a preference may apply for those bio-based products meeting the specifications set forth in the bidding documents.

5. RFP SCHEDULE – Updated 4/6/2016

Date RFP issued April 1, 2016

Deadline for suppliers/firms to submit questions April 18, 2016

Deadline for Tri-C to respond to suppliers/firms questions April 22, 2016

Deadline for suppliers/firms to submit final proposals April 29, 2016

Supplier/firm presentations May 9 – 13, 2016

Final supplier/firm selection May 20, 2016

6. RFP QUESTIONS AND CONTACTS 1. We encourage suppliers / firms to review all information carefully, prior to responding.

2. Any and all questions are to be directed to both of the following designated contacts via email no later

than April 18, 2016 @ 5:00 p.m. EST.

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Martha Davidson

Supply Chain Specialist Supplier Managed Services

Cuyahoga Community College District Office

700 Carnegie Avenue Cleveland, OH 44115

Email: Martha.davidson@tri-c.edu

and

Stephen Hilbert

Executive Director of Supplier Managed Services Cuyahoga Community College

District Office 700 Carnegie Avenue Cleveland, OH 44115

Email: Stephen.hilbert@tri-c.edu

All questions related directly to the RFP should reference the item number accordingly.

3. The College will respond to all suppliers/firms’ questions no later than April 22, 2016 @ 5:00 p.m. EST.

Any supplier / firm attempting to obtain information from anyone other than the designated contact persons may be subject to disqualification from further RFP consideration. Questions received after the due date and time noted may be rejected.

7. PREPARATION OF PROPOSAL In submitting a proposal or in its performance under an award by Tri-C, the successful supplier / firm warrants and represents that it is not suspended or debarred by the Federal Government or the State of Ohio.

Suppliers must notify Tri-C promptly of any ambiguity, inconsistency, or errors.

Tri-C will not provide compensation for any expenses incurred by the Supplier for preparation of the proposal or for product or service demonstrations.

Alterations, deviations, or modifications must be noted in the submittal package.

Tri-C will not assume responsibility for errors or misinterpretations resulting from the use of incomplete documents.

Tri-C may not consider proposals that require or request changes to the terms of this RFP or changes to the terms of the attached Professional Services Agreement that are not approved by our Legal Department.

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Proposals and any other information submitted in response to this proposal are the property of Tri-C and will not be returned.

No conflicts of interest shall exist between the supplier/firm and Tri-C except what has been disclosed.

Suppliers must submit all information though Tri-C’s online Supplier Sourcing Management system.

Please follow all instructions in this document and the electronic Sourcing Director documents exactly as requested. Be complete, but provide only the information requested. If you have additional service offerings or information that have not specifically been requested in this RFP, but that you feel would be of benefit to Tri-C in general, please include this information in a separate section of your response entitled "Additional Information".

Proposal Submittal

A. A hardcopy of the proposal is included under “Buyer Attachments.” All of the following required RFP documents / forms and information must be submitted in the College’s online Sourcing Director system, prior to the deadline of April 29, 2016 @ 5:00 p.m. The responding suppliers / firms must complete, upload, and submit all documents and enter information as required per instructions

B. Prerequisites: The following prerequisite forms are attached in the Sourcing Director. They are to be completed and uploaded:

i. W-9 Tax Form ii. Standard Affirmation and Disclosure Form

iii. Execution of Offer iv. Professional Services Agreement (PSA) is also attached under “Prerequisites.” The

successful supplier / firm will be required to execute the College’s standard (PSA) as a

condition of the RFP. Any exceptions to the terms and conditions of the PSA must be

listed with proposed new wording at the time the RFP is submitted. If there are no

exceptions to the PSA, supplier / firm must provide confirmation in its response.

C. RFP Addendum A – Questions: Suppliers / firms shall respond to the “Questions” listed in the

Sourcing Director, and upload documents as requested.

D. RFP Addendum B - Supplier Price Sheet is attached under “Buyer Attachments.” Supplier shall

enter the total 3 year prices under “Items” in the Sourcing Director. If a price is included or not

applicable, enter $0.00. Addendum B – Supplier Price Sheet is also to be completed with annual

pricing and uploaded under “Supplier Attachments.”

E. Supplier’s proposal is to be uploaded after completion. It shall contain: i. Cover page with full name of the supplier / firm and contact information for the

representative submitting the proposal. ii. Table of Contents – The Table of Contents should outline the major areas of the

proposal. All pages of the proposal, including enclosures, must be clearly marked and correspond with the table of contents in the original RFP.

iii. Executive Summary – Provide a brief summary describing the services offered, experience and qualifications of the supplier / firm and its key personnel.

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iv. Supplier / firm additional information sheet(s); attach if applicable.

8. ADMINISTRATIVE AND CONTRACTUAL INFORMATION

Tri-C reserves the right to reject any or all proposals received as a result of this RFP, waive any formalities or technicalities, or negotiate separately with any source and in any manner whatsoever.

Tri-C does not discriminate in admission, access, or treatment in programs and activities, employment policies or practices based on race, creed, sex, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, marital status, age, sexual orientation, Vietnam-era or qualified disabled veteran status or qualified disability.

Award of Contract

Tri-C, at its sole discretion, shall decide if an award will result from this RFP.

Supplier / firm proposals must be fully responsive to all requirements stated in the RFP to obtain consideration. Tri-C may not consider any proposal not prepared and submitted in accordance with the provisions outlined herein.

In the event a contract is awarded, this RFP and the proposal of the successful supplier/firm will be included as an addendum to the contractual obligations. Therefore, no information should be submitted which cannot be incorporated into that agreement.

Price alone will not be the sole determining factor in the selection process.

Tri-C reserves the right to award based on various selection criteria.

Tri-C is not bound to accept the lowest cost proposal, if in its judgment the lowest cost proposal does not provide the best overall value.

Portions of the RFP may be awarded separately.

Tri-C reserves the right to negotiate the final details of the Contract with the successful supplier/firm.

Pricing

All suppliers/firms are required to hold discounted pricing for a period of six (6) months from time of submitted proposal.

Rejection or Acceptance of Pricing Proposal

Cuyahoga Community College reserves the right to reject any or all proposals and any part or parts

of any proposal and the right to waive any informalities of any kind.

Delivery of Products and Services

Delivery requirements, as applicable, include software and / or hardware, or equipment and any installation, implementation, and training required to bring the system up and running by the effective date outlined in the statement of work.

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Billing

Invoices prepared in accordance with any statement of work and/or contract should reference the College’s purchase order number. Invoices are to be submitted to Accounts Payable using one of the following three methods:

Mail to: Cuyahoga Community College District – AP Dept., P.O. Box 91119, Raleigh, NC 27675-1119

Fax to: 855-271-9674

Email to: Tri-C@edmamericas.com

Contract and License Agreements

Respondents must comply with all State of Ohio and Federal regulations concerning wages, liability insurance, worker’s compensation, discrimination, intimidation, and all other applicable regulations.

Terms and Conditions

Tri-C’s Terms and Conditions are accessible on our web site at:

http://www.tri-c.edu/administrative-departments/supplier-managed-services/documents/terms.pdf

Any issues or exceptions to Tri-C’s terms and conditions should be listed at the time the proposal is submitted with new wording and included as part of the proposal.

Entire Agreement

The RFP and any resulting Contract shall be the complete and exclusive statement of the agreement

between Tri-C and the supplier/firm and supersedes all prior oral or written agreements.

The terms and conditions of any purchase orders, agreements, amendments, modifications, or other

documents submitted by either party that conflict with or in any way purport to amend or add to

any of the terms and conditions of the Contract are specifically objected to by the other party and

shall be of no force or effect; nor shall govern in any way the subject matter hereof, unless set forth

in writing and signed by both parties.

Observance of College Rules and Regulations

The supplier/firm agrees that at all times its employees will observe and comply with all regulations of Tri-C, including but not limited to smoking, parking, and security regulations.

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9. RFP ADDENDUM A: SUPPLIER / FIRM QUESTIONS RFP Addendum A: The following questions are listed in the Tri-C Sourcing Director system. Suppliers /

firms are to enter responses in the Sourcing Director and upload documents as required for each

question.

Addendum A: IT Help Desk Questions

I. Supplier / Firm Information - Questions Questions Supplier / Firm Responses

1. Provide your full company name and corporate address.

If vendor has a parent company, please indicate the parent company name and address.

Year your company established / incorporated?

2. Is your company being purchased by another company currently or this year?

3. Is your company publicly listed/traded?

4. Provide a description of the company’s geographical service areas, including international, national, regional and local offices.

5. Are you operating as a small, minority, women, disabled, or veteran owned business enterprise? Please select one.

6. Specify the primary service(s) offered by your company. What additional services does your company offer?

7. Describe any new service or product offerings planned for the next year relative to this RFP.

8. If your company is not publicly listed/traded, and your firm is awarded the business, are you prepared and willing to submit the last two years of audited financials?

9. What partnerships do you have with technology vendors?

10. Provide a brief resume of key staff members assigned to work with the College.

11. To what extent will participation be required from individuals whose primary work location is outside of Cuyahoga County?

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Addendum A: RFP IT Help Desk Questions

II. Architecture / Business Continuity Questions Questions Supplier / Firm Responses

1. Please upload a diagram of the system architecture.

2. Is your solution a dedicated hosted or multi-tenanted solution? Please describe.

3. Is the core service a dedicated instance of the system, or is the service provided strictly a service where all users are tenants of a single shared platform?

4. Is the hosted solution fully based on IP telephony?

5. Are core hardware, such as processors, power supplies, hard drive systems, network interface cards, etc., redundant and fault tolerant to avoid single points of failure? Describe.

6. Describe any events that would result in a “failure” of the system and require a restart, re-registration, database load, etc. to return to a fully operational state. How long does the recovery take?

7. Please describe your disaster recovery plan (DRP) for a hosted solution.

8. Please describe the IP telephony call control protocol used by the system.

9. How does the system provide for fault tolerance?

10. Fully describe the system’s redundancy capability. Is it "hot standby redundancy", "shared redundancy", etc.? (Cisco UCCX, Avaya)

11. Does the system provide call preservation, that is, the ability to retain calls in event of component failure? Please describe.

12. In distributed help desk architecture, the contact center technology can be located in two data centers. Are there any limits in your solution for distance between these data centers and or between the localities with help desk agents?

13. What is the proper number of agents needed to yield best results - avoid skewed call data)?

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Addendum A: RFP IT Help Desk Questions

III. System Maintenance Upgrade Questions 1. The service must be provided so that routine

maintenance procedures, troubleshooting, loading hardware and software revisions, patches, etc. will be performed without disrupting the Tri-C service. How will these notifications be communicated to Tri-C (24 hour service/maintenance contact)?

2. How will an example of root cause analysis and corrective action template for cases be provided?

3. When the system detects a fault notification must be provided to Tri-C, how is this notification provided?

4. Maintenance schedules must be provided and agreed upon in advance by Tri-C in order to avoid peak performance periods. How often do you provide new releases and maintenance to your solution?

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Addendum A: RFP IT Help Desk Questions

IV. Security Questions

Questions Supplier / Firm Reponses

1. Does your solution have AD integration / Single Sign-On capability? Explain.

2. Please provide a sample of your Service Level Agreement, which covers security concerns, risks, liability, and service performance criteria.

3. What security is in place, which ensures secure connectivity for all voice and data passed by the hosted solution to any and all endpoints?

4. Describe the security related to the user

interface?

5. Describe the security integration with

multiple firewalls.

6. What type of password authentication do

you support?

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Addendum A: RFP IT Help Desk Questions

V. Ticketing Questions Questions Supplier / Firm Responses

1. What ticketing system will be utilized?

2. Can the ticketing system be used to manage and create tickets with Windows, Mac, tablets, iPads etc.? Describe.

3. What canned reports are available? Provide examples.

4. Can custom reports be created? How easy?

5. Are auto alerts available for extended time or for no action?

6. Describe watch list for tickets?

7. Does system provide the ability to track “time worked” on tickets?

8. What is the process to make changes (i.e. updates, notes, reassign, reopen tickets, etc.) to a ticket?

9. What does the entire ticketing process look like? Can this process be customized?

10. How are assignment groups created?

11. Can the system be accessed through the web?

12. Is licensing structured as enterprise or per seat?

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Addendum A: RFP IT Help Desk Questions

VI. Real Time Dashboards and Reporting Questions

Questions Supplier / Firm Responses

1. Does the solution provide both real time

dashboards and historical view reporting?

Please describe.

2. The system must provide a unified

reporting interface into a centralized,

standardized repository of all data from

the help desk infrastructure. How is that

managed by your system?

3. Does reporting include the ability to create

and add new reporting fields that show

calculations of raw call data based on user

entered formulas?

4. Data must be accessible with different time intervals – year, quarter month, week, day, hour, and ad-hoc – including changing the week start day. How is that managed by your system?

5. As a separate attachment, please provide

a sample schema and data dictionary.

6. Does your system have an open reporting

architecture? Please describe.

7. How does the system’s reporting feature

set compare to Excel in terms of ease of

use, graphs, charts, pivot tables, and other

advanced features?

8. Can your reporting system handle multi-

year enterprise-wide queries with many

custom calculations rapidly, sans crashing?

Provide examples.

9. Where is the data stored?

10. If the data is stored remote from the

reporting system and/or enterprise, does

that slow down reporting and how much?

11. How long of a period is repository data

accessible?

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10. RFP ADDENDUM B: PRICE SHEET

ADDENDUM B: PRICE SHEET TRI-C RFP PRICE SHEET Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

I. PRIMARY SYSTEM OFFERING

Hosted Solutions or

Multi-tenanted Solution

II. Architecture / Business Continuity

III. System Maintenance Upgrades

IV. Security

V. Ticketing

VI. Real Time Dashboards and Reporting

VII. Implementation

VIII. Training

TOTAL