Website Maintenance Services RFP
Questions & Answers
Summary
9 companies submitted an ‘Intent to Bid’. 6 companies submitted questions. 128 questions were submitted.
Questions & Answers
1. We plan to use Agile framework for the development. We would need someone from Visit CA to play a role of Product Owner. Will we get this person and if yes how many hours we will have access to Product Owner per week?
A. Yes, as many hours as needed per week.
2. Are you currently using any specific tool for capturing sprint, stories and backlog? A. The incumbent digital agency uses their own tools for capturing sprint, stories
and backlog in-‐house.
3. Are you currently using any bug tracking tool?
A. The incumbent digital agency uses their own tracking tool called JetBrains Bug & Issue Tracker YouTrack 6.0.
4. What are the standard SLA (Service Level Agreement) for Simple, Medium and Complex requirements -‐ OR in other word story type that Visit CA is expecting?
A. We are looking to you to provide your thinking on appropriate standard SLAs based on what you know about our business.
5. Since this project may have both development of new stories and maintenance of old site, are you expecting 2 separate teams i.e. Development team will work on Agile Framework and Support team will work based on Tickets/SLA's?
A. It is not expected to have 2 separate teams, but we would be open to it. 6. We are assuming that we have to provide 24x7 support for the web sites across
different regions. Please confirm
A. While 24x7 support is not expected year round, we do expect the ability to escalate if a major problem occurs and support to be provided within a
reasonable timeframe and at minimum during normal business hours Monday – Friday, 8am to 5pm.
7. There will be need of transitioning current knowledge to us. We are assuming that you will be able to spare resources for this knowledge transition
8. We propose 1 Month training/understanding session to new team members on current processes, domain and knowledge. We hope to get enough support in terms of
availability of resources from Visit CA for this transition A. Ok.
9. Do you have internal test team?
A. While we do have a resource for internal testing, we would expect the selected agency to facilitate testing and verification.
10. Will we get access to any current information/architectural documents etc.? A. Yes.
11. What is the current hosting environment? A. Acquia
12. Is it hosted on cloud or on Managed server? A. Cloud
13. Do you currently have separate environments for Development, Test and Staging? A. Yes.
14. If we are facing issues with provided hosting/domains etc., do you have an IT contact to take care of this or would we have to manage this ourselves?
A. We do have an IT contact to help with issues, however, we would also look to the selected agency to provide any additional support/expertise/POVs.
15. Are all sites developed in Drupal OR are some developed using other opensource/php technologies/frameworks?
A. Yes, all sites are developed in Drupal.
16. Are all the current sites using Drupal 7 CMS? If not, please advise what the other frameworks, etc. that are being used?
A. Yes.
17. "Are the current sites using any other technologies apart from PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript/jQuery for API/WebServices/Integration?"
A. No.
18. Responsive framework is a current trend but it is mainly used and is compatible with latest desktop, tablet, and mobile platforms/devices/browsers? Also, what browser and devices we are targeting?
A. All of the standard browsers are expected: IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. The devices include desktop, tablet, and mobile.
19. Do you have internal graphic design team to design website and social media design elements and campaigns? If not, is that something you would expect the winning bidder to provide?
A. No, we do not have an internal graphic design team and would expect the selected agency to provide that service as needed.
20. Do you have content writer to help us with content? Or, is that also something you would expect winning bidder to provide?
A. Yes, we have a content team in place that handles all of the content – so we do not expect the selected agency to provide any help as it relates to content. 21. Once we design elements, who will be the final authority to approve/test?
A. Visit California will be the final authority to approve, but we would look to your agency to run full tests and verification of the elements.
22. Where are the Visit California sites currently hosted? Do you have any restrictions in terms of where it can be hosted (cloud/on premise)?
A. All of the sites are currently hosted on Acquia (cloud) and will continue to be hosted through our subscription period, which expires on June 29, 2016. 23. Which agency developed your current website?
A. Code and Theory
24. Are you currently working with a design agency or another other agencies that we may work with? Who are they?
A. MeringCarson is our Agency of Record and Time CA is our agency handling all of our content. There may be times where collaboration with one or both agencies will be required.
25. How are the current 13 sites structured? Are they subsites within a main site? (They seems to be the same site with different languages)
A. Folders structure. Content is specific to a single .com target / destination (visitcalifornia.com, visitcalifornia.com/uk, visitcalifornia.com/cn, etc.) 26. What are the various groups of users and their roles?
A. Author: can create content, add assets and generally perform typical site
maintenance. This role can submit to Editor for approval, but cannot publish live.
Editor: can create, as well as review and ‘approve’ content to be queued for
publishing.
Publisher: a power user with all previous credentials, but also the ability to make
content live on the website.
Admin: all other abilities along with purview to edit CMS settings and other
typically ‘unseen’ fields like analytics, redirects, etc. 27. How many content editors will be using the site concurrently?
A. As many as 10+ concurrently.
A. Because we are still in launch mode, there is no support team in place currently. 29. What is working with the current support structure and what is not working?
A. Because we are still in launch mode, there is no support team in place currently. 30. Is Continuous Integration being used to maintain the current site?
A. Yes.
31. Does Visit California take preference to vendors who have physical office locations and staff located in the San Francisco Bay Area?
A. No.
32. On a similar note, will Visit California require or prefer in-‐person meetings at Visit California office location at any point during the website redesign process?
A. We do not require in-‐person meetings at our Sacramento office, however, we would welcome it.
33. How much does Visit California currently spend on hosting and ongoing yearly website support/maintenance?
A. Hosting is handled through a separate contract and a standard for support does not exist for the current sites at this time because we are still in launch mode for the remaining country sites. We look to the selected agency to be capable of performing the support/maintenance required in the RFP.
34. How much did Visit California spend on the overall website development? A. Site development costs are not relevant to this RFP.
35. Which agency developed Visit California current website? A. Code and Theory
36. What were the strengths of your previous website services vendor? A. We are more interested in what you believe your strengths are. 37. Was there any aspect (related to services, quality, process, communications,
technology, expertise, etc.) that Visit California would like improved from the previous vendor?
A. No.
38. Why is Visit California considering changing its current vendor relationships?
A. Our current contract with the incumbent agency is ending on June 30, 2015. 39. What version of Drupal is the site current on and if all latest patches have been applied?
A. The current version is Drupal 7 and all latest patches have been applied.
40. If hosted at Acquia, would the environment and infrastructure support be provided by Acquia?
A. Yes, with some support from the selected agency, as needed. 41. What is your DR/Business Continuity Plan?
A. Response will be forthcoming.
42. How many environments are there? (Dev, Test, UAT, Stage, Prod?) A. Dev, Stage, Prod, and RA environments.
43. What are some of the current site support issues and bugs?
A. Because we are still in launch mode, there is no support team in place currently. 44. What ticketing system is used for current system support?
A. The incumbent digital agency uses their own tracking tool called JetBrains Bug & Issue Tracker YouTrack 6.0
45. How is the performance of the current sites?
A. Since we are still in launch mode for the remaining country sites, the primary metric has been site stability and continuity. Other important KPIs: visits, time on site, and partner handoffs are all trending positively.
46. What is the current process to create new sites from the existing sites? A. Each content module can be ‘replicated’ (translated) to another
Language/country. Translations of a piece of content are managed with translation sets. Each translation set has one source post and any number of translations in any of the enabled languages.
47. Please provide an architectural diagram of how the Drupal sites are architected and how it integrates with other systems?
A. Response will be forthcoming.
48. Do you currently have a wish list of items/features that you would like to get complete in the first year?
A. Yes.
49. How and what groups are feature set requirements defined and prioritized?
A. Requirements are defined and prioritized by the Visit California team through a combination of findings from our third party user testing and business needs. 50. How are current features set being developed? (In house team or with an development
partner)?
A. All development is happening with an external partner. 51. What are the current Quality Assurance process and tools?
A. The incumbent agency manages the QA processes and tools.
52. How many features are they usually in each release? Please provide some example from the last release of feature set enhancements?
A. Because we are still in launch mode, there have not been post feature set enhancements.
53. Which browsers and versions do Visit California require to be supported? A. All standard browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari) and latest versions. 54. Does Visit California website have any ADA compliance requirements?
A. The basic requirements in compliance with ADA.
55. Please describe the current and desired process for web strategy development and review?
A. We expect cross-‐collaboration with the Visit California team and relevant agencies and through a series of reviews/changes with the Visit California team and the selected agency.
56. What are some of the strategies that are planned for 2015?
A. Refer to: http://industry.visitcalifornia.com/Market-‐Strategy/Strategic-‐ Marketing-‐Plan/
57. How will a web strategy translate into implementation?
A. We expect cross-‐collaboration with the Visit California team and relevant agencies and through a series of reviews/changes with the Visit California team and the selected agency.
58. Which groups are responsible for the Web Strategy Development and Review? A. We expect cross-‐collaboration with the Visit California team and relevant
agencies.
59. What is the overall integration architecture between the CMS to other application? A. Mainly, via API.
60. What is the current status or future plan for an Enterprise Services Bus?
A. No status at this time, but we are open to discussions if it serves the business needs of Visit California.
61. What is the status of the Acquia Lift integration?
A. Visit California has only had initial product demo discussions with Acquia Lift. No implementation has been done.
62. What is the vendor API support arrangement with WebDam, Kapost, Traplt?
A. We have only had initial conversations with each of these vendors and at the moment we have paused until we have a selected agency in place for support and maintenance to move forward. They each have their own API documentation to support integrations.
63. Are there any integrations with CRM? Can you please describe them?
A. Currently, all integrations are handled via API being made for site Search and Visitor’s Guide orders.
A. None.
65. What reporting and BI tools are the sites integrated to? A. Google Analytics
66. What specific performance results are expected by the end of the Support Term? A. Visit California will work with selected agency and have regular check-‐in points. 67. What metrics and site analytics are being monitored on a day-‐to-‐day basis? What are
the new goals for these metrics over the Support Term?
A. Top level performance metrics such as visits, users, pageviews, and time on site. One of the new KPIs for the site is Partner Referrals – sending visitors to third party sites like our destination partners and best in class mapping and weather information.
68. How does Visit California define a successful relationship with a professional services provider?
A. One that can successfully provide all the required services on time and within budget, and can work collaboratively with the core team as well as the extended Visit California team.
69. Has Visit California used a Drupal Support professional services provider in the past? If so, what worked well (and, not so well) during that engagement?
A. No.
70. What type of Work Strategies is Visit California expecting to review in the vendor’s proposal?
A. We will review your proposed strategies, work plan, and/or processes as
outlined within the RFP scope of work.
71. How does Visit California define “Effective and Efficient” when it comes in relation to the budget?
A. On time and within budget.
72. What is the desired format for highlighting the vendor’s history and experience? A. Any form of medium can be used to best highlight your history and experience.
We have no preference.
73. What types of results should the vendor highlight when referencing their Case Studies? A. Whatever you feel best showcases why you should be selected.
74. Will the headquarters of the organization be a factor in assessing the vendor’s Qualifications?
A. No.
75. Is it required, preferred or not applicable that the team assigned to Visit California be located in close proximity to Sacramento California?
A. There is no requirement or preference for the team assigned to be located in close proximity to Sacramento, CA.
76. How did Visit California determine that 30 hours was an approximate estimate for Maintenance/resolution of issues, bugs, designs, and problems that may arise and cause usability, display, or accessibility issues for users?
A. Based off of the level of support needed after our US/CAN site launch on January 20, 2015 and the current list of support issues/items awaiting the selected agency.
77. How did Visit California determine that 15 hours was an approximate estimate for Maintenance/resolution of issues, bugs, and problems that may arise that would inhibit workflow process but may include any other enhancements necessary to the Drupal CMS system as determined by Visit California?
A. Based off of the level of support needed after our US/CAN site launch on January 20, 2015 and the current list of support issues/items awaiting the selected agency.
78. How is the translation process currently being managed?
A. We work with our content agency, which follows our publishing model to have all translation services managed through their vendor, TransPerfect.
79. What’s the timeline for implementing languages in those sites that haven’t been translated such as Italian and Korean?
A. Our timeline since April has been to launch a new international site a week. The remaining sites left to launch in the next 3 weeks is Korea, India, and Japan. 80. Are there plans for further social media and/or community forum integration for the
site?
A. Not at this time.
81. Can you describe any plans/ideas that exist for music media integration? A. There are no plans currently for music media integration.
82. Are there plans for marketing automation integration and newsletter subscription features?
A. None that are defined at this time.
83. Are there any plans for revenue sharing and/or e-‐commerce?
A. There are plans for site monetization and we are currently working on the ad strategy to integrate throughout the site.
84. Will Visit California have a dedicated project team available and dedicated to the website support needs from month-‐to-‐month?
85. What is the process for setting, evaluating and approving the digital strategy for the website during the Support Term?
A. We expect cross-‐collaboration with the Visit California team and relevant agencies and through a series of reviews/changes with the Visit California team and the selected agency.
86. What is the process for approving new work performed on the website?
A. Through a series of reviews/changes with the Visit California team and the selected agency.
87. What project management tools is Visit California accustomed to working with in submitting and approving support tickets?
A. SharePoint (Visit California) and JetBrains Bug & Issue Tracker YouTrack 6.0 (incumbent digital agency).
88. Are there any existing errors, bugs or issues that are occurring on the website that we need to be aware of when preparing our proposal?
A. Nothing that is impeding the website or its functionality.
89. What areas of the site is personalization being used/applied? What specific information is being captured from the visitor while the visitor is on the site?
A. There is currently no personalization being used/applied on any of the sites. The only information that is being captured from the visitor are those that sign up for either our Free California Visitor’s Guide or newsletter opt-‐in.
90. Has a full a11y test been performed on the site? A. Yes.
91. Will any penalties be assessed if hard copies of the proposal are not delivered?
A. Yes – hard copies are a minimum requirement. Proposers not submitting hard
copies of their proposals will not be considered.
92. If printed copies of the proposal are required, what section titles/tabs are expected?
A. There are no specific formatting requirements. However, proposals presented in
a logical, easy to follow format are encouraged. A format which follows the format of the RFP is preferable.
93. Information that is asked to be provided in Financial Statements section (page 7) is typically not made public by our company, as we are privately held. Would a statement as to the financial stability of our company be acceptable for our response to be
considered and awarded?
A. Financial statements are a minimum requirement, even if you are a private
94. It is expected that the vendor’s Project Team that will be assigned to Visit California be confirmed and provided with the Proposal that is due June 26, 2015, or can the Project team be confirmed and provided after the contract is awarded?
A. The selected agency’s project team can be confirmed and provided after the contract is awarded, however, we would prefer to have the team in place and provided with the proposal.
95. What responsive framework(s) is being utilized?
A. Response will be forthcoming.
96. Year over Year, or at least in the last 90 days, what kind of web traffic has each of the 13 websites received?
A. Since site launch on January 20, 2015, traffic has been trending well. We have seen a total of 4,436,805 visits.
97. Of the 30 hours per month for General website support, how many hours do you anticipate would go towards design?
A. Less than 10 hours, but will not be expected on a monthly basis. 98. What type of disaster recovery plan is in place?
A. Response will be forthcoming.
99. What type of daily, weekend, holiday coverage does your existing vendor provide? A. While 24x7 support is not expected year round, we do expect the ability to
escalate if a major problem occurs and support to be provided within a
reasonable timeframe and at minimum during normal business hours Monday – Friday, 8am to 5pm.
100. What business hours would you need support coverage for?
A. While 24x7 support is not expected year round, we do expect the ability to escalate if a major problem occurs and support to be provided within a
reasonable timeframe and at minimum during normal business hours Monday – Friday, 8am to 5pm.
101. Can you provide your cross browser compatibility list for both mac & windows? A. All standard browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari) and latest versions. 102. Can you share your staging to production publishing workflow?
A. We expect this workflow to be identified by the selected agency. 103. How many content contributors have access to each of the 13 websites?
A. Each of the 13 websites has at least one editor/author role type that has access to the CMS. In some cases, there are multiple contributors for a country office. 104. And of those users how many are administrators vs. editors?
A. There is only 1 administrator.
105. Which translation vendor do you use? And how often is content translated?
A. We work with our content agency, which follows our publishing model to have all translation services managed through their vendor, TransPerfect. Content
translations are done in batches and the frequency at which we refresh content changes seasonally or by promotions/campaigns.
106. As part of the service requirements, do you anticipate requiring wire framing/information architecture?
A. Potentially.
107. Besides Google Analytics, do you use any other web analytics package? A. No.
108. Would you be open to other services outside of website maintenance? For example: Video production, Content marketing, and Social media?
A. Not at this time.
109. Is there a minimum size of firm that Visit California is interested in working with, either in terms of staff or yearly revenue?
A. No, there is no minimum size requirement in terms of either staff or yearly revenue.
110. Based on our understanding, following are the sites which are in scope: www.visitcalifornia.com (US & CAN)
www.visitcalifornia.com/uk www.visitcalifornia.com/au www.visitcalifornia.com/cn www.visitcalifornia.com/mx www.visitcalifornia.com/br www.visitcalifornia.com/fr www.visitcalifornia.com/de www.visitcalifornia.com/jp www.visitcalifornia.com/kr www.visitcalifornia.com/in www.visitcalifornia.com/it Please confirm.
A. Yes.
111. Is it possible for you to share details on who is the current service provider for these websites?
A. Code and Theory for development and Acquia Cloud for hosting.
112. Would any documentation be provided to understand the application complexity and other technical details?
A. Yes, upon specific requests.
113. What are the kind of issues most frequently reported by the customers?
A. Due to time constraints, we were unable to obtain information about most
frequently reported issues.
114. What is the procedure currently in place for logging the issues reported by customers? How will the various issues/tickets flow in to the selected vendor?
A. The incumbent digital agency uses their own tracking tool called JetBrains Bug &
Issue Tracker YouTrack 6.0. We would work with you on how best to manage the various issues/tickets flow process.
115. What would be the SLAs for responding and resolving the issues reported?
A. We are looking to you to provide your thinking on appropriate standard SLAs
based on what you know about our business.
116. What are the hours of operation expected to carry out the maintenance and support activities?
A. While 24x7 support is not expected year round, we do expect the ability to
escalate if a major problem occurs and support to be provided within a
reasonable timeframe and at minimum during normal business hours Monday – Friday, 8am to 5pm.
117. Are all sites hosted on same server or are there different hosting providers for different sites?
A. All sites are currently hosted on the same server.
118. Please let us know if all the sites share the following components or they are they different for each site: database; structure, look and feel, template themes; code base?
A. Same for all
119. What are the caching techniques used in these sites. Which caching technique you are using for images? Are different size of images loading on different size of device?
A. We have installed Acquia’s Proactive purging module called Acquia purge. It’s
installed and configured out-‐of-‐the-‐box. The cache of the detail pages of a node and its translation is purged when it’s been updated/deleted. Site admin has the ability to purge URLs manually.
120. Are all the sites are mobile responsive as we switch between the applications?
A. Yes.
121. Are you using any css framework to maintain the site css structure like less, SaaS etc.?
A. Do to time constraints, we were unable to obtain this information from our
122. Do these sites have multilingual capability?
A. Yes. Each content module can be ‘replicated’ (translated) to another
Language/country. Translations of a piece of content are managed with translation sets. Each translation set has one source post and any number of translations in any of the enabled languages.
123. What are the third party applications installed in your current sites.
A. None at the moment.
124. Are you using solar search for you content search? Is cross site search feature available in current sites.
A. No, we are not using solar search and we do not have cross site search feature
available on any of the sites.
125. Who will be responsible for the data population? Visit California or the selected vendor? Is data population multi lingual?
A. Visit California and its global country offices will be responsible for all of the
content and data population.
126. Do you have a SEO team in place or would the selected vendor be responsible for it?
A. We will have an SEO team in place and will not need the selected agency to
provide.
127. What are the steps being followed today to push changes on live server.
A. We have separate environments for Development, Test and Staging before
anything gets pushed to Prod.
128. Who will be responsible for the code review-‐ Visit California or the selected vendor?
A. We would expect the selected agency to be responsible for any code review,
including facilitating all testing and verification necessary.
