Customer Experience Intelligence Partner 2

Description

Summary of the work To work with Highways England (HE) as a Customer Experience Intelligence Partner (CEIP) following the re-procurement of the Dart Charge service. The CEIP will work with HE and their service partners in delivering FFC. The CEIP shall provide similar customer experience and intelligence services supporting other HE projects as required. Expected Contract Length 2 Years with 6 month option to extend Latest start date Thursday 15 April 2021 Budget Range Capped Time and Materials - Total Value £1,000,000 £600,000.00 allocated to delivery of Free flow Charging £400,00.00 allocated to other HE project requirements Why the Work is Being Done The Dartford Crossing is critical to the strategic road network in the South East of England. A road user charge has been collected at the Dartford Crossing by Highways England (on behalf of the Secretary of State for Transport) since 2003 (under the brand name “Dart Charge”) to manage high demand for its use using powers under the Transport Act 2000. A new service delivery model is proposed for the second generation Dart Charge service (“Free-Flow Charging”). Three service delivery packages are being/will be procured with each package delivered as a complete managed service, including people operations, systems and maintenance. Please see links below for further information. - https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:411144-2019:TEXT:EN:HTML - https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:464283-2019:TEXT:EN:HTML Highways England (HE) need to ensure the Dart Charge service continues to meet the needs of our users throughout the design and implementation of Free-Flow Charging, while creating a service that improves the customer experience and allows innovation throughout the course of its lifetime. HE is realising a growing demand for customer experience skills and requires an experienced partner to support Free Flow Charging (FFC) and other HE projects , and provide training and knowledge transfer to upskill HE staff through the lifetime of the contract. Problem to Be Solved • Work with HE including user research and testing, content design, digital guidance, accessibility and best practice. Ensure design principles, design guide and service maps are relevant and aligned to service. • Work with suppliers to assist design and development of digital services ensuring customers seamless end to end journey, to ensure customer experience measures are implemented and calculated correctly, ensure design guidance is followed and act as the voice of our customers representing their individual needs and how accessibility priorities are met. • Support HE and suppliers through all Government Digital Service (GDS) assessments providing an assurance role for FFC, including guidance throughout the process • Advise on innovative technologies to improve customer experience • Investigate/validate scalability of the Free-Flow Charging service, providing guidance through research how to incorporate other schemes (from a user experience perspective) • Support procurement of other Free-Flow Charging services and enhancements if required • Provision of support to other HE projects • Provision of training and knowledge transfer to key HE staff Who Are the Users For Free-Flow Charging, the users should represent a broad cross section of account, non-account (casual), LRDS (local residents), commercial users and those that need digital assistance, such that the results are statistically significant. We can provide contacts for some commercial users, but the remainder would have to be sourced as part of the task. Profiles of users for other projects will be determined in collaboration with the winning tenderer. Work Already Done We have conducted an extensive survey asking account holders their usage, views and improvement requests. Using this as a basis, we conducted further discovery work and prototyped key journeys in support of the procurement process with bidders. Using a Customer Experience Intelligence Partner we have conducted further user research, specifically around our Fleet and Business users and have created several products to help envision the service and promote collaboration among the service providers. All outputs of previous research will be made available to shortlisted bidders. Existing Team For FFC, the supplier will work primarily with the FFC Operational team and new FFC supply chain in Birmingham. Work could also be done with the project team in Guildford and the Lower Thames Crossing team. For other projects the supplier will work primarily with the existing digital team in HE. This will involve the Digital Services team in Leeds. Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Experience of building and testing prototypes • Demonstrable evidence of UX design across multiple service providers and back office systems • Provide examples of leading projects successfully and working collaboratively with GDS to ensure GDS assessment criteria is fully met, with emphasis on user research and user experiences design services • Experience of agile and iterative development • Proven experience of supporting a re-design of a multi-faceted, complex transactional service. • Demonstrate excellent analytical, problem solving, written and verbal communication skills • An in-depth understanding of GDPR and Cyber Security legislation and the processing of sensitive information • Demonstrable experience of designing and testing services for Assisted Digital users Nice to Haves • Capability to provide coaching of Agile methodologies and iterative development • Demonstrable evidence of working with a broad range of back office systems and the capability to learn adapt to new technologies • Demonstrate collaborative experience and innovation (from others etc.) • Experience of Content Design and carrying out Content Audits • Demonstrable experience of identifying and engaging with potential or unknown users • Proven experience in delivering training to upskill client resources. Work Location Primary location for FFC is: Highways England, 2 Colmore Square, Birmingham, B4 6BN. We expect the work to take place across other locations at offices in Guildford, Leeds, or offices connected to suppliers we are engaging with. We want the provider to communicate with users and potential users so they can do this in whatever way is most appropriate. We would not require a partner to be on site for any specific amount of time. We would expect them to visit HE in Leeds, Birmingham, and Guildford as required for meetings and workshops and be available for regular virtual conferences. Working Arrangments Engagement with the team will not be constant with periods where work is minimal. Current restrictions due to Covid-19 pandemic should be adhered to at all times. Indicative timescales for Free-Flow Charging’s key support tasks are provided below. • Assist GDS Alpha assessment - 05/2021 to 11/2021 • Support Detailed Design - 10/2021 to 06/2022 • Assist GDS Private Beta assessment - 10/2021 to 08/2022 • Support Customer cutover - 07/2022 to 11/2022 • Provide UX and specialist digital advice to the FFC implementation team - 05/2021 to 01/2023 Security Clearance Must comply with HE’s Security requirements. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Your proposed approach and methodology to meeting the needs of the project (15%) • How you intend to optimise the user experience and deliver value for money to benefit the development of the service (20%) • How you'll provide HE with a team that embodies the “essential” and “nice to have” skills and experience detailed; particularly, why you believe the team will be high performing (20%) • How you'll balance being responsive and flexible to changing work demands (in terms of skills/capacity) as it progresses with the benefits of a stable and consistent team (10%) • Indicative structure (i.e. people/roles in your proposed team and their main interrelationships), indicative profile (detailing how team size and roles might change over time) and start date (5%) • How you will work with HE and incumbent suppliers to identify improvements to the existing services (5%) • How you will work with multiple potential suppliers within the planning and development phase for new services (10%) • How you will work with HE and third parties to ensure new HE services can meet the relevant GDS digital service standard at various phases of development (5%) • How you will ensure delivery of key tasks to time whilst delivering value for money (5%) • What is your approach to delivering training in order to upskill client resources? (5%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Work with HE as part of a team (15%) • Work well in a collaborative agile team and be confident at communicating and demonstrating developments and ideas (25%) • Demonstrate courage and challenge the status quo (e.g. can express controversial views, confront reality, make tough decisions) (10%) • Demonstrate responsibility (e.g. act like a leader, provide solutions to problems, seek the best for the organisation beyond your team) (15%) • Be respectful of different opinions and constructive in feedback (10%) • Demonstrate that they can work with users with low technical expertise (10%) • Share knowledge and experience (10%) • Have proven experience of stakeholder management and strong negotiation skills (5%) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 65% Cultural fit 10% Price 25% Questions from Suppliers 1. Under “Security clearance”, you state “Must comply with HE’s Security requirements”. Can you please elaborate on the security level our team should possess? We require BPSS as a minimum. 2. Could you provide examples of the “broad range of back office systems”? It is with regret that we cannot be more specific at this point in time because we have not yet placed contracts for new FFC service. This is due to take place in the coming weeks. However it would be safe to say that FFC suppliers will be utilising well known ERP products as part of their Back Office solution. 3. Can you please provide the name of Highways England’s partner? The incumbent supplier for these services currently is Nomensa. We are re-procuring these services to ensure we have support throughout the Transition and Implementation of FFC. 4. Please can you clarify the amount allocated to other HE project requirements, it currently reads £400,00.00 This should read £400,000.00 5. Please could you clarify if suppliers should provide single 100-word case-study responses to evidence the essential and nice-to-have criteria, or capability statements tailored to this specific project? For the purposes of shortlisting suppliers should provide responses incl. examples demonstrating their capabilities to meet the essential and nice to have criteria. The more relevant these are to this project the more likely they are to attract a higher score. 6. Please can you describe the evaluation method for the pricing/commercial element that will be used at the second stage and whether this will be on a total capped cost basis? It is likely that price will be assessed on an average day rate across multiple SFIA day rate categories. We would like to realise as much value from the £1,000,000.00 capped T&M budget. The lowest average day rate will attract the full 25% of the marks for price. Tenders with higher average day rates will be awarded scores calculated as a percentage using the lowest tender submission as a baseline. Example calculations will be provided in the tender documentation. 7. Will Nomensa be bidding for this opportunity? It would not be appropriate for Highways England to speak on behalf of a supplier. 8. Please could you clarify what could be included in “other project requirements”? We have at least one other active major project which is likely to require Customer UX assistance in the coming months. We also have smaller requirements in support of the Highways England Digital Services Team to assist business as usual activity across existing services and to increase the experience/skillsets/awareness of CUX within the organisation. 9. Please could you clarify what you mean by “Demonstrate collaborative experience and innovation (from others etc.)”? The second generation service is being delivered through a multi-package approach, consisting of three core packages (road user charging, UK enforcement services and Non-UK enforcement services) to deliver a best in class service to end users. We are looking for a supplier who can work collaboratively with all parties to deliver a seamless end user experience. Innovative ideas and approaches to support the development of the service are important to meet the changing needs of end users throughout the 7 year life of the service. 10. Would you please clarify the following question is relating to identifying and engaging end user for research and survey?5) Demonstrable experience of identifying and engaging with potential or unknown users" We are looking for suppliers to demonstrate experience of being able to identify, source and engage with end users for research, survey and other engagement purposes e.g. focus groups. Highways England is committed to developing an accessible and inclusive service and wishes to engage with a wide range of users, including potential new or unknown users e.g. those not currently using digital or automated channels that we have not reached to date.