US4522 DAM Services

https://www.crs.org/about/bid-opportunity Please go to the CRS website for the full scope of work and attachments.

Request for Proposal

#US4522 – DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT SERVICES

Contracting Entity: Catholic Relief Services (CRS]

228 W Lexington St

Baltimore, MD 21201

Issued on: April 26, 2022

Dear Sir or Madam,

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a Digital Asset Management system to house and deliver our multimedia materials to our staff, both overseas and in the United States. The attached RFP contains all of the necessary information for interested bidders.

As the Procurement professional responsible for facilitating this process, the rules of engagement are for you to contact me via e-mail at [email protected], with CC to [email protected].

CRS will accept questions through 4 p.m. EDT. on May 2, 2022. Interested Bidders can submit their questions to the email addresses above. CRS will provide answers to all relevant questions by email to all known participating companies and organizations.

Please refrain from communicating with other staff of CRS in regard to this RFP. Any communication outside of this process may result in disqualification. Please follow the instructions provided in this document for your responses to the RFP. CRS looks forward to working with you throughout the RFP process.

This RFP does not obligate CRS to execute a contract nor does it commit CRS to pay any costs incurred in the preparation and submission of the proposals. Furthermore, CRS reserves the right to reject any and all offers, if such action is considered to be in the best interest of CRS.

Sincerely,

Regina Hill

Section I. General Information

1.0 Introduction and Purpose

Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an international not for profit non-governmental organization founded in 1943 by the Catholic Bishops of the United States to serve World War II survivors in Europe. Today, it is the official international humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic community. It provides support to impoverished and disadvantaged people in over 100 countries overseas based solely on need, regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity. Within the United States, CRS engages Catholics to live their faith in solidarity with the poor and suffering of the world. CRS works with individuals, dioceses, parishes, schools and organizations throughout the United States to offer Catholics at home concrete ways to contribute to the progress of the world by helping the poorest and most vulnerable overseas.

The intent of this Request for Proposals (“RFP” or “Solicitation”) is to provide Digital Asset Management Systems an opportunity to present their features, qualifications, experience, and conceptual approach to providing the scope of services in relation to the needs of CRS for our headquarters office located in Baltimore, Maryland.

CRS is seeking a Digital Asset Management System to house and deliver our multimedia materials to our staff, both overseas and in the United States**

It is intended that one (1) contract will result from this solicitation. Any Contract arising from this RFP action shall commence on the date the Contract is executed on behalf of CRS, or such other date as CRS and the Contractor shall agree. The initial term of the Contract is anticipated to start on or around June 2022, for a two (2) year duration with the option to renew for one (1) year.

Questions must be submitted in writing via email and reference RFP #US4522. RFP related questions must be received by 4 p.m. EDT on May 2, 2022. Inquiries will receive a written reply. Copies of replies will be sent to all known participants. All such questions and inquiries must be received by the date and time as outlined.

Late proposal submissions will not be accepted. The time on the “sent” email from the Proposer will be used to determine timeliness.

1.4 General Requirements

CRS anticipates issuing a contract to a successful bidder for a Digital Asset Management Service.

CRS may elect to hold vendor demonstrations.

1.5 Conflict of Interest, Anti-bribery and Anti-Corruption Statement

Our CRS values and guiding principles commit us to avoid conflict of interest, and to never accept any form of fraud or corruption in compliance with operational regulations.

It is the policy of CRS that no vendor shall take any action or make any statement intended to influence the action of a CRS employee, to benefit the personal interest of the employee or the employee’s family members, rather than the interest of the agency.

CRS employees shall not solicit, request, accept, or agree to accept any significant gift from a CRS partner or prospective partner. A significant gift is defined as any tangible item, service, favor, credit, or discount of value, not available to others, that could influence decisions and actions. No monies are to be accepted as a personal gift for any reason whatsoever.

1.6 Source of Funding

Any contract resulting from this RFP will be financed by CRS’ own resources, foundations, and other sources.

1.7 Chronological List of Proposal Events

The following calendar summarizes important dates in the solicitation process. Bidders must strictly follow these deadlines.

RFP published April 26, 2022

Deadline for written questions Monday, May 2, 2022, 4 p.m. EDT

CRS Responses to Questions Tuesday, May 10, 2022

Complete Proposal Packet due Monday, May 23, 2022, 11:59 p.m. EDT

Vendor Sandbox Demos May 31 – June 3, 2022

Contract award To Be Determined

The dates above may be modified at the sole discretion of CRS. Any changes will be published in an amendment to this RFP and posted on www.crs.org.

1.8 Validity Period

Bidders’ proposals must remain valid for 90 calendar days after the proposal deadline.

1.9 Negotiations

CRS reserves the right to conduct post-iterative negotiations. If deemed an opportunity, CRS reserves the right to make separate awards per component or to make no award at all.

1.10 Amendments

If at any time prior to award, CRS determines there to be a need for a significant modification of the provisions of the RFP, CRS will issue a written amendment to all potential suppliers. No oral statement of any person shall, in any manner, be deemed to alter or otherwise affect any term or condition of this solicitation, and no supplier shall rely on any such statement.

1.11 Rejection or Award

CRS reserves the right to reject any and/or all proposals for any reason. CRS also reserves the right to accept any tender in whole or in part and to contract on any of the terms offered or on different terms.

Upon award and execution of a contract under the RFP, CRS will notify unsuccessful bidders. CRS will not be bound by any award notice issued under this RFP until a contract is duly signed and executed with a bidder.

1.12 Protest

Bidders agree that any protest to this request for proposals must be presented in writing with a full explanation of the Bidders’ concerns to CRS for consideration. At its sole discretion, CRS will make a final decision on the protest.

1.13 Confidentiality

The contents within this document are considered confidential and should be shared with

relevant members of your team (staff, consultants or advisors) on a need to know basis. Bidders are responsible for any breaches originating from their Team.

Information relating to the examination, evaluation, and comparison of Bids, and the recommendation of contract award, shall not be disclosed to Bidders or any other persons not officially concerned with such process, even after publication of the contract award.

1.14 Evaluation and Basis for Award

A contract will be executed with the Bidder whose proposal is determined to be responsive to this solicitation document, meets the eligibility criteria stated in this RFP, that is determined to represent the best value to CRS.

Specify length, start date and end date of the contract, and the options for renewal.

All proposals submitted in response to this RFP will be evaluated by CRS/Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM) personnel and the RFP Bid Committee. The entire committee will judge the merit of proposals received in accordance with the evaluation criteria described below.

1. Interface – Is it easy for our non-technical audience
   to use and understand?
2. Analytics – How robust? How many tracking factors
   considered? What kind of reporting features?
3. Portals or Simple, branded, web pages that can be used
   to arrange and distribute our assets, internally or
   externally.
4. AI – How robust? Is it teachable for our agency?
5. Translation – we have an international workforce. Prefer an internal interface that can serve French, Spanish, English and Arabic.
6. Customer Service
7. Ability to meet specifications on pages 9 – 13

8. Phases of Evaluation

9. Technical Fit

10. Interface – Sandbox

11. Total Cost to Own

    Section II: Required Proposal Documents & Technical Proposal

    1.0 Bidder Questionnaire

    In addition to the information requested in 2.0, 3.0, and financial proposal, please complete and include the Annex sections with your submission:

    · Cover Letter

    · Executive Summary

    · Company Overview

    · Proposal with reference to RFP#US4522

    · Copy of trade license, or equivalent document

    · Copy of certificate of authorization to act as an Agent on behalf of the manufacturer.

    · References

    2.1 Cover Letter

    Limit the cover letter to two pages or less.

    2.2 Executive Summary

    Succinctly outline the proposed solution. Introduce the differentiating elements of your DAM. Limit the Executive Summary to two pages or less.

    2.3 Company Overview

    · Provide a general description of the company, a statement regarding stability, and an overview of the organizational structure.

    · Describe the company resources dedicated to development, enhancement, management, and support of the solution software and application offerings.

    · List recent awards and other indicators of industry leadership.

    · Do you have a product roadmap? What features and functions are in your organization’s roadmap?

    · Do you have an application strategy with readily available apps? What apps do you have available today benefiting customers?

    · Describe the organization’s expertise in this market.

    · Provide a list of recently completed projects or implementations, preferably in the same or similar industry.

    Catholic Relief Services reserves the right to contact the references listed and, if necessary, request additional references from respondents.

    2.4 Questions

    All potential vendors need to answer the following questions:

    Program and Product Specifications

    1. How long will it take to migrate our assets to the new system? Offer a time frame**.** Do you have a guide? Written directions? or a roadmap for your process?

    2. How will you ensure that our metadata will be intact in the transfer? If so explain, this may be covered in the guide asked about in question one. Are there steps we take?

    3. Will video be playable, rather than just a thumbnail, on the system?

    4. Are there templates? By this I mean, the ability to open a document, for example, say an Adobe InDesign document in the DAM, change an element and then use it. All while still inside the DAM? Explain if you do, or if there’s a variation.**

    5. Do you have a Brand Portal? If so, is it an add-on, or built-in.**

    6. Please list and highlight the programs that your DAM integrates with. Explain?**

    7. What are the base features? What are the add-ons. Explain?**

    8. Please explain your AI options. Can your AI be customized to fit our business?**

    9. Can we auto-create ALT or ALT text tags. Can your ALT tags be customized to fit our business?**

    10. What are your translation options? We have staff all over the world and want to accommodate them. Please list the languages offered in your answer.**

    11. What are your reporting and analytics capabilities? Explain features, types and highlights?

12. Do you offer a service where we can create branded webpages to arrange and deliver our assets, either internally or externally? These pages would include permissions levels. We currently have a service like this that we call Portals in our DAM. We use these simple, branded web pages internally to share our latest and greatest multimedia, but they can be used for multiple purposes. If you are able to provide this service, can you talk about the analytics for these portal pages? At the moment in ours we can see weekly and monthly views, but we can’t see if they’re unique or any other metric. Explain what your portals can do, features, benefits, and analytics.**

    2. Does your DAM search through or inside the content of the assets themselves? Or does it just search through captions, filenames, and keywords? Explain?**

3. Does your DAM have the capability to transcribe video into text? Explain?**

1.0 Product and Program Features
All potential vendors need to confirm or address the following features:**

For users:

· Cloud-based

· Assets are searchable through uploaded metadata

· Able to upload a wide variety of filetypes for photography, video, PDFs, graphics and design files, etc.

· Batch uploads and tagging

· Conflicted asset feature to prevent overwriting current assets

· Variety of ways for users to find what they need such as a category menu, advanced search capabilities, related assets, and predictive search

· Customizable metadata schema

· Version control to track file iterations and retain the related metadata values

· Asset history to see all activity on an asset

· Custom restrictions on specific assets (restricted, semi-restricted and unrestricted)

· Create custom roles for different levels of access

· Custom upload profiles

· Users can self-register for the system

· Users can create their own collections and easily share with others, both inside and outside the agency

· Analytics for how users search and individual asset insights

· Dashboard messages to highlight key assets

· Ability to share links and embed codes for assets and collections

· Set asset release and expiration dates

· Mobile app available

· Chat feature to immediately connect with a support team

· Responsive, easy to use interfaces for both DAM and integrations.

For API, Integrations and Asset Serving:**

Ability to create and assign users to groups/teams with collections of assets assigned to them (API and Integrations should support this capability).

o A well-documented REST API that supports the ability to search, create, retrieve and modify assets and data equivalent to the DAM site (name, attributes, metadata, custom fields, sizes, roles & permissions, taxonomy, analytics, etc.).

o Integrations for Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Drupal and WordPress, Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) such as Acquia and Sitecore, project management platforms such as Workfront[AK1] , and creative design tools such as Adobe Creative Cloud.

· CMS/DXP integrations should be bi-directional and support the same capabilities as the DAM site.

· CMS/DXP integrations should support responsive image formats and adhere to image sizes or styles set up through the platform where the asset will be placed (e.g. Drupal Responsive Image Styles).

· CMS/DXP integrations should support minimal image editing capabilities (size, crop, focal point, aspect ratio) if not covered by the integrated website and the ability to review asset usage/placement.

· Ability to create asset sizes for specific use cases (social media, email, hero, custom, etc.) and on-demand through URL (using parameters or other method) such as size, quality, focal point, crop, and format, when placing an asset on a web page. (e.g. dam.com/imageid?w=100&h=100&q=80&fp=300,300&c=true&f=jpg)

· Utilize AI and/or Machine Learning to automatically tag assets and provide image ALT descriptions.

3.0 Deliverables

• Vendor will assist with the migration process.

• Vendor will provide DAM by stated roll out date.

• Vendor will provide training for their software.

• Vendor will provide consistent customer service.

• Vendor will provide regular updates.

4.0 Financial Proposal

Please see Annex B for additional details. Bidders must provide itemized and total costs of proposed services, this would include subscription and fees, payment expectations and pay cycle. This should include any detail about initial costs and deposits.

Thank you for your consideration.

[AK1]Adobe Workfront

**