Estacada, OR

Agency – Estacada, Oregon

Interviewee – Matt Lorenzen, Economic Development Manager

Interview Date – 9/7/16

Outcome – Lost

Proposal Bid – $31,530 + $7,000 annual

RSM - Redfern

Proposal - originally dated August 10, 2016

Background

Estacada is a city of about 2,900 located on the western edge of Mount Hood
They had a total budget of $25,000
Matt reached out to 7 different vendors that he discovered from research - Vision, CivicPlus, EvoGov, Aha Consulting (acquired by Municode in April 2016), and a couple of local vendors
He found us from Govtech's Best of the Web contest, and liked Sandpoint and Dillon's websites
He called our 800 number and eventually received a call back from John Redfern
CivicPlus came in with a more competitive price, but they were concerned about being lost in the mix as a small customer in a big pond
Ultimately Estacada chose Aha Consulting
- Price was the first criteria
- But they also offered the functionality that municipal websites need - email subscription, meetings and agenda manager, business directory, job portal
- He looked at their portfolio, and he wasn't that impressed with most of the customers - but a couple were really good
- It also helped that Aha is based in a Portland suburb, about an hour away

Why did we lose?

Price was the #1 driver of their decision - and we were higher on the upfront costs as well as for the ongoing annual costs
Matt was confident with our process and approach, but had some reservations about getting lost in the mix as a smaller customer

What could we improve?

Other points

Matt had a good quote - "custom costs money"
- Smaller, budget-constrained cities don't need all of the upfront research
- "We need a site that looks good and functions well
- UX, heatmaps is cool and flashy, but not necessary at the low end of price point
Matt recommends that we eliminate the front-end consulting for smaller customers to keep price point lower

Takeaways

To go downmarket, we need to eliminate or reduce the cost of upfront consulting/UX
Annual fees for other vendors was in the $2,000 to $4,000 range - which is less than half of our $7,000 proposed annual fee