Grand Rapids, Michigan

Agency – Grand Rapids, Michigan

Interviewee – Becky Jo Glover and Amie Merron

Interview Date – 12/14/16

Outcome – Lost

Proposal Bid – $160,960

RSM - Adam

Proposal - originally dated November 2016

Background

Grand Rapids is a city in western Michigan with a population of about 200,000
They did a content review and conducted an alpha test of an "evolutionary redesign of its website to include expanded digital service offerings"
They call this the Digital First Vision and expect it to be "epic"; it's a change in mindset from broadcasting content to making sure that citizens can do everything online
They want to be a model for digital government and let customers do as much online as they can in person
User experience, user design and user testing are important components for what they want to do
9 people were on their web redesign team and they have been working for over a year on the strategy and looked at 59 vendors over the year
We were one of 3 finalists pre-selected for the RFP along with CivicPlus and OpenCities
Their selection criteria was based on:
- Commitment to Digital Vision strategy - 35%
- Cost - 25%
- Organizational viability - 15%
- Implementation history - 15%
- Technical capabilities - 10%

Why did we lose?

Grand Rapids' team felt there was a disconnect between our proposal and their RFP, and that we didn't really listen to what they were looking to do
They thought our proposal was very templated and only included one or two mentions of the Digital Vision, and was barely customized
They also thought our proposal was more focused on 'old school' content broadcasting and not enough on moving services to digital; in their mind, they are starting with moving services online first and content will come later
Content taxonomy and digital governance were also important to them
It seemed like we were offering "business as usual" because that is all we presented - at the end of the day, we barely offered 3 statements relating to their Digital First strategy in our proposal
Becky Jo said it was disappointing because she thought they spent more time and had interaction with Vision than any other vendor; she thought it was "odd" that information from those conversations didn't make it to proposal (she used "odd" and "disconnect" several times)

What could we improve?

Do a better job with personalizing the proposal and listen to what the customer is saying - our proposal felt too much like a template and there was very little personalization for Grand Rapids, what they told us and what was in the RFP
Content migration story - she made a big deal of the 2,000 page migration that we mentioned in our proposal, but that was at odds with what they want to do with content
Read the RFP carefully - she stated that they encouraged every vendor that including local partners is incredibly important ("we value local partnerships") as they want someone on the project who really knows Grand Rapids; only OpenCities included partners in their proposal
Improve forms tool - OpenCities has a more robust and mature forms tool and process

Other points

Becky Jo said our UX approach is solid and was what they were looking for; we understand and tell a good story around UX
OpenCities appeard to have more
CivicPlus didn't have much in terms of user experience - they only offered to do focus groups
Of the functional requirements, we noted that several would be TBD based on discussions with customer
On the cost sheet and recommended expansions, other vendors put in prices but Vision noted that several would be TBD after discussion
Adam did a good job with listening to them and asked a lot of questions - but they didn't think a lot of the information they told him wound up in proposal

Takeaways

UX story did resonate with Grand Rapids - they liked our approach and we should continue to press our advantage here
There is a bit of a disconnect when we discuss 2,000 page migration in the proposal with a content strategy approach that is trying to reduce the number of pages
We should continue with plans to update our forms tool
Our proposals for larger deals need to be more customized, and include more information from RFP and prospect discussions