Santee, CA

Agency – Santee, CA

Interviewee – Bill Maertz, Director of Community Services

Interview Date – 7/18/16

Outcome – Won

Proposal Bid – $47,030

Proposal - originally dated March 31, 2016

Background

Santee is a current customer on version 4 and their site had not been updated for more than 10 years due to budgetary constraints
Being the incumbent for Vision meant that we were actually playing from behind because our name was associated with their old out-of-date website even though there were no issues with the what we had done
They prepared an RFP and received 16 proposals, 8 of them were moved on to next level
The city wanted a user friendly site that incorporated better branding for the community
A panel of 4 people (Bill, assistant city manager, IT, Bill's analyst) narrowed the field down to CivicLive, CivicPlus and Vision who were invited in for demo and interview
All vendors presented in person - CivicLive had technical issues during their presentation and didn't come off very well,
They didn't have a formal scoring process, but came to a consensus with the team

Why did we win?

They liked the visual impact of our sites and we had recent, relevant and local experience
Another strength was that they also liked our usability approach with heatmapping and analytics
Their acting city manager was at San Marcos when they updated their website which helped in our favor too
They liked the WeHo and Reno webistes and talked to all of the references in our proposal (Lemon Grove, San Marcos, Glendale, Manhattan Beach, etc.)
Reed did a very good job with the proposal and presentation
They had confidence in us as a long-term partner and want to evolve with us

What could we improve?

The panel didn't like our pricing structure and they likened it to dealing with their cable provider (Time Warner) in terms of being nickel-and-dimed; they said menu items were a little complicated
Reed was not as confident with discussing some of the items in the proposal, but he was always able to come back with a quick answer when he didn't know something

Other points

All vendors came in about the same price point - $48k to $55k - which was under their budget of $80,000
With their cost savings, they will be able to pay for 3 years of maintenance without having to use current operating funds
They will likely have a change order to get the custom mobile homepage (like WeHo)
CivicLive includes everything in their base proposal instead of a la carte

Takeaways