Human Resources Information System
(HRIS) RFP
Interrogatory Questionnaire
Due March 17th, 2015, 5 P.M. CST
Contents
Instructions ................................................................................................................................ 1
Business Interrogatories ............................................................................................................ 1
General .................................................................................................................................. 1
Product Development / Release Management........................................................................ 2
Deployment ............................................................................................................................ 2
Technical Interrogatories............................................................................................................ 2
General Inquiry ....................................................................................................................... 2
Application Security ................................................................................................................ 3
Database ................................................................................................................................ 3
Database Design .................................................................................................................... 4
Technical Deployment ............................................................................................................ 4
Reporting ................................................................................................................................ 5
System Networking................................................................................................................. 5
Off-premise Hosting................................................................................................................ 5
Instructions
Please respond briefly to the questions listed below. Responses should be limited to a maximum of
approximately half a page excluding any diagrams or tables required to help answer the question. You
can attach diagrams as an extra pdf document if necessary and label the file with the Question number.
For example: Business Interrogatories-Product Development-Q1.pdf
Business Interrogatories
General
1. Please provide a roadmap showing direction and timelines regarding the three-year plan of the
HRIS.
2. Describe your support during the testing phase after our data has been imported into your
system. Will you provide assistance in creating test cases and scripts, run through certain test
cases, etc.? Provide examples.
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Product Development / Release Management
1. Please provide the frequency of release for major version changes and minor fixes/patches.
Include a proposed release schedule in a tabular or diagrammatic form for the next 18 months. In
addition describe the communication mechanism and channels of these updates and upgrades to
end-users (email update to primary contact, notifications within the system, etc.).
2. Describe how your organization’s product management team maintains a dialog and/or
coordinates with clients in regards to product enhancement requests and what level of formal
documentation is required from your clients to facilitate said requests?
3. Explain how software enhancements are deployed in the proposed solution architecture.
4. Explain how fixes/patches are deployed in the proposed solution architecture.
5. Does your organization have a support website or user community of any sort to facilitate dialog
between clients?
6. Provide an example of release notes associated with your latest software upgrade, fixes/patches,
etc.
7. Provide the most current version of software released (example: Version 1.6) for each part
#/SKU. Provide the number of versions of this software that have been delivered. Please provide
release notes for your current release.
8. Describe your Systems Design Life Cycle. Provide examples of all phases of your life cycle and
how it translates to a presentable Vendor roadmap.
Deployment
1. Provide templates for processes related to deployment and implementation. At a minimum,
include the following templates: Requirements Gathering, UAT scripts, Training plans,
Implementation Plans, Business Process Engineering.
2. Please provide a high-level implementation approach and describe your experiences in migrating
data from ADP specifically. To clarify, what are the challenges (procedurally and technically) of an
organization moving from ADP to your product?
3. Please describe your approach to training and templates for your training implementation plan.
Technical Interrogatories
General Inquiry
1. Document the proposed support model for KAPS. Document your levels and options for hours of
support (i.e. 24x7).
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2. Describe how log files are accessed? Please include where they are saved (i.e. in text file or in a
database).
3. The Proposer shall provide and describe the process for importing or loading data into their
proposed solution. Additionally, the Proposer shall provide and describe the process for
extracting data from their system.
4. Describe what third-party tools are supported by the proposed solution for data management
(e.g., data flows, data models, data source: target mapping, etc.), backup, archiving, and
hierarchical storage management.
5. Does the solution support document imaging and attaching/associating images (such as photos,
scanned documents) to individual employee records?
Application Security
1. User Authentication information shall be encrypted. Please describe encryption methodology
(authentication process and any stored credentials).
2. The software shall integrate with the existing Microsoft Active Directory hierarchy per KAPS'
technical specification requirement. This includes (but is not limited to) authentication,
authorization, group mapping, administration, etc. Provide architecture details explaining how you
fulfill this requirement.
3. Describe how user provisioning (including account creation, deletion, and rights delegation) will
be handled by the system. Include technical descriptions, business process recommendations
and process flows.
4. Describe security features, of the solution, that prevent unauthorized access or leaked student
data, (other than SSL encryption and user authentication/authorization/logging).
Database
1. List the Databases product and versions that the proposed solution supports. If possible, provide
a record with dates showing the time period when each version of RDBMS was officially
supported.
2. Provide both a soft copy of a database diagram (MS Visio format).
3. Provide a database dictionary mapping all user interface fields to database tables. Include
business and technical definitions for all fields. Include the data sensitivity for each element.
Please also include entity relationship diagrams.
4. Describe the filegroups used by the application database. Are they configurable?
5. Provide documentation defining the restoration process for the proposed application database
(i.e. Development, QA, Training Environment copies from Production).
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6. Provide documentation defining the back-up process for the Proposer's application. In case that
one of the databases has to be restored from an older backup, how does the re-synchronization
work?
7. What are your process and timeframes for testing patches and hot fixes? (i.e. Microsoft SQL
Server patches/hot fixes).
8. What are the sizes of the databases in your largest installation in production?
9. Have any production sites ever experienced data corruption in your products database? If so,
please explain the root cause and the resolution.
10. Is any data stored outside of the database? If so, where?
Database Design
1. Describe how tables are normalized?
2. Describe the database installation process for the solution.
3. Describe the database processes for year-end processing.
4. Describe the typical activities a Database Administrator (DBA) performs on your products
database. Please indicate frequency of activities.
5. Does the application use effective dates to capture changes to records? Does the application
capture the original timestamp of a transaction as well as the most recent change to the record
and who made the changes? If the answer to either or both of these questions is "no", please
describe how changes to records are captured & retained.
6. Is the data updated in one location by all modules, or does each module have its own data
repository and the databases have to be synchronized?
In case of the latter:



How is the synchronization implemented? (E.g. IIS, proprietary sync application, stored
procedures replication etc. Full sync and incremental sync).
How often does it typically run? - How long does it take to synchronize?
Are there locking/blocking/deadlocking issues if the synchronization is run during business
hours?
Technical Deployment
1. Does your product support handheld implementation? If so, please provide recommended or
supported platforms.
2. Are the databases designed in such a manner to facilitate data extracts (e.g. to data warehouse;
both full refresh and incremental)? If yes add a short description how it’s been implemented.
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3. Describe the process for importing (loading) existing data into the Proposer's software solution.
4. Describe the process used to migrate changes between non-production and production
environments in the proposed architecture.
Reporting
1. Identify reporting tools available.
2. Identify & list "canned reports" available.
3. Describe the process for creating custom reports based on the information contained within the
application.
4. How are new reports written and added to the application?
System Networking
1. Provide details regarding minimum bandwidth requirements for application access and data
access for “normal” daily operational use (provide your definition of “normal daily operational
use”). Describe the typical impact expected on the network once the solution is implemented.
2. What are the built-in load balancing capabilities to scale the solution? Are there any loadbalancing requirements/recommendations that KAPS will need to incorporate into their
environment to assure adequate performance?
3. Is the solution sensitive to network delay or jitter? Are there additional requirements or
recommendations for network QoS?
4. Provide details regarding supported network monitoring protocols (SNMP, WMI, etc.) as well as
built in alerting capabilities.
Off-premise Hosting
1. As part of an off-premise hosting solution, are Disaster Recovery Services an option or included
by default? If so, what is the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and the Recovery Point Objective
(RPO) for a district of the KAPS' size?
2. If DR services are available, please include an overview of the Disaster Recovery Lifecycle which
would be utilized by the vendor in the event of catastrophic failure to the hosting services.
3. Is annual DR testing included with the DR service?
4. Does the proposed hosting environment meet the requirement prescribed by FERPA, PCI, and/or
HIPAA/HITECH? If not, which requirements does it not meet?
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5. Where will the data be stored, geographically? Do you leverage cloud services, such as AWS? If
so, what version or contract type? For purposes of compliance with applicable statutes and
regulations, the Board prefers a solution where data is stored and maintained within the
continental United States. If this cannot be assured by your system, please identify that fact.
6. How is data destroyed once requested by KAPS or once the relationship with KAPS is severed?
How quickly is the data destroyed?
7. Does the off-premise hosting solution utilize multi-tenancy architecture? If so, please explain the
safeguards that the virtual partitioning has in place to maintain a secure environment.
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