Supply of a Business Process
Management (BPM) Suite 10/11/2004
REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
ETHEKWINI MUNICIPALITY BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
Business process management (BPM) describes generally the services and tools that support explicit business process
management (such as process analysis, definition, execution, monitoring and administration), including support for
human and application-level interaction BPM has proved to be valuable in defining effective business processes for
everything from a single department to an entire organization and its associated value networks. The municipality is
seeking to improve, manage and administer its business processes with technology through an agile BPM suite.
Targeted procurement forms can be found here and must be completed and submitted with all proposals. Questions
must be directed to lunga@durban.gov.za or fieldDN@durban.gov.za
Written proposals must be submitted not later than 12:00pm on Wednesday the 10th of November 2004 and must be
submitted to the DEPUTY HEAD: IT on the 9th Floor, Martin West Building, 251 Smith Street, Durban. Proposals are to
be in sealed envelopes clearly marked "BPM".
REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
SUPPLY OF A BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM) SUITE FOR ETHEKWINI MUNICIPALITY
REQUIREMENTS
1 Municipal Objectives
Respondents need to demonstrate to the municipality how their suite of tools will achieve the following business
objectives:
1. Ability to build better new processes faster
2. Knowing what the municipality is doing (right or wrong) through an understanding of the depth and breadth of current
business processes
3. Leverage Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) opportunities by having a documented business model
4. Understanding the implied business model contained in a software package and the effects of introducing that model
into the organization. Understanding the potential "pain" and corresponding customization necessary to implement a
software package.
5. Ability to identify, reconcile and consolidate separate, but similar, business processes into core processes for better
total cost of ownership (TCO).
6. Ability to analyze which business processes are candidates for "human to human" or "system to system" process
flows, and which can be automated.
7. Integrating municipal business processes with partners in a value/supply chain, and understanding which partner is
responsible for what part of the process. This would also apply to the municipality's interaction with other spheres of
government, businesses, NGO's, etc.
8. Improving the efficiency of our business processes (doing things better with optimized processes) and achieve better
communication across the organization
9. Building business processes which are compliant with legislation (MFMA, Municipal Systems Act, etc.), policies,
societal expectations, etc.
10. Uniform approaches to process management across all the municipality's business areas
11. Using business process models to plan scenarios for reacting to threats and opportunities.
2 Technical
It is understood that there may be general confusion between workflow and BPM. For the purposes of this RFP,
workflow is more a legacy term referring to a combination of tasks that define a process. BPM is more a generic
concept of workflow and is more focused: it includes human to human flow (people and their assignments in fulfilling a
goal), system to system flow automation. Therefore BPM adds automated participants to help manage part of a
process by reducing the amount of human actions involved. It is also understood that certain BPM functionality may be
contained in other applications, e.g. ERP, CRM, IDMS, Integration Brokers, collaborative tools, etc. BPM in this RFP
refers to the ownership issues of the larger process that extends beyond individual applications (such as IDMS) and
involves other system dependencies. Any proposed software must, as a minimum, enable the municipality to define,
execute, manage, measure and refine business processes by business users. It should take into consideration the
integration of people, process and applications seamlessly through one business driven user interface that does not
require coding or compiling in order to run. The following are the criteria that will be used to evaluate your BPM
solution. You are therefore required to demonstrate in your response how your suite will address each of these
requirements:
2.1 Support of Business Process Flow for Human-to-Human-Related Tasks
Not just system to system and human to system interactions. Human collaboration is a critical component of many
business processes: managing roles and tasks for routing, review and approval, exception handling and ad hoc
changes by end users, etc. The software must cater for the following:
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Organizational model support, including reporting relationships
Ability to define human workflow steps with detail
Collaboration features that include recalibrating negotiated dates, policies, rules and procedures
Escalation capabilities where late work or important events and activities occur
Worklist support for human access and work priorities
Worklist customization
Ability to include workers outside the BPM technology domain (for value and supply chains)
E-mail integration - for example, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Note that the municipality's standard is
Novell's Groupwise
Thin- and thick-client access support, depending on user needs
2.2 Ease of Use in Operation/Development and Administration
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Rich graphical process designer
Flow animation
Separation of "power user" and professional developer features
Wizard-like assists for power users
Capability to support adaptive workflows - rules for exception management
Ability to modify inflight workflows - terminate, update and suspend
2.3 Architectures, Standards and Complex Flows Supported:
Each solution will be evaluated based on its adherence to the municipality's enterprise architecture, standards and
guidelines.
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Industry standards, as well as such specifications as BPML, Wf-XML and, most importantly, BPEL
Integration with Microsoft BizTalk enterprise application integration (EAI) technology suite, unless there's native
support
Directory integration, including Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
Integration with business process analysis tools. Ability to import business process models from other business
modeling tools
Integration with advanced Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) capabilities
Integration with composite/micro flows and legacy application integration support
Openness to multiple channel capabilities, such as mobile computing
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) support
Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) support for Java offerings
Extensible Markup Language (XML) process definition storage
Web-centric architecture
Integration with any Open Source products/initiatives
Platforms on which your product runs
2.4 Performance and Scalability:
The system must be able to manage multiple, complex processes or work well in a distributed environment, and be
able to be extended to many users.
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Support of long-running business events
Ability to have compensating or reversal transactions
Scalable process engines - interconnected, multiple instances
Load balancing among process engines
Queue management facility
Support and integration of business rules
Support for distributed process management
Ability to have multiple versions of the same workflow running at once - version control
2.5 Management
Less reliance on IS personnel to manage and administer the system. Therefore there is a need for Web-browser-based
end-user access to many administrative functions.
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User group administration
Role-based access to management functionality
Rule changes
Reporting and administration
Security
Support for roles and resource mapping
User administration
2.6 Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Capabilities
The ability to review system and human performance is a key factor in leveraging the technology. BAM provides realtime access to critical business performance indicators and delivers alerts and short-period summaries of business
events and metrics in something close to real time.
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Process engine communications facility
Business intelligence/online analytical processing (BI/OLAP) support for event analysis
Data/information/event aggregation facilities
Algorithms and pattern matching
Event-filtering features
Event management and alerting
Dashboards
Mobile and other notification mechanisms
Business process instance monitoring
2.7 Agility Supported by Business Rule Engines or Simulation
Adjustable business rules, which do not require a development environment and are easy for business professionals
and IS personnel to change, are important.
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Business scenario and contingency supports
Rule management capabilities
Rule collision and overlap detection
Rule tracing
Rule collaboration supports
Flow, rule and case instance versioning
2.8 Development Environment
Service-oriented development of applications (SODA) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) ease the burden of afterthe-fact integration and have the potential to reduce integration costs by creating more flexible, integratable solutions.
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Segmentation of flow, services and rules
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Service location support
Service assembly capabilities
Service composition
Service orchestration
Test simulation with or without service stubs
Well-defined, documented programmatic interfaces for all major system components
Fully defined application programming interfaces (APIs) to underlying services
2.9 Vertical/Horizontal Template Support
Many vendors and systems integrators (SIs) have built a large catalog of process flows, which can be reused by new
enterprise clients with similar needs.
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Predefined template or "out of the box" flows for such processes that would be applicable to local government
Predefined template or out-of-the-box flows for standard processes, such as compliance, Six-Sigma, ISO, quality
assurance and IT processes (including distributed change management)
2.10 Pricing/Costing Model
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Options as per pricing model
Software licenses
Support and professional services
Starter packages
Availability of bundled training
Availability of bundled services
Annual maintenance fees
Note that you have to provide costs, as well as the basis for those costs (including any assumptions you may have
made to arrive at those costs). All prices must be given in South African Rands. Clearly indicate if the prices are
subject to any exchange rate variations. Pricing must be for the entire municipality. Respondents must clearly
distinguish all costs, e.g. software license fees, product maintenance, product support, professional fees,
implementation costs, etc.
3. Vendor
3.1 Financial & Management Commitment to Product
Indicate total amount of resources dedicated to the product. Indicate any R&D spend of software manufacturer in last
two years.
3.2 Installed Base
How many customers does your suite have?
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Number of installed licenses
Customer satisfaction with vendor support
Recent sales?
Provide reference sites, both internationally and locally
3.3 Product Support
Demonstrate your support track record
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Customer support
Technical support and consulting
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Number of support resources (including third party)
SLA framework
Geographic reach, including local support. Does the reseller of the software and services have offices in
Durban? Does the software manufacturer have South African presence?
3.4 Partnerships
What sort of relationships do you have with the other vendors?
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Vendors that provide added software infrastructure
Packaged application vendors that provide added sales channels and improve the quality of your product
Market site providers that name your product as their technology of choice
3.5 Professional Services
Are services available to assist with configuring and installing the BPM suite and using the technology for initial setting
up of the BPM environment and establishing best practices? These services may be through sister organizations or
through multiple, strong partnerships with system integrators.
3.6 Vendor Viability
Demonstrate that you are still going to be in business several years from now. Are you capable of growing and
investing in your tool(s)? Indicate the following:
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Financial assets
Company size (headcount specific to BPM tool)
Profitability
Management track record - stability of workforce, strategy, business model
3.7 Socio-Economic Objectives
Indicate how you, through the deployment of your product(s), would contribute to the achievement of the following city
goals:
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Black Economic Empowerment
Developing local ICT skills and retaining them in KZN
Employment creation
Growing SMME's and making them sustainable
Developing local solutions using local resources and skills, and the ability to market these solutions locally and
internationally
Reducing dependence on off-shore vendors and their licensing policies
Willingness to reveal intellectual property to build capacity and encourage innovation
Encouraging investment in local economy
The money that the city spends not only circulates in the local economy, but also benefits the citizens of this city.
3.8 Alignment with Local initiatives
Indicate if and how your proposal is aligned to any other local initiative(s) within the Greater Durban region.
3.9 Procurement Policy
The Council's affirmative procurement policy will be applied in selecting the successful tenderer. So demonstrate how
you would meet the BEE objectives of the municipality by completing separate forms attached with this RFP - these
forms can be found here.
3.10 Value Proposition
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Your value proposition
Why you are best-suited to partner with eThekwini municipality
How will this relationship help the municipality achieve the objectives set out in Section 1 of this document
How will you ensure you remain competitive in terms of price, services, service levels, service quality, development
and innovation
It is imperative that prospective respondents meet the above requirements or fully demonstrate their capabilities with
respect to Section 2 and 3. Failure to satisfy any of the above may result in elimination during the assessment phase.
Short, meaningless answers such as "noted", "complied with" , "Yes", etc. will not be acceptable and might be seen as
sufficient reason to cancel the respective bid.
4 Responses
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The city is looking for a long-term commitment here so chancers and vendors that are not prepared to invest in this
process need not respond.
Vendors must also be prepared to negotiate with the management of the municipality as far as price and other
requirements are concerned.
No negotiations will be entered into whilst this Request for Proposals is open
No late responses will be entertained
Vendors are encouraged to be creative in their responses - the municipality understands that technology changes all
the time and that there is more and more blurring of tools/products as far as their capabilities are concerned. So you
might have one product that meets the requirements set out or ten products. The municipality is quite open-minded
about this and at this stage does not have any bias towards any particular product or suite. So it is up to the vendors
to make an impression.
The municipality is also aware that certain projects or applications may require different development architectures
for specific reasons, so the ability to support multiple architectures or integrate with others is important.
Responses must be to the point - do not include unnecessary information