PART 1 – INTRODUCTION
1.1 Invitation to Proponents
The University of Ottawa (uOttawa), through the office of the Communications Directorate (CD) seeks a proponent who can provide design and development expertise, experience, and creativity for the transformation of its website, www.uottawa.ca (which has fallen behind users’ expectations of both experience and design), further description is provided in Part 2 – The Deliverables.
1.2 Proponent’s Costs:
The Proponent shall bear all costs and expenses associated with or incurred by the Proponent relating to any aspect of its participation in this RFP process, including for example, all costs and expenses relating to the Proponent’s preparation and presentation of its Proposal .
1.3 Contract Period:
The Preferred Proponent (as referred to in section 3.2.5 of this RFP) shall be required to enter into a written agreement (the “Contract”). The term of the contract term will be based on the delivery of the project with its estimated timelines.
1.4 Type of Contract
The Preferred Proponent (as referred to in section 3.2.5 of this RFP) will be requested to enter into negotiations for a Contract with the University for the Provision as stated in Part 2 – The Mandate in this RFP.
Such negotiations and the possibility of awarding a Contract will be conducted according to the University of Ottawa’s policies and procedures.
1.5 Conditions
Proponents who respond to this RFP agree to be bound by the terms and conditions stated herewith. All Proposals submitted shall remain irrevocable and open for acceptance by the University for a period of not less than one hundred and twenty (120) days from the RFP closing date referred to in the RFP timetable at section 4.1.1.of this RFP.
1.6 Evaluation of Proposals
The Proposals will be evaluated by a proposal evaluation team comprised of the University Human Resources managers (the “Proposal Evaluation Team”). It is understood and accepted by any Proponent submitting a Proposal that all decisions as to the degree to which a proposal meets the requirements of this RFP are the sole judgment of the Proposal Evaluation Team.
The following nomenclature has been added for clarity:
MIndicates a mandatory requirement that must be complied with in order for the proposal to be given further consideration.
RThese items will be assigned a point rating during the evaluation.
MSIndicates a mandatory requirement that requires substantiation to support compliance.
RSIndicates a rated item that requires substantiation to support a claim or specification.
Mandatory requirements (M or MS) will be evaluated on a PASS/FAIL basis. A proposal shall be considered NON COMPLIANT if the response to any such mandatory requirement is deemed by the Proposal Evaluation Team to be unsatisfactory.
All proposals shall be examined in detail in accordance with the published evaluation criteria and following the process outlined in this RFP. The University reserves the right to either award a Contract to the most suitable Proponent as determined by the Proposal Evaluation Team on the basis of the evaluation criteria or not to make an award if none of the Proponents received meets the minimum requirements of the evaluation criteria.
PART 2 – THE deliverables
2.1 OVERVIEW
uOttawa is the largest bilingual (English-French) university in the world.
As a major economic force in the National Capital Region, our advances in bilingual education with a cross-disciplinary approach make the university a unique place to learn, grow and excel.
Quick facts:
- Ranked seventh in Canada and in the top 2% of best universities in the world, according to the Times Higher Education rankings;
- Member of the U15 (Canada’s top research-intensive institutions);
- 40,000+ students (35,000+ undergraduate and 6,000+ post-graduate);
- 450+ programs across 10 Faculties (Medicine, Engineering, Law, Arts, Health Science, Medicine, Science, Social Science, Civil Law, Common Law and the Telfer School of Management;
- 97% employment rate for graduates;
- One of the most generous student financial aid programs in Canada;
- Fifth-largest CO-OP program in Canada;
- 225,000+ alumni;
- 7,000+ employees.
2.2 BACKGROUND
Since January 2018, the CD has built institution-wide alignment for the need for a comprehensive redesign and an update to its content management system (CMS)—note that this update is not part of this RFP, as a separate one, Hosted Drupal Web Platform Solution, has been issued).
Anchored into user-research and analytics, the work done highlighted the pitfalls of our current website and the urgent need to adapt a user-first approach (for both external and internal users of the website).
Highlighted findings:
- The website does not embody the university’s spirit and ambition;
- The website is difficult to use on mobile;
- The content is extremely hard to find and to search (Google remains the primary way of finding information);
- The information architecture mirrors our internal structures and not the needs (or intuition) of users (external or internal);
- There are no clear audience-specific paths;
- The programs are not presented in a compelling and intuitive manner;
- The CMS (Drupal 7) has been overly customized to meet our internal needs, which makes it difficult for its editors to use or for developers to modernize;
- There is no digital asset management (DAM) or content hub (i.e. no streamlined ways of distributing and synchronizing content or promoting events across our multi-site environment (i.e., central administration, various faculties and services);
- There are too few page templates and they are constraining and not adequately visual;
- The digital design system is outdated, difficult to scale and complex;
- Webmasters are needed to implement simple changes;
- Our website is unnecessarily bloated (link farm of organizational priorities vs user needs).
Now that we enthusiastically and unanimously align on the problem to solve, the university seeks an exceptionally insightful, experienced, and creative proponent, to help us strategize and operationalize a way forward.
2.3 OBJECTIVES
In a future state, our website will become:
1) A powerful moment of truth in the journey of a prospective student (the newly agreed upon website’s primary audience);
2) A platform to tell the university’s story to the world in a powerful, simple, and effective way.
Building our brand and reputation through the website is absolutely critical in our ability to develop and maintain our competitive edge (locally, nationally and internationally) and remind the world of our relevance and purpose. Failure to do so could negatively impact the quantity and quality of our future student, as well as our future employees, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, etc.).
Business objectives
All prospective students at Ontario universities must apply through https://www.ouac.on.ca/. This means that the website cannot directly increase applications, only consideration or interest, by enabling the findability and discoverability of our content. Unfortunately, this is not possible in the current website. As a result, requests for information by prospective students find their way through other channels.
Once the website is redesigned, we will look to the following metrics (and others, TBD) to measure success:
- Decrease in the number of calls, emails or social media inquiries for information that prospective students should find on the website;
- Decrease in the number of days it takes to respond to these inquiries;
- Decrease in the rate of abandoned phone calls;
- Increase in campus tour registrations;
- Decrease in drop-off rates on prospective student pages;
- Increase of user-satisfaction with the website (for prospective students but also current students, staff and faculty);
- Increase of prospective students who mention the website as a key element in their decision-making.
Project objectives
We expect the selected proponent to help us adopt and elevate the best practices within our category (for example, by developing more intuitive and effective ways of presenting and searching for program) and bring inspiration and learnings from other categories.
To address the highlighted findings above, we want to, amongst other things:
- Design and develop an accessible (WCAG standards now and AA by 2021), secure, and scalable website;
- Present admission requirements, programs, deadlines, etc. in a more compelling and relevant way;
- Make the content more findable and discoverable for multiple audiences (the primary audience);
- Modernize and refine the design and develop more a more visually compelling approach;
- Create a device-agnostic experience (not simply mobile-first);
- Build a website that has great load performance;
- Build a website that allows for data-tracking accuracy across domains and devices;
- Build a website that allows secured forms to deliver data via email;
- Reduce development effort (compared to current platform) for website changes and enhancements;
- Enhance and modernize the functional and technical capabilities of the website;
- Enhance the content owner-editor experience by delivering an easier-to-use interface;
- Leverage the full potential of the platform that will be chosen to host Drupal.
2.4 SCOPE
Given the scale of our current website (27 Drupal 7 multi-sites, with 300+ subsites and an estimated 1.8M pages), the selected proponent is not expected to deliver on the entirety of the website transformation.
Instead, we will look for the selected proponent to:
1) Help us define a vision
2) Design, develop and start scaling a minimum viable product (MVP)
3) Identify a roadmap for the future.
We are looking for the selected proponent to lead (in a highly interactive and agile manner) in the initial phases and to progressively become a consultant, throughout the transformation.
We will look for the selected proponent to lead and deliver on:
- Strategy (from vision, minimum viable product (MVP), to roadmap for future state);
- UX and user-research (complementing and elevating what has been done by the university);
- New information architecture and sitemap;
- Design (expand and refresh the current brand guidelines);
- UI and digital design system;
- Front-end development;
- Back-end development (selected proponent will partner with IT, not lead);
- Content strategy (and content approval process);
- Content production (copywriting only for core pages + writing guidelines);
- Product/project management (the university will also have a team with these roles);
- SEO strategy;
- QA and testing;
- Analytics set-up and measurement plan;
- Scaling MVP and post-launch support (for up to 12 months).
The university will lead on:
- Governance;
- Further website deployment;
- Maintenance and administration;
- Training and post-launch support;
- Change management;
- Content production and writing;
- Content migration;
- Content translation;
- Website launch and communication plan.
To gain a better understanding of the scope of work and the university’s context, refer to Appendix F (Additional Information).
2.5 DELIVERABLES AND ESTIMATED TIMELINES
Timeline
The sunsetting of Drupal 7 and 8 are the main drivers for this website redesign.
This means that by November 2021, the university will need to have a fully functional and (almost) complete website.
The university will be looking for the selected proponent to recommend a way to meet this deadline (or ways to mitigate risks if the university cannot meet this deadline).
