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Top 3 Vendor Finalists & Vendor Presentations

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First, a big note of thanks to all of the vendors that participated in our evaluation and selection process. We appreciate the effort and detail that went into crafting the RFP responses.

I'm  happy to announce that the Web Refresh Core Team has completed the RFP evaluation and narrowed down the pool of vendors to three finalists (in no particular order):

  • Happy Cog
  • Stamats
  • White Whale
We believe each of the three finalists have the background, knowledge and expertise to help us achieve success in our project. Because the final vendor we select will be working with so many campus stakeholders, it's important to choose a vendor whose approach, strategy, values and vision compliment our own.

To that end, we are working with each finalist to schedule a campus visit and in-person presentation to our Web Refresh Core and Advisory teams. Each vendor will get meet members of each team and outline their proposed approach to our Web Refresh project. It will be an opportunity for us to experience working with each vendor in-person, and give each finalist a better feel for our campus and our community.

Invitations for the vendor presentations were sent to Advisory Team participants this afternoon. A limited number of additional spaces are available for other current CI students, faculty and staff that wish to attend any of the vendor presentations; please contact me via email at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu to RSVP (presentation schedule is forthcoming). Spaces are limited and are available on a first-come first-served basis.

In the meanwhile, any questions or comments regarding the vendor finalists can be sent directly to me at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu.

We look forward to meeting each vendor in the coming weeks, and finalizing our selection shortly thereafter.

RFP for strategic partner

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On November 22, CI issued an RFP to select a strategic partner to assist in planning, strategy and execution of the University Web Refresh project.

We have invited the vendors with the top 8 highest scores in Phase 1 of our evaluation to participate in Phase 2, which includes the RFP submission process. We look forward to their responses. The deadline for their completed proposals is Friday, December 16.

Why do we need a strategic partner, can't we just do it ourselves? The fact is we have a very skillful and capable Web Services team of designers and developers that can (and will) do much of the implementation work for this project, including developing and implementing the final design within echoCI, our web content management system. Unfortunately, this talented team team is very small, and given their current workload of other projects and existing web operations, the team would be stretched too thin to complete the project of this scope within the expected time frame.

In addition, it's a great opportunity to leverage the insight and perspective that a partner with significant higher education experience can provide with respect to our web presence. We can use this perspective and experience to identify strengths and weaknesses and develop strategies and tactics to improve in our information architecture, web marketing, content development, social media, and mobile development efforts.

What do you think? What are the pros and cons of selecting a strategic partner? And what attributes of a strategic partner are important to ensure the right fit with the University for this project?

Post your thoughts and concerns as a comment here, or contact me directly at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu. We look forward to your feedback.