To: Executive Director of Delivery
Executive Member for Culture, Delivery and Public Protection
17/08/2021
Awarding Teams Telephony Contract
Director of Delivery
1 Purpose of Report
1.1 Bracknell Forest Council currently uses on-premise Cisco Call manager to deliver its core telephony services. This technology is approaching end of life and needs replacing. Bracknell Forest Council has a Digital and ICT strategy that encapsulates moving services to the Cloud and are already using Microsoft Teams for internal calls and meetings. The Council possesses Microsoft 365 E5 licenses which incorporates Microsoft’s cloud-based telephone offering within Microsoft Teams which permits external calling. It is proposed that Bracknell Forest Council procure a replacement telephony system using Microsoft Teams with Direct Routing.
1.2 This report seeks approval to award a contract for the provision of a Microsoft Teams with Direct Routing telephony solution to a Supplier that can host the infrastructure in the cloud. This award is following a robust procurement process
2 Recommendation(s)
2.1 That the contract for the Teams Telephony with Direct Routing and related services is awarded to Tenderer A. The contract term is for 5 years and is authorised to the sum specified in section 6 of the corresponding confidential annex.
3 Reasons for Recommendation(S)
3.1 Having conducted a mini competition under Lot 10 of the Crown Commercial Services RM3808 Network Services 2 Framework, Tenderer A were the only provider to meet the Council’s full specification.
4 Alternative Options Considered
4.1 As detailed in the Strategic Procurement Plan
5 Supporting Information
5.1 The Procurement Plan for a hosted Teams Telephony with Direct Routing system was approved by the Executive in March 2021.
5.2 A high level specification of requirements was produced by members of the project team. A set of questions for which further clarification was sought was also produced, to be completed by prospective suppliers.
5.3 In May 2021 the tender opportunity issued against Lot 10 of the Crown Commercial Services RM3808 Network Services 2 Framework. The invitation to quote (ITQ) was extended to all 44 suppliers in that Lot utilising the Council’s e-Procurement system.
5.4 Such is the importance of the telephony system, strict quality criteria was applied to the ITQ to ensure the Council received a qualitative response, including being a Microsoft accredited Gold Partner
6.0 The Evaluation Process
6.1 The evaluation team was largely drawn from ICT services with guidance from the procurement team for this heavily technical procurement. The evaluation team consisted of:
· Project Manager
· Senior Network Engineer
· Network Engineer
The weighting for the procurement was split into
a) 60% of the marks relate to the costs over the duration of the contract (including implementation services)
b) 40% of the marks relate to the quality criteria based on:
· Appropriate accreditations to deliver the service
· Responses to the questions in the specification
· Platform security and availability
· Ongoing technical support
6.2 The evaluation team produced and maintained a clarification document for suppliers to consult the Council on components of the ITQ that needed further explanation. The list of questions and answers was made available to all 44 suppliers in the framework lot to ensure competition transparency.
7 Consultation and Other Considerations
Legal Advice
7.1 Legal advice has been sought on this procurement which has confirmed that the process adheres to both Procurement Law and internal governance requirements.
Financial Advice
7.2 The one-off costs of £0.131m will be funded from the ‘ICT Transformation Reserve’ as agreed by CMT on the 17/02/2021. This reserve was created to help manage the implementation of the IT Strategy which sees a move from a Capital to Revenue based funding model. It is anticipated that there will be an annual revenue saving resulting from this project of £0.047m p.a. from year 2.
Other Consultation Responses (Head of Procurement)
7.3 Procurement considerations included in this report and Confidential Annex.
Equalities Impact Assessment
7.4 The screening performed in the strategic procurement plan determined that a full Equality Impact Assessment was not required
7.5 Strategic Risk Management Issues
Telephony provision is critical to the operations of the Council and needs to be kept current. The current solution is end of life so needs to be upgraded which is planning using cloud-based solutions and exploiting the current suite of Microsoft products already in use and available at the Council.
7.6 Climate Change Implications
The recommendations in Section 2 above are expected to: Reduce emissions of CO2
The reasons the Council believes that this will reduce emissions are that by moving our telephony systems to the cloud, we can remove our own physical telephony servers and backup devices from our properties thereby reducing our carbon footprint.
Background Papers
Contact for further information
Gareth Edwards, ICT Services - 01344 352702
Gareth.Edwards@bracknell-forest.gov.uk