Okaloosa County (hereafter known as the “County”) on behalf of its Water and Sewer Department, is seeking bids from qualified vendors to provide utility bill printing, mailing, and related services. The qualified vendor must be able to print and mail utility bills, send an e-mail notification of bill generation or send an e-mail for e-billing customers with a PDF of the bill attached in the event that the County chooses to utilize this alternative option and have the ability to occasionally mail/and e-mail customer letters, inserts, or notices for the County in the same mailing as the bill and sometimes as a separate mailing. The qualified vendor must be able to provide custom bill design, printing, inserting, mailing, and electronic bill notifications. The qualified vendor must also have experience working with utility bill files generated out of Superion LLC., a CentralSquare company (hereafter known as Superion) software, which runs on an IBM iSeries. Additionally, a minimum of the three (3) past months of PDFs representing customer bills shall be available for display/download to our customers via our third-party online payment portal. Access to these PDFs shall be through a fixed format URL/URI utilizing Customer ID number and Location ID number, and no more than a single fixed security token.
The County issues approximately 41,000 utility bills each month, with approximately 9,800 customers currently enrolled in e-notifications (an e-mail indicating the bill is ready to view). The customer base is divided into 4 billing cycles; where one cycle is billed per week, along with final bills and off cycle bills. Each bill includes one or more services (water, sewer, garbage, etc.) that are active for each utility account. Bills are mailed via pre-sorted first-class mail. The County uses utility billing software provided by Superion. During processing, thirteen (13) spooled files are generated with the utility bill print data. All bills require a minimum of a one-page billing statement. The statement should be perforated to provide for a return remittance. The bills will need to be printed, folded, sorted, and mailed. The mailing will include a return envelope and occasionally additional inserts/letters/notices.
