Specifications include, but are not limited to: The College is seeking an out-of-the-box, integrated Student Success Portal (SSP) solution that demonstrates all of the required capabilities defined within this RFP, without requiring additional development to provide these required elements. The College does not want a system that requires development to be able to provide the needed functionality and the College does not want a combination of separate tools that provide discreet elements of the functionality needed. The proposed SSP solution should be a comprehensive tool providing all of the functionality described within this RFP. The SSP must be successfully implemented and used in at least five (5) other community colleges of similar size within the United States. The other colleges using the proposed solution must be utilizing the features and functionality defined within this RFP. Additionally, the SSP must have been developed and supported by an established firm that has been doing business with higher education institutions, preferably community colleges, for at least five (5) years. The vendor providing the SSP should also provide a users’ group or consortium that meets regularly to share best practices, data, experiences, and other techniques that will help to improve the tool and its application with students. C. Platform Modality The SSP must be multi-modal and include both an online desktop option as well as a full-service, secure, native mobile communication application option for students that is compatible with both iOS and Android. Both access points should provide students with customized educational planning guidance, targeted automated contacts, and personalized automated support throughout the students’ enrollment, registration, and ongoing matriculation. The development of the SSP must be grounded in extensive best practices and research on student success. D. Integration with College’s Colleague CIS and Other College Technology The SSP must be a hosted or cloud-based solution and it must be able to integrate with the NC customized version of Ellucian’s Colleague CIS. The SSP should integrate with NC customizations such as web attendance and course restriction overrides. The SSP should interface and provide seamless integration with the College’s Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS) and with Outlook 365 for Email and calendar. This seamless integration should be transparent to the student. The SSP should provide automated, bi-directional, real-time synchronization of data in approximately 5 minutes or less with the College’s Colleague CIS, without requiring modifications to the Core Collegue CIS system. The SSP must support authentication by means of either: A) direct LDAP connection to the College’s Active Directory Service, or B) Single Sign-On. The SSP should meet all accessibility standards: responsive design, mobile applications for iOS and Android, WCAG 2.0 AA standards, and 508 compliance. The SPP should have user specific audit trail with date/time information and reporting capabilities to capture and identify specific user information that has updated or added data. The SSP must be scalable and flexible, and performance should not decrease due to load on the system. The SSP should have the ability to handle error conditions without crashing or failing. The SSP should meet availability of at least 99.9%. The vendor must be able to support conversion and migration to a new ERP. The vendor must provide tools and procedures for load testing. The vendor should provide a standards based (REST) API for ingress and egress of data for all client owned data. The vendor must backup all data and provide a disaster recovery plan that is exercised at least annually. Vendor should provide a SOC2 report. The College will retain ownership of its data and the vendor should provide an exit strategy for the College to retain its data should the need arise.
