United Kingdom-Reading: Customer Experience Contact Centre Platform

Type of document: Contract Awards
Country: United Kingdom
OJEU Ref: (2020/S 239-592285/EN)
Nature of contract: Supply contract
Procedure: Negotiated procedure
Type of bid required: Not applicable

Contract award notice
Supplies

Section I: Contracting entity
I.1) Name and addresses
Official name: Thames Water Utilities Ltd
Postal address: Procurement Support Centre — 3rd Floor East, C/O Mail Room, Rose Kiln Court
Town: Reading
Postal code: RG2 0BY
Country: United Kingdom
Email: procurement.support.centre@thameswater.co.uk
Internet address(es):
Main address: www.thameswater.co.uk

I.3)Communication
I.6) Main activity:
Water

Section II: Object
II.1) Scope of the procurement
II.1.1) Title: Customer Experience Contact Centre Platform

Reference number: FA1538
II.1.2) Main CPV code: 48333000
II.1.3) Type of contract : Supplies
II.1.4) Short Description:
We are conducting this procurement process because we want to appoint the most suitable technology partner for the provision of a strategic Customer Contact Centre Platform.
The platform will support Thames Water to realise the ambition of becoming a leading digitalised organisation within the Utility sector and provide the foundations for our key organisational strategy of Digital Channel Shift within a wider Customer Experience Management programme of work.
These ambitions are imperative for our organisation to provide first class customer engagement upon a modern, cost effective and reliable suite of cloud-based technologies that enables organisational agility.

II.1.6) Information about lots
The contract is divided into lots: no
II.2) Description
II.2.2)Additional CPV code(s)
Main CPV code: 48510000
II.2.3) Place of performance
Nuts code: UKI, UKJ Main site or place of performance:Whole of Thames Water region.
II.2.4) Description of the procurement:
We are conducting this procurement process because we want to appoint the most suitable supplier for the provision of a Customer Experience (CX) contact centre platform that will be awarded as a term contract.
The main drivers for this tender are to move forward and make fundamental changes and improvements in how Thames Water interacts with its customers.
The key goals are:
1) Realise the ambition of becoming a leading digitalised organisation within the Utility sector
This will be realised through:
• providing our customers with a differentiated ‘digital first’ experience across multiple channels and touchpoints;
• providing our agents with a solution that is intuitive with an optimisation of information presented to guide resolution of our customers concerns;
• providing our organisation with a capability to easily pivot channel strategies, messaging and resourcing to cater for large scale incidents;
• providing our digital support services with a platform that is stable, scalable and highly available;
• enabling future proofing through delivery of a platform that has a strong contact centre focused roadmap in a public cloud environment;
• providing our delivery and transformation function a capability of a blended model of delivery, through an agile methodology, alongside our chosen strategic delivery partners.
2) Enable our Virtualised Contact Centre Cluster (multiple locations) with multiple specialised units to be rationalised into a journey based rather than functional contact centre model
This will be enabled through:
• integration of the proposed platform with digitalised and data driven journeys, requiring a seamless link for our customers and agents to be able to interact at key customer and business moments through an optimal channel for both customer and business outcome;
• intelligent routing of interactions to both human and pseudo human operatives utilising a broad dimension of skills and capabilities to optimise the business outcome across multiple journeys at every touch point.
3) Delivering organisational agility and resilience in the case of a major incident which could be linked to one or more of political, environmental, socio-economic or technological factors.
This will be delivered through:
• a high availability service with geo and carrier resilience;
• capability to rapidly respond to external pressures through the provision of additional contact centre environments;
• ability to ‘burst’ licences and platform usage to handle unexpected peaks of activity;
• provision of a solution that enables distributed and remote working whilst providing a mechanism to maintain QoS from a customer perspective.
4) Providing value to our organisation, lowering overall cost to serve:
This will be provided through:
• utilisation of a platform with a subscription-based pricing model that includes defined levels of platform support;
• utilisation of a platform that utilises a concurrent rather than named user approach to licensing;
• removal of multiple contact centre and other associated solutions as a part of implementation of the proposed platform subject to this procurement activity.
As a result of this process we will:
• appoint our strategic technology partner in the space of customer channel and experience management;
• engage with our delivery partner framework and internal delivery and transformation resource to successfully deliver the chosen platform into our organisation (not in scope of this procurement).

II.2.11) Information about options
Options: yes
Description of options: Any agreement will be awarded for an initial duration of 3 years, with the option to extend up to a maximum of 8 years.

II.2.13) Information about European Union funds
The procurement is related to a project and/or programme financed by European Union funds:no

Section IV: Procedure
IV.1) Description
IV.1.1) Type of procedure:
Negotiated procedure with prior call for competition
IV.1.3) Information about a framework agreement or a dynamic purchasing system
IV.1.8) Information about the Government Procurement Agreement(GPA)
The procurement is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement:no
IV.2) Administrative information
IV.2.1) Previous publication concerning this procedure
Notice number in the OJ S:2020/S 129-318145

Section V: Award of contract
Contract No: Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL Lot No: Lot 1 Title: Customer Experience Contact Centre Platform

A contract/lot is awarded: yes
V.2) Award of contract
V.2.1) Date of conclusion of the contract:2020-09-25

Section VI: Complementary information
VI.3) Additional information:
All suppliers who wish to respond to this notice must request a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) by using the link in Section I.3 of this notice, i.e.
Note that your client may be Thames Water Utilities Ltd or another company within the Kemble Water group structure.

VI.4) Procedures for review
VI.4.1) Review body
Official name: Thames Water Utilities Ltd
Town: Reading
Country: United Kingdom
VI.4.3) Review procedure
Precise information on deadline(s) for review procedures:
Thames Water Utilities Ltd will incorporate a standstill period at the point information on the award of the contract is communicated to tenderers. That notification will provide full information on the award decision. The standstill period, which will be for a minimum of 10 calendar days, provides time for unsuccessful tenderers to challenge the award decision before the contract is entered into.
The Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016 provide for aggrieved parties who have been harmed or are at risk of harm by a breach of the rules to take action in the High Court (England, Wales and Northern Ireland).

VI.4.4) Service from which information about the review procedure may be obtained
Official name: Thames Water Utilities Ltd
Town: Reading
Country: United Kingdom

VI.5) Date of dispatch of this notice:2020-12-03