REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

ABC Banks in Action 2.0

PROJECT

ABC Worldwide intends to improve its online computer simulation, ABC Banks in Action, by
converting the current product from PHP running on a Unix environment to .NET running on a
Windows environment and adding the ability to support multiple languages in Unicode
character set.

ISSUED BY
Vice President-Procurement
ABC Worldwide

INTRODUCTION

Founded in 1919, ABC Worldwide is the oldest, largest, and fastest-growing not-for-profit
economic education organization in the world. It is the largest partnership linking the private
sector with education efforts. ABC’s educational programs serve as the primary vehicle to
advance the organization’s mission: To ensure that every child has a fundamental understanding
of the free enterprise system. Programs are regularly developed, revised, and enhanced as ABC
inspires young people to be successful in life through free enterprise education.

ABC Worldwide programs for K-12 students focus on three key content areas: entrepreneurship,
financial literacy, and work readiness.

On July 1, 2004, ABC Inc. and ABC International merged to form a single, efficient organization,
ABC Worldwide. The merger in no way alters the established programs, methods of educational
delivery, or values that ABC has steadfastly upheld for more than 85 years. As a united
organization, ABC Worldwide now provides new avenues of opportunity to reach more students
around the world.

BACKGROUND

ABC is renowned in the United States and throughout the world for promoting comprehensive,
sequential, economic and business education programs for students in kindergarten through
grade 12. These programs:
 focus on academic achievement;
 align program content with important academic content standards and assessments;
 teach management skills and encourage innovative thinking;

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  incorporate mathematics and literacy skill development into program content;
 incorporate service-learning experiences into program content;
 support differentiated learning styles;
 utilize community volunteers and mentors to deliver program materials; and
 provide opportunities for parental involvement and support

ABC ensures the effectiveness and relevance of its economic and business education programs
by utilizing validated curricula and instructional materials, specific program implementation
standards, teacher and volunteer training, and program outcomes evaluations.

ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS

Proposals are invited from companies and organizations demonstrating experience and capacity
to produce age-appropriate, exciting, online and CD-based systems. Interested parties must
show experience and familiarity with development in the educational field and expert
knowledge of PHP, .Net, and Unicode character set. Educational experience in international
settings would be desirable as this product is being developed primarily for an international
audience.

Note: Interested parties that have been suspended or debarred from doing business with
federal agencies or private organizations using federal funding are disqualified from applying.

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PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION

The proposal should include the following components.

Part I: See attached document entitled “ABC Banks in Action 2.0 Requirements.”

Part II:
Vendor will perform various tests and provide the appropriate documentation. These tests
will include: Unit, integration, system, stabilization, and regression testing. Documented test
plans, test cases, and test results will be provided by the vendor to ABC Worldwide®.
 Unit Testing – A procedure used to validate that a particular module of source code
is working properly. This type of testing is done by the developer and not by QA
Testers or ABC Worldwide®.
 Integration Testing - The phase of software in which individual software modules are
combined and tested as a group.
 System Testing – Testing conducted on a complete, integrated system to evaluate
the system's compliance with its specified requirements.
 Stabilization Testing – Testing conducted with the focus of stabilizing the application
to ensure that it does not crash.
 Regression Testing – Testing which seeks to uncover regression issues.

Part III:
The following questions should be answered with clarity:
1. In order to achieve a transfer of knowledge, as well as positioning ABC to become
self-sufficient, how would you structure the roles and responsibilities?
2. Please describe the various steps in your project life cycle and provide a sample
project plan.
3. Please describe your methodology for developing your software. Define all phases
of the development cycle and how each would be managed.
4. Based on your experience, what areas of development present the greatest risk for
a success?
5. Please describe what a typical schedule is for development of your software,
detailing duration of each phase.
6. Please describe the key issues raised during your last software development effort.
7. Please detail how the issues from the last question were resolved to ensure
successful completion of the project.
8. Please describe your methodology or procedures for how you transfer knowledge
and responsibilities to ABC after completion of the integration effort.
9. Please describe your methodologies or procedures for managing defects.
10. What mechanisms and/or techniques do you use to track defects to ensure proper
resolution?

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 11. Does your company provide training prior to, during and after implementation of
your software? Describe your training approach.
12. Does your company provide product support after implementation of your
software? Describe your support approach and tools.

The ABC IT Group requires that proposal components be in written and electronic forms and
should include pricing and timeline with suggested milestones.

PROPOSAL BUDGET
The proposal budget should be submitted to include all parts of the Proposal Description and in
as much detail as possible. Proposal budgets must be broken out into very specific parts to
specify cost per deliverable of the RFP.

Timeline
ABC Banks in Action 2.0 needs to be ready to use by ABC Area Offices and ABC Member Nations
by July 2013. Therefore, the following timeline needs to be adhered:

Proposals Due: Close of business (5:00 p.m., Mountain Time)

Friday, March 1, 2013

Notification of Award: Friday, March 29, 2013

Tentative contract: Friday, April 5, 2013

Project Plan: Friday, April 26, 2013

Design Documents: May 31, 2013

Initial Review of Product: Monday, October 7, 2013

Software Beta

Final Review Period: Monday, November 11, 2013

Software Application

Final Product Due: Close of business (5:00 p.m., Mountain Time)

Monday, Nov 25, 2013
Complete Software Application and Documentation

March 2013
 Vendor selected as a result of the RFP process. Begin work creating new template for all
languages.

April- May 2013

 Work continues on the creation of the new simulation template.

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  ABC Worldwide determines next languages for translation with new simulation template
(High priority will be given to countries expressing the greatest interest in the program
or with the greatest implementation of the program such as Asian countries, Arabic
countries and Russia.)

June – November 2013

 New simulation template complete. ABC Banks in Action can now be translated into
any language!
 Vendor provides files to the newly selected ABC Member Nations for translation.

December 2013 – June 2014

 Vendor must be available to support product as we conduct deployment of the product
to various areas around the world. The intention is to be able to fix inconsistencies and
conduct fine tuning that may only show up during a period of actual practical use of the
product.

CREDENTIALS
Vendor is expected to provide documentation that demonstrates quality of work, stability of the
organization, customer satisfaction, and proven methodologies. These documents should
include but are not limited to the following:
 Other Projects
 Customer Base
 Letter(s) of Recommendation
 Financial Statements

ASSISTANCE
Inquiries should be directed to the Project Manager for this project:
Blake Tamara, 819-640-6222 or e-mail at [email protected].

OWNERSHIP
All materials for both draft and final products are to be considered the sole property of
ABC Worldwide, Bleekers Way, Colorado Springs, CO 80906

PROPOSAL DEADLINE
Proposal must be submitted by the close of business (5:00 p.m., Mountain Time) Friday, March
1, 2013, to:

Vice President-Procurement
ABC Worldwide®

Thank you for your interest in ABC!

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ABC Worldwide®

ABC Banks in Action™ Simulation Software

Requirement Document

Table of Contents

Table of Contents........................................................................................................................................1
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Vision...........................................................................................................................................................2
Background..................................................................................................................................................2
Scope of ABC Banks in Action 2.0................................................................................................................3
Simulation Enhancements and Updates.............................................................................................3
Language Expansion............................................................................................................................3
Application Environment.............................................................................................................................4
System Requirements..................................................................................................................................4

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Introduction
ABC Banks in Action is the first ABC Worldwide program developed for international use and is
part of ABC’s suite of high school programs. This project is an enhancement of an existing
product currently delivered.

The current ABC Banks in Action online computer simulation is available in three languages:
 English
 Spanish
 Portuguese

The ABC Banks in Action online computer simulation includes a “Quick Start Guide” and
“Strategy Guide” within the Help menu.

In this document, we will refer to the new application as ABC Banks in Action 2.0.

Vision
ABC Worldwide intends to improve its online computer simulation, ABC Banks in Action, by
converting the current application from PHP running on a Unix environment to .NET on a
Windows environment and adding the ability to support multiple languages in Unicode
character set.

Background
ABC Banks in Action was first developed by ABC Argentina with financial support from Bank XYZ
Argentina. The XYZ Foundation has continued its support of ABC Banks in Action to expand its
reach to students worldwide. In 2006, with XYZ Foundation sponsorship, ABC Worldwide
upgraded and replaced the original program with the new ABC Banks in Action program so
students can increase their understanding of the banking industry through a computer
simulation available online.

ABC’s Education Group has developed a product which will use an interdisciplinary approach
to educate high school aged youth about banking and the banking industry. ABC Banks in
Action is a volunteer-led program built around eight classroom sessions. During each session,
students learn the fundamentals of the banking industry and then have the opportunity to
apply what they learn in a competitive environment using the ABC Banks in Action online
computer simulation.

Through the online simulation, students form banking teams and operate a bank over time by
making several decisions, each of which represents three months or a calendar quarter. Six key
decisions are made that involve:
 Setting short-term deposit interest rates.
 Setting short-term loan interest rates.
 Setting long-term deposit interest rates.
 Setting long-term loan interest rates.
 Investing in research and development.

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  Investing in marketing.

Competing banks are doing the same thing and the banks start out on an equal basis. The
banking team that develops the best strategy and makes a greater profit than its competitors is
the winner, earning the title “Bank of Choice.”

Scope of ABC Banks in Action 2.0

ABC Worldwide intends to improve upon ABC Banks in Action in the following areas:
Simulation Enhancements and Updates
 Migrate application to Microsoft-oriented technologies (.NET) to make it easier to
support and develop additional features
 The application is currently written in PHP with a Flash client.
Language Expansion
Specific program enhancements are to include:
1. One user interface to add additional languages as needed by ABC Worldwide.
2. Enable the system to support multiple international languages in order to expand the
accessibility of the application. Application must be developed to support Unicode and
accommodate special characters in the way in which a particular language is read (top to
bottom, left to right and right to left).
3. Languages requiring translation can be considered in four categories with varying levels of
challenges.
a. Roman character set-based languages that can be represented in Latin 1 (most
European languages) - Process only develop, document, and test pipeline process.
b. Roman character set-based (Latin) languages that require other character sets (for
instance: Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, etc) - Process and Technical (loading
additional character/font sets).
c. Cyrillic Languages - Non-Latin alphabet based languages (such as Russian, Arabic,
etc) - Process, Technical, and Design (layouts may need to change).
d. Character-based languages (Japanese, Chinese, etc.) - Process, Technical, and
potentially major design changes.
4. Build a language administration module for creating new language libraries, proofing the
language libraries, and adding them to the system. Allow ABC to use MS Office applications
to translate text of the simulation that can be imported into language library.
5. User should have ability to select language when logging onto site and it should be
connected to user account. User should not have to reselect preferred language every time
user logs on.
6. The ABC Worldwide Education and IT Groups will monitor the quality and consistency of the
translations to ensure that the program works as designed. In addition, the project team will
work closely with the selected vendor to notify, fix, and manage any discrepancies.
Application Environment
The client application will be designed to work with at least Microsoft Windows 7 or higher and
Macintosh OSX or higher systems in a web environment. The database shall not require user to

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purchase additional software or licenses. The application is currently written in PHP with a Flash
client.

ABC Worldwide intends to standardize the administrator user interface across our variety of
online and offline systems. Although not called out as a deliverable within these requirements,
this goal should be kept in mind when adjusting or changing such interfaces.

System Requirements
 Application must be a web application and must not require a download from the user
to operate.
 Application may require a .Net, Java, or Flash download if those are part of
the application.
 Server components must run in a Windows Server environment using .Net and MS SQL
Server for the database.
 Client environment should not be operating system specific and the application should
run on the last and current major revisions of Microsoft IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
 Client must not use any hard disk space, except for browser, .Net, Java, or Flash
system files.
 Server system requirements are negotiable based on functionality and approved design.
 System can require IIS but we would prefer support for any Web server.
 We would prefer the system include support for load balancing and not require a single
affinity connection. This is important because all of the teams may have the same IP
address when accessing the system.
 Vendor will provide system specifications that will be designed to handle 1,000
concurrent users with the ability to scale upward by adding more equipment.

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Request for Proposal - ABC Banks in Action 2.0
Questions for Interview
ABC Worldwide is a fast-growing not-for-profit economic education organization. It has decided
to enhance its online computer simulation software, ABC Banks in Action, which is used to teach
the fundamentals of banking industry to high-school aged youth. ABC Worldwide has invited 10
vendors to bid for this project.

Nagarro has been invited to bid for this project. It has expertise and experience in implementing
such projects. Assuming that you are leading the sales effort to bid for this project on behalf of
Nagarro, do the following:

1) Create a Table of Content for the proposal. Be as detailed as possible.

2) Create an Executive Summary (1 page) for the proposal

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