The agency is seeking information and best practices from IT vendors on fee collection and invoice management.
In a request for information released Aug. 15, the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) Office of Information Services wants to learn more about the options available to it for an Administrative Services Division Fee Collection and Invoice Management System (AFCIMS). Among the takeaways:
- CARB is growing and transforming as regulations increase demand for an “automated, efficient and scalable payment and invoice management system,” according to the RFI; it now processes fees and payments for more than 25 various regulatory programs. New regulations will boost its numbers to more than 500,000 annual collections. However, existing AFCIMS processes are manual, labor intensive and not scalable. Generally, CARB seeks to “automate the AFCIMS and streamline the accounting management processes to support the growth and expansion, and to be able to receive payments from U.S. and international manufacturers.” A contractor eventually selected via procurement would be expected to “roll out their AFCIMS program responsibilities” based on the project timeline once it’s set.
- CARB seeks information from IT companies on their abilities to “meet the proposed project requirements” and provide it with “Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) cost estimates.” The agency also seeks information on possible modifications and improvements to the proposed scope of the project, and requirements that might do more to meet the project goals. CARB wants to receive “suggestions, best practices and cost estimates” around procuring a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that can “facilitate the Administrative Services Division (ASD) Payment and Invoice Management procedures including streamlining the accounting payment management processes to support current and future growth.”
- Capabilities for the AFCIMS include accepting customer information from various “program sources” for customer account creation and management; facilitating customer invoice generation so that customers can make payments and process payments with “bank merchant or vendors”; system integration to enable the archiving of traceability on payment statuses; integration with the Financial Information System for California (FI$Cal) and “existing bank merchants for payment collections.” CARB also seeks the ability to track payment and invoice statuses; associate charting of accounts; and the ability to provide administration and reporting capabilities to its Administrative Services Division, and “position the system to support future expansion of CARB programs driven by a variety of regulations and enforcement processes.”
- CARB, the RFI said, “also seeks” an experienced implementation team to install the proposed solution; and it wants to learn how long such a solution would need to go live successfully. Minimum staff would be “three resources, one engineer, a senior information architect, and a project manager, to offer “software implementation services” and support on the actual implementation, as well as technical support. IT groups at the California Department of Technology and CARB provide services including “application support, development and maintenance” as well as cybersecurity, according to the RFI. A vendor would be charged with “providing and maintaining the cloud-based solution implementation.” CARB “would like managed services for a period no less than three years to assist with in-depth knowledge transfer.” In addition to a “designed integration of the proposed solution,” CARB indicates several third-party apps will also need to be integrated.
- The RFI isn’t a “request or authorization” to do any work; this isn’t a competitive bidding process, CARB reminds vendors, and the RFI and any information provided shall not “be deemed to create any legally binding agreement or obligations upon CARB.” In their responses, vendors should include answers to questions; a profile of the company; a ROM cost estimate; business requirements and a project timeline among other elements. Questions on the RFI are due by 10 a.m. Wednesday; responses will come Sept. 11. Responses to the RFI are due by 12 p.m. Sept. 25. Confidential discussions and demonstrations may follow but have not yet been scheduled.
