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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF MAY 05, 2016 FBO #5277
DOCUMENT

D -- Electronic Invoicing (e-invoicing) - Attachment

Notice Date

5/3/2016
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

NAICS

541519 — Other Computer Related Services
 

Contracting Office

Department of Veterans Affairs;Technology Acquisition Center;23 Christopher Way;Eatontown NJ 07724
 

ZIP Code

07724
 

Solicitation Number

VA11816Q1031
 

Archive Date

8/6/2016
 

Point of Contact

Amy Schmalzigan
 

E-Mail Address

hmalzigan@va.gov<br
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Award Number

GS-35F-247DA VA118-16-F-1002
 

Award Date

4/29/2016
 

Awardee

A & T SYSTEMS, INC.;12200 TECH RD STE 200;SILVER SPRING;MD;20904
 

Award Amount

$847,700.00
 

Description

On April 29, 2016, the Technology Acquisition Center awarded Delivery Order VA118-16-F-0887 under the terms and conditions of General Services Administration (GSA) Schedule 70 Contract GS-35F-247DA with A&T Systems, Inc. (A&T), located at 12200 Tech Road Suite 200, Silver Springs, Maryland 20904. A&T will be providing for continued support for VA's Tungsten e-invoicing solution which supports VA Financial Services Center's (FSC) commercial invoice processing with invoice data automatically exported from the service to the existing VA FSC invoice processing system. The period of performance shall be from May 1, 2016 through April 30, 2017, plus three 12-month options periods. In addition there are four optional tasks that allow Non-VA federal agencies to obtain the aforementioned Tungsten e-invoicing solution. The optional tasks may be exercised at any time during contract performance, but will not exceed the contract's 4-year period of performance. These optional tasks will not exceed 12-months per task, the total order value of $8,671,508.05. ? LIMITED-SOURCES JUSTIFICATION 1. Contracting Activity:Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Acquisition Operations Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724 2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed price task order issued under General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) Information Technology 70 contract number GS-35F-4003D, to A&T Systems, Inc. (A&T) for the renewal of the Tungsten electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) solution to support the VA Financial Services Center (FSC). 3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA FSC currently utilizes a brand name Tungsten Corporation (Tungsten) cloud hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) e-invoicing processing service that automatically exports invoicing data from cloud hosted software to the existing VA FSC invoice processing system. Specifically, the Tungsten e-invoicing solution includes software, maintenance, integration, and technical support. VA FSC requires renewal of the existing Tungsten e-invoicing solution which currently supports over 250 automated integrations with high invoice volume VA vendors and over 29,000 web form accounts used by lower invoice volume vendors so that VA can continue to receive and process electronic invoices VA wide. VA electronic invoicing is required by the federal Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012, Public Law 112-248, and vendors are required to submit electronic invoices for contract payments per VA Acquisition Regulation clause 852.232-72, Electronic Submission of Payment Requests. The period of performance shall be from May 1, 2016 through April 30, 2017, plus three 12-month option periods. In addition there are optional tasks that allow Non-VA federal agencies to obtain the aforementioned Tungsten e-invoicing solution. These optional tasks will not exceed 12-months per task. 4. Statutory Authority: This acquisition will be conducted under the authority of the Multiple-Award Schedules Program. The specific authority providing for a limited source award is Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B), "Only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized." 5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: The proposed source for this action is A&T, located at 12200 Tech Road, Suite 200, Silver Spring, MD 20904. The proposed action is for renewal VA's Tungsten e-invoicing solution to allow VA vendors to submit automated electronic invoices to FSC, as well as allow invoice submissions via a web portal. Tungsten does not conduct business directly with the Federal Government and only uses A&T as its authorized reseller. Without the renewal of the existing integrated Tungsten e-invoicing capability, VA's ability to process and pay the estimated 1.2 million invoices to over 30,000 vendors would be substantially disrupted for this 2 year period while new interfaces and web portals are created and implemented. No other solution, other than the Tungsten e-invoicing solution, can provide automated integration, which is a critical VA functional requirement. Any other solution would require the use of a web form to manually enter invoice data. Using this web form would not meet VA's requirements and would result in a severe processing bottleneck of claims which would severely impact VA's ability to pay invoices in accordance with the required timelines specified in the Prompt Payment Act. In addition, when a vendor registers for a web form, A&T as well as VA FSC Nation Wide Vendor File Division must take actions, such as activating the web form request and validating the banking information, which is a labor and time intensive process. There are various issues with using a web form. Specifically, it is common for many vendors to have a base tax identification number and numerous suffixes to identify specific departments and divisions within its organization elements spread-out over the entire nation. These entity base tax identifiers are further complicated by the fact that there are often different bank accounts associated with each suffix. If the banking and billing information is not identical to what is submitted and on record in FSC, the vendor must be contacted by a VA FSC Nation Wide Vendor File Division technician to reconcile any differences. This takes about 2 business days per request, which would be required initially for all 30,000 VA vendors. If all 48 FSC personnel were devoted to this task, it would take between 4 to 5 years to complete processing of all the web forms requiring reconciliation. Additionally, submission of all invoices through a web portal would result in erroneous payments or duplicate payment of invoices. Anytime a vendor has to manually enter invoice data rather than rely on automated e-invoicing, the error rate will increase. This would be true of vendors being forced to use the web form instead of the existing automated solution while the automation integration is being implemented for all vendors to a new solution. However, it is especially likely in the case of vendors whose invoices are too complicated to manually enter each on a web form. In these cases, the vendor would have to revert to submission of paper invoices. This would dramatically increase manual processing actions by both the vendor and VA personnel. VA FSC personnel will have to manually process the invoice in the mailroom, manually scan the invoice and manually validate the invoice information. Each of these steps increases the likelihood of a mistake that would delay payment and incur interest penalties or cause an erroneous or duplicate payment. Furthermore, manual invoicing would violate VA's mandated requirements for vendors to submit invoices electronically. Vendors who are not paid timely and accurately for their supplies or services may cease providing support to medical centers, clinics and cemeteries across the nation, thereby negatively affecting the timely delivery of critical services required by Veterans. Tungsten's current SaaS solution, which is supported by A&T, supports over 250 automated integrations with high invoice volume VA vendors and over 29,000 web form accounts used by lower invoice volume vendors. These 250 automated integrations allow for vendors to submit electronic invoices directly to VA without the need to manually upload and submit documents or manually enter invoices through a web form. Using automated integration accounts for 40 percent of all invoice submissions to FSC. VA estimates that recreating over 250 automated interfaces to a new e-invoicing solution would require a transition period in excess of 2 years for successful completion. This is based on previous efforts for similar transition periods. Finally, implementation of a new e-invoicing solution would require a duplication of hundreds of hours of development between VA and the provider of the new e-invoicing solution network. There are several aspects of VA's payment process that are unique to VA and have been customized only in the current Tungsten solution. Several of these are Purchase Order (PO) Flip, Invoice Status Service and VA's process for offering and capturing discounts. This work will have to be replicated if FSC were to move the e-invoicing service to a new network. VA's payment process is based on the requirements of the Prompt Payment Act and specifically, the nine elements that make up a valid invoice. The PO flip (vendor selects the appropriate VA specific PO in the Tungsten portal and "flips" it into an invoice) requires a VA PO stored in a VA data warehouse to be pushed daily to Tungsten. This eliminates one of the main reasons an invoice gets rejected due to an incorrect PO. Likewise, the Invoice Status Service provided by the Tungsten solution requires a daily push of invoice information from the FSC's Vendor Inquiry System so that invoice status information can be displayed in a single portal. This helps prevent duplicate invoices as the vendor can see status in one convenient place. Finally, the current solution has been modified so that when a vendor offers a discount, multiple discount related field's auto-populate rather than requiring manual keying of discount due date and percentage entries, which is unique to VA and deviates from the industry standard. This functionality has allowed FSC to increase its discount capture rate when a vendor does offer a discount. 6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section eight of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements. There is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. The ordering activity will post this justification along with the request for quote to the GSA E-Buy website in accordance with FAR 8.405-6(b)(3). Additionally, in accordance with FAR 5.301, the resulting notice of award of this action will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) web page within 14 days after award and this justification will be made publicly available. 7. Actions to Increase Competition: In order to remove or overcome barriers to competition in future acquisitions for this requirement, the Government's technical experts will continue to perform market research to determine if there are emerging e-invoicing solutions they become available to enable future requirements to be competed. Additionally, the Performance Work Statement for this action will include a 12-month optional transition task that will assist VA in transitioning to a new electronic invoicing system. This task would be exercised in the last year of performance and overlap with the implementation of a new solution. In the future VA will determine whether it is in its best interest to continue receiving electronic invoicing support from A&T under this contract action, fund the transition task to transition to a new solution, and simultaneously award a contract for a new solution. 8. Market Research: Market research was conducted by VA in December 2015 by posting an RFI on FBO. Three responses were received, and based on reviews of these companies' products and services offered, the Government's technical experts determined that only one of these sources, A&T, the sole reseller of the current Tungsten solution can meet the Government's requirement for e-invoicing services. The three responses received were from A&T, CACI, and Datarose. CACI and Datarose did not show any ability to meet VA's functional requirements, specifically the automated integration function as discussed in section 5 of this justification. Also, these solutions would not allow for PO Flip, Invoice Status Service and the process for offering and capturing discounts, which would have to be integrated in any new solution. In January VA's technical expert contacted both CACI and Datarose to notify them of the assessment that their systems did not meet VA's requirements. No challenge was made regarding the Government's s technical assessment. Only A&T Systems, the only authorized Government reseller of the current Tungsten solution responded with an e-invoicing service solution that provides for automated integrations with vendors required by federal law, the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act of 2012, Public Law 112-248, and the VAAR. 9. Other Facts: None.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/d2e4aed83c0c64c0715cd57e76d7c253)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: GS-35F-247DA VA118-16-F-1002 GS-35F-247DA VA118-16-F-1002_1.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=2708755&FileName=GS-35F-247DA-000.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=2708755&FileName=GS-35F-247DA-000.docx

 

Note: If links are broken, refer to Point of Contact above or contact the FBO Help Desk at 877-472-3779.
 

Record

SN04104721-W 20160505/160503235637-d2e4aed83c0c64c0715cd57e76d7c253 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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