Delegate signing authority to the Yolo County Procurement Manager to approve the agreement with Northwoods Consulting Partners, Inc. for the period of July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2027 with a contract maximum of $268,212 for the provision of lobby management and customer appointment scheduling systems; and delegate the Director of the Yolo County Health and Human Services Agency the authority to exercise option year extensions. (No general fund impact) (Sullivan)

The County has received lobby management services from Northwood Consulting Services since FY2010-11. Since contracting with Northwoods Consulting, the County has made significant financial investments in Yolo County Health and Human Services Agency's lobby management system. The County has spent over 10 years developing and customizing the system to best meet the agency’s needs.

The system has improved customer experiences with the Service Center branch by supporting lobby management, customer appointment scheduling services, and providing the metrics needed to track employee performance and customer service efficiencies. The system also serves as the primary appointment scheduling program for the Service Center branch. These services are critical to operations and are necessary to manage the large volume of customer appointments.

Approval of the request herein will enable HHSA to expedite the approval of the agreement for these crucial services and prevent a lapse in services. The Agreement is currently with Northwoods for their review and signature. The agreement will be routed to the Procurement Manager for the final County signature.

Performance Measures included in this Agreement are as follows:
There are no performance measures associated with this agreement.

County Counsel has approved this Agreement as to form.
General Services Department, Procurement Division

On February 26, 2024, the then acting Yolo County Deputy Director/Manager of Procurement or Deputy Director/Purchasing Agent or designee approved a single source procurement for these services.

Procurement reviewed HHSA’s request and determined that it was in the best interest of the County to enter into a new agreement, based on satisfactory service/reasonable prices and to avoid the interruption of County business. Without sole source approval and renewal of the agreement with the vendor, the County would lose the ability to serve customers efficiently. Factors considered but were not limited to: 1) the effect the termination of services would have on the current application backlog; 2) the service center would need to re-engineer business processes and workflows to use alternate tools that will not adequately fill the department’s needs; 3) the loss of critical functionality regarding data for appointments and lobby management; 4) the loss of data used to track and monitor employee performance. Without approval, services to customers will be severely impacted; 5) It would be impractical, if not impossible, to replicate the amount of customization and development that has been put into the program over the past 10 years with any other system.