Digital Platform Database Consultancy

Agro-processing Development in Palestine:
Supporting SMEs and Entrepreneurship for Youth
Program 2017-2020

Terms of Reference
For digital Platform Database consultancy

Background

The Small Enterprise Center (SEC) is a Palestinian non-profit organization that has been established in the year 2008, to provide an integrated package of innovative and tailor-made business development services to promote the enhancement of a conductive environment for the MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium enterprises) development, increasing their potentials for growth and sustainability. The Small Enterprise Center has rich experience in the Palestinian market, and it manages and implements projects in both the West Bank and Gaza strip, since it has an active branch in Gaza in addition to the headquarter office in Ramallah.

SEC aims at facilitating solutions in the development of start-ups, small and medium size enterprises to contribute to the development of the Palestinian private sector, through enhancing the productivity and efficiency of MSMEs, which compromise the vast majority of all business entities. Accordingly, SEC activities focus on the provision and promotion of technical, informational and referral services for existing and potential MSMEs.

Under the Drosos Foundation program areas in Palestine, SEC is executing project entitled “Agro-processing Development in Palestine / Supporting SMEs and Entrepreneurship for Youth”. The Program Goal is to contribute to the economic growth through raising the participating companies operating in the agro-processing sub-sector incomes and strengthening their ability to create sustainable jobs for unemployed youth and women by providing the participating companies with a set of innovative business development services.

Purpose of Assignment

SEC will establish a digital Platform Database to recruit and facilitate the matchmaking process between the unemployed persons and the employers. Where unemployed persons can fill up applications where job matching will be available. On the other hand the employers will be informed about this Platform and trained how to use it efficiently, where they can search for candidates by categories, field of expertise, gender, geographical location…etc. The platform will be flexible and easy interface for both parties.

For the purposes of inclusiveness and sustainability, SEC will hire an IT firm to develop a digital Platform Database.

Technical Proposal:
The proposal should include:
Technical overview of functions and features.
Suggested methodology and work plan with delivery dates.
Samples of previous relevant projects experience and relevant graphics designs.
Name(s) and CVs or brief summary of professional background of key personnel to be involved in implementation of the Contract.
Summary of working model. Team functions involved
Proposal of extra features and ideas to be included in the portal, the service provided will commit to developing these suggestions.

Specific Tasks and Deliverables

The digital Platform should be designed in regards to the below programming language:

Technology :

MVC .NET (4/5/Core 2) C#/VB.NET
Open source code (not encrypted)
SQL SERVER 2014/2017 database
JQUERY AJAX for retrieving the data (Using paging on displaying the data,…)

Design :

Bootstrap design for the layout
User friendly design
Responsive design (mobile friendly design)

SEO:

User friendly URL
metadata, keywords ,… etc for every page in the website
Google analyst integration
Facility to share any article to the social media with analytics reports

Hosting:

Mail server on the host
Backups for the website on a weekly basis
User-friendly Cpanel for the hosting
Access on the database server with admin privileges
Database and Hosting each on deferent servers
SSL domain

Security :

To have encrypted passwords of the website users
Prevent any type of hacking (sql injection ,…)

Language:

The system will support the following languages:
Arabic
English
System Administrator/User can select the default Language.

Nonfunctional specifications:

The website needs to be interoperable with standard operating system environments and popular internet browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, and others.
Compliance with the new designs/ technologies.
Design should include visuals, images and flashes, user-friendly interfaces with high quality, dynamic text and images, supports interactive technical design.
Notifications: The portal will support notifications for all types of users like Admin, Organization, Unemployed

The portal will have an administration interface enabling portal administrator to issue user access credentials and manage users’ access profiles. The portal administrator will be able to create, delete, suspend and activate the account of any user on the portal.

The consultancy firm should address the methodology it will use to understand the above objectives and how the proposed website will comply with the above stakeholders’ general objectives.

Visitor:

The visitor user is any user opens the website. The website should allow the visitor to:

Visitors Dashboard
Charts (Number of unemployed/Number of employers)
Last 5 unemployed CVs added to the database
Last 5 employers added to the database

Others

Browse the website
Search the website using simple/advance search mode
Filter companies by product/service type
Contact any company
Communicate over the blogs
Register in a mailing list

Member type 1(companies & organizations):

The website should allow the company user to:
Login with user/password
Dashboard (charts and statistics … )
Update the profile and all its sections
Add new product and all its sections
Manage his/her products with all details
Change password / Forget password procedure with proper authentication technique
Deactivate the profile
Send comments/notes to the Admin
Search for local experts/contractors by skill.

Member type 2 (Unemployed Youth):

The website should allow the individual user to:
Login with user/password
Dashboard (charts and statistics … )
Update the profile and all its sections
Add new skills and experience to their CV
Manage his/her profile with all details
Change password / Forget password procedure with proper authentication technique
Deactivate the profile
Send comments/notes to the Admin
Can be attach CV, Certificates, etc. (PDF Format)

Deliverables:

The consultancy firm is expected to:

Kick off meeting to match the preparation with the stakeholders needs.
All documents as requested in the technical proposal.
weekly progress feedback
A designed and developed website with agreed well functions and features with high quality graphics design and layout.
All portal working files and full source code of all components.
Training for the SEC staff (to be determined later) on how to use & manage the portal.
Website Final lunch.
Warranty commitment letter for at least 12 months from portal deployment.
Upon finalization, the firm/ expert is expected to provide a detailed full report about the assignment and its recommendations.

Timeframe and Reporting

- The consultancy firm will require a maximum of two months and should start by end of March 2018 .
- Reporting and coordination will be with the Director General of SEC.

- The consultancy firm, team or individual making an application for the contract shall submit a detailed proposal (in either Arabic or English) for establishing the platform. The proposal should be divided into two parts, i.e. technical and financial.

- The deadline to submit the proposal is on 28th February 2018. The proposal should be submitted on a sealed envelope to SEC office at the following Address:

5th Floor , Al Amal Building
Mecca Street , Al Balou’
Al Bireh
Tel: 02-2423326
SEC working hours from Sundays to Thursdays between 8:00 to 16:00 except public holidays.

Notes:
Winner of this bid has to pay bid fee
Valid source dedication certificate is required and should be provided with the offer.
Winner of this bid has to provide bank guarantee or certified cheque with amount of 10% of the total awarded contract.