Innovation Challenge Mentor – MSME Digitalization: E-commerce Website and User Experience/User Interface (UX/UI) Mentorship

Background

The Royal Government of Cambodia has undertaken a series of broad-based reforms aimed at strengthening and diversifying the productive sector base and achieving economic/trade-related competitiveness growth. These strategic objectives are enshrined in the national development agenda, articulated by the Rectangular Strategy IV, the National Strategy Development Plan (2019-2023), the Cambodia Trade Integration Strategy Update (2019-2023), and the Cambodia e-commerce strategy which has been launched in November 2020. A common thread running through these policy instruments is the recognition of E-commerce as a driver of private sector growth, both from a domestic-market and international trade perspective.

The potential for e-commerce development is significant in Cambodia, promising to diversify the economy, provide new jobs, increase financial inclusion, as well as contribute to improved lives and livelihoods. Cambodia has considerable advantages that could be leveraged to create ICT jobs and benefit the national economy. Yet E-commerce is relatively undeveloped compared to Cambodia’s neighbors and has not yet contributed to export diversification despite its potential in particular for agricultural commodities, handicrafts, and garments.

Some important considerations have noticeably constrained the future growth in this sector, though. SMEs, in general, face a lot of challenges ranging from the lack of proper status, and high transaction costs, to uncertainty related to incentives and regulations, particularly e-commerce firms, IT start-ups, and other segments in newly emerging areas. Remarkably, access to finance is reportedly the most

burdensome and challenging for SMEs to find in the formal lending sector.

In this context, UNDP in collaboration with co-financing support from the Ministry of Commerce, Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF), and Khmer Enterprise jointly implements key components of Cambodia’s e-commerce acceleration project (Go4eCam) that aims to boost domestic and international opportunities for small and medium enterprises through a digital platform. Under this component, there are two initiatives: the MSMEs Incubation on Digitalisation Programme and the Innovation Challenge Programme. The Incubation programme focuses on improving the basic functionalities and capabilities of MSMEs in their entrepreneurship to uptake the e-commerce solution to sell online domestically and internationally. Meanwhile, the Innovation Challenge will offer 70 awards, with a maximum prize of up to USD 5,000 per awardee, through the Innovation Challenge modality aiming at helping those MSMEs with no and little access to formal lending and to demonstrate the benefits the MSMEs could gain by going digital and by doing so, they could reach out to wider markets and clientele.

For this particular terms of reference, it will be focused on providing support for the Innovation Challenge awardees.  Regarding the implementation status, the Innovation Challenge programme runs in two cohorts.  Each cohort has a duration of 3 months, Cohort 1 (July-September 2022) and Cohort 2 (September-November 2022).  During each cohort, the awardees will receive mentorship support to complete their innovation projects.  This includes tailored business mentoring sessions, business-to-business webinars with a focus on cross-border e-commerce, and online training on e-commerce.

To take this initiative forward, UNDP is currently seeking an E-commerce Website and User Experience/ User Interface (UX/UI) Mentor to provide tailored mentorship support to the awardees on their innovation projects. 

Duties and Responsibilities

Through close coordination with UNDP’s technical team and in collaboration with other Individual Consultants, the successfully selected consultant will act as an Innovation Challenge mentor to the awardees on the two innovation challenge cohorts.  The role of the Innovation Challenge mentor is designed to provide technical guidance on innovation deliverables that were set out in the awardee's proposed workplan.  The scope of work areas for the Innovation Challenge mentor per cohort are the following:

1. Meeting with matched mentee/awardee:  The mentors will be matched with awardees (group of mentees) based on what support was stated in their needs assessment form.  UNDP Cambodia will then set up one-to-one introductions between the mentor and awardees, where the mentors are expected to meet with the assigned awardees at least twice during 1 cohort period (3 months per cohort). 

2. Conducting workshops:  In addition, to meeting with the assigned awardees, mentors will also be facilitating at least 2 group mentorship training sessions.  These sessions will cover topics based on common awardee activities and deliverables across the cohort but are expected to be practical, where 50% of the time during the workshop is learning, and 50% of the time during the workshop would be working on what was taught during the workshop.   If there is another mentor with a similar background/skillset, it is expected the mentors can co-design/ask for input on the workshop material.  This is to ensure there is consistent information across what was taught to the awardees at the workshop.  Any learning material will then be shared with awardees.

3. Follow up after the workshop: After practicalizing what they’ve learned during the workshop, Awardees can then follow up with their assigned mentor (if applicable to the expertise) or the workshop mentor during individual sessions or open office hours (depending on the demand).

The responsibility of the mentor includes, but is not limited to the following main activities;

1. Provide tailored mentorship support and expertise to assigned awardees on a one-to-one basis depending on the topic area and ensure awardees are kept on track for their deliverables/activities;

2. Conduct at least 2 workshops and provide learning and practical materials for group mentoring sessions;

3. Attend onboarding session for mentors at the start of the contract (date to be announced);

4. Keep a log of mentorship sessions using a template provided by UNDP Cambodia to submit at the end of each month

5. Attend the business showcase event; and

At the mentor’s discretion, support the awardees by making introductions to and assisting in the acquisition of potential business linkages that may be helpful for their business;

Competencies

Corporate competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards. 

• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

• Treats all people fairly without favoritism.

• Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment

Required Skills and Experience

Education: 

• At least a Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) with a specialization in one or more of the following; user experience and user interface design, e-commerce, digital marketing, business administration, or other relevant fields.     

Experience:

• Demonstrated at least 2 year specialized in e-commerce UX/UI design experience through websites/mobile development and has experience launching and managing an e-commerce website from scratch or using a website builder such as Shopify, Weebly, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Wix, Zyro, or others.

• Understands what the key points of a user journey on an e-commerce website are and has conducted user research and testing for e-commerce websites/mobile applications to make the customer’s experience enjoyable, straightforward, and hassle-free, from website discovery, product page, checkout, confirmation.

• Has experience understanding how to convert and incentivize existing customers to buy using an e-commerce website and converting customers from social media platforms to buyers on an e-commerce store.

• Has experience using various e-commerce website platforms and integrations

• Desired:  Has experience mentoring e-commerce businesses in Cambodia

Language Requirement:

• Fluency in Khmer is required and some ability to use English.

Interested offeror must read the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=94676   more detail information about term of references, instructions to offeror, and to download the documents to be submitted in the offer through online.

UNDP reserves right to reject any applications that is incomplete.

Please be informed that we don’t accept application submitted via email.

Interested Offerors are required to submit application via UNDP jobsite system as the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP jobsite system. Please note that UNDP jobsite system allows only one uploading of application document, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your online applications submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an email acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application, if necessary. Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.

Interested individual offeror must submit  the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

1. Proposal: Letter of explaining why they are most suitable for the work

2. Financial proposal (Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP)

3. Personal CV including past experience in similar projects and at least 3 references

Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email pheara.lek@undp.org and cc procurement.kh@undp.org . While the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 3 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted in Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain update related to this Individual Consultant (IC).