How To Manage Research Grants Successfully With Grant Management System?

Grant Management is usually defined as the process and methods an institution oversees its grants. Grant management is the phase of the grantsmanship process that begins when an applicant signs an agreement with a grantor to accept a grant award and becomes a grantee.

Educational institutions like university or college usually deal with six types of grants that require management. They include - Capital grants that are generally for endowment, building, equipment, or construction, General operating grants that are for the everyday operations of an organization, Program/project grants that are for a specific activity or plan within an organization that is usually time-limited, Technical assistance grants that support an organization’s development or infrastructure needs, Planning grants that support the planning stages of a future project.

There is a significant administrative burden faced by a typical office of sponsored research which is centred on grant management, grant accounting and effort certification. Sponsored program administrators in colleges and universities operate in a demanding financial and regulatory environment. Compounding the challenge is the ever-shrinking availability of resources. As an example, grant accounting is usually handled with limited staffing and a mix of homegrown, manual or internal systems that were designed for other business purposes.

The specific challenges are seen in the following areas:

• The effort it takes to track and streamline reporting and other administration related to financial and regulatory compliance.
• The hands-on approach research administrators must take to improve administrative efficiency and quality control.
• The multi-step process to manage faculty commitments on sponsored programs and academic appointments.
• Record keeping needed to track funding on pending proposals and active awards.

Reporting is another administrative necessity. For example, federal funding sources require grantees to submit a variety of reports, which are due at specific times during the life cycle of a grant award.

When considering research universities grant administration, there are steps to take to work smarter and streamline processes. Many colleges and universities rely on grant management application that easily automates report generation, improves effort certification, automates manual handling, and offers a comprehensive set of easily generated reports.

Grant Management System by Inknowledge

Grant Management System is designed primarily for educational institutions like university and college. It automates grant management processes, so you can easily track your grants, demonstrates accountability, and attract future funding.

Automated grant management empowers you to make faster, better spending decisions for better use of grant funding. You can send out review request for the grant proposal to all reviewers simultaneously and remove bottleneck inherently present in a linear approval process.

Features of Grant Management System:

1. The Grant Management System helps faculty submit their pre-proposal certification form and get approved by their department heads electronically.
2. You can speed up the review process by sending out review request simultaneously to all reviewers and remove the bottlenecks inherently present in a linear approval process.
3. Grant Management System helps faculty report their award activity and let sponsored programs office personnel verify and issue award letters.
4. With an elaborate budget builder in Grant Management System, you can propose effort in months, percentage or salary and let the builder calculate the rest for you.
5. Additional online forms like Indirect Cost Waiver, Indirect Cost Distribution, Cost Share and multiple credit are all built into the system to even allow for special cases to be handled online.
6. Regulatory Compliance, Conflict of Interest management and technology transfer can be tightly integrated into your grant management process to automate elated business processes and improve compliance with internal and external policies and procedures.
7. University and college administration can run reports at an institutional level or drill-down to specific faculty to see their proposal and award activity. Draw insights and provide them to administration. Grant Management System also helps faculty directly pull this information into their productivity reporting tools and showcase their accomplishments on their profiles.

Note: The author of this article is working with Inknowledge Inc.

For more information, please visit our official website Inknowledge Inc. You can also contact us at info@inknowledge.com.