Part two of our five-part series covering strategies to accelerate growth and break down organizational silos in research administration. Read part one here.
In the second installment of our webinar series, Cayuse Director of Solutions Consulting Stef Friesen continued the conversation about breaking down pre- and post-award data silos, this time with a focus on spending to zero more reliably.
The objectives of the webinar were to:
- Understand the challenges associated with passing financial information from pre- to post-award
- Strategize ways to improve the pre- and post-award financial processes
- Brainstorm eRA solutions to common challenges and barriers to collaboration
What we know about institutional differences
Every research institution, regardless of size or prestige, grapples with the complexity of aligning its pre- and post-award offices, especially regarding budgets and spending. Several factors contribute to these common challenges, including:
- Sponsor regulatory changes
- Institutional policy changes
- Integrating research and sponsored projects financial accounting into overarching institutional systems
- Understanding research budgets and associated procedures
- Disparity between rules during submission and at the time of spending
Adding to the complexity, traditional ERPs or financial systems of record—usually tailored to large universities—often don’t cater to the unique needs of research administrators.
How we measure post-award success
In our 2023 Benchmark Report, we found that award spending was by far the number one measure of post-award success:
- Award spending (69%)
- Number of grants closed out, fully utilized, and not in deficit (36%)
- Sub-award spending (34%)
There is a direct line from pre-award involvement to post-award success; a close relationship must exist between the two functions and with the researchers involved in the project.
Budgeting harmony between pre- and post-award
For a post-award process to achieve its goals, the pre-award phase—including involved researchers—must function as an extension of that end. The strong link between the two is evident across such areas as budgets, no-cost extensions, terms and conditions, and sponsor policies and procedures.
The collaboration between pre- and post-award on budgets should be a three-step process:
- Create the budget
- Modify the budget
- Start spending
However, the real-world application of budgeting is seldom this straightforward. After an award has been accepted, processes used to set up an account in an institution’s General Ledger vary widely, from passing information to post-award via email or another manual method to having one office handle everything, from award negotiation forward.
The role of technology in streamlining processes
One of the most prominent challenges research administrators face is re-keying repetitive information, a process that is both error-prone and time-consuming. Transferring a budget into an ERP or other system of record can be a fraught process, and the information entered is usually only one piece of the puzzle.
Fortunately, modern technology can preserve research administrators’ sanity and save time by:
- Ensuring an accurate flow of data from one stage to another
- Eliminating the need to re-key data
- Providing a comprehensive project history, from inception to conclusion
- Enhancing budgeting with a broader perspective
- Consolidating proposal development and fund management in one unified location
Going back and forth with researchers to update them on the status of their spend, not to mention chasing down budget information internally, can be one of the biggest wastes of time within a research administrator’s day-to-day.
In post-award in particular, reporting is the number one most time-consuming activity. Between phone calls to answer questions, translating between accounting speak and research speak, ensuring spend down information is accurate and up to date, and analyzing data against a fiscal year versus a project period, there’s too much information at play to manually juggle.
Cayuse’s answer to breaking down silos
Two Cayuse applications work in tandem to help research teams spend to zero more reliably: Sponsored Projects and Fund Manager. Together, they foster a seamless collaboration between pre- and post-award offices.
- User Dashboard: Offers a comprehensive view of both pre- and post-award information
- Portfolio View: Enables users to delve into an entire project’s history
- Fund Linking: Provides complete transparency into fund consumption
- Reporting: Facilitates seamless sharing of budget-related information
- Holistic View: Integrates all data, offering a comprehensive view of the researcher’s intent and the current project status
Sponsored Projects
Sponsored Projects handles everything from proposals through awards. Both pre- and post-award staff can access the awards dashboard and customize reports based on what they want to see. With a holistic view of what the researcher intended to spend on when they requested funding, post-award teams can easily view spend down status, access reporting milestones, and refer to the original proposal for context as needed.
Sponsored Projects also links directly to Cayuse’s Fund Manager application, which consumes information directly from your ERP with no manual data entry.
Fund Manager
Once Fund Manager consumes data from your ERP, it displays that data back in research language, making “translation” for researchers a simple task. On the Funds tab, users can easily see direct, indirect, and total spend, as well as how much budget remains. Fund Manager gives post-award teams insight into the award, and pre-award teams insight into post-award spend.
Think of this tool as “online banking for researchers,” because it’s just that easy for them to log in, check the status of their account, and see what they have left to spend. Permissions settings ensure that everyone sees only what they need to see; administrators can have a bird’s-eye view across an entire portfolio, while researchers see only the awards that apply to them.
Conclusion
For research institutions to truly thrive, breaking down barriers within research administration is crucial. As projects evolve and become more complex, providing systems that offer clarity, transparency, and efficient budget management is imperative.
