As research teams increasingly look to improve organizational resilience and keep projects on track despite an atmosphere of uncertainty, we’re highlighting the most effective strategies to help institutions stay flexible and primed for continued success.
Previously, we outlined The Three Pillars of Research Resilience—diversified funding, smart automation, and better tracking and reporting—and took a closer look at the first pillar: Exploring New Funding Opportunities in a Shifting Landscape. In this blog, we’ll focus on the second pillar: leveraging automation to improve workflows and save valuable time and resources across research and grant management lifecycles.
Manual Processes and Limited Resources
Despite continuing research industry trends towards increased workloads, limited resources, and a higher demand for research, an average 52% of research teams still rely on some degree of manual processes and homegrown systems to manage administrative tasks. Additionally, a majority of surveyed research professionals counted manual processes as the top reason for delays and unnecessarily slow workflows.
Manual and homegrown management systems are vulnerable to several pitfalls, including lost time and delayed processes, the potential to introduce errors, and the security risks that arise from managing physical storage and the disconnected digital storage. Even the best set-up homegrown systems require a significant investment from IT teams to maintain and update services.
Despite these risks, many institutions stick to their existing systems because switching to a new system is seen as too big a change or investment. However, implementing a reliable cloud-based management system with effective automated processes not only resolves the above issues with manual and homegrown systems, but also saves time and resources and significantly improves organizational resilience.
Automation vs AI
AI—specifically large language models (LLMs) and machine learning (ML) systems—often come to mind when discussing automation. For the purposes of this blog, it’s important to outline the differences between traditional automated software and LLMs or ML.
While LLMs and ML present exciting possibilities for technology and software, they are still relatively new and untested in certain professional settings. Put simply, the technology leverages large datasets to predict outcomes, using established patterns to respond to inputs. For example, a LLM customer support chatbot can respond to questions by referencing its dataset, producing the most likely response based on the data at hand. However, it is important to note that these systems can interpret this data incorrectly and often need human review to ensure accuracy.
Conversely, software automation has been a tried and tested feature in computing since the technology’s inception. The concept is simple: automation follows a set of predetermined rules to enact processes that would otherwise require manual input. As a low-level example, a calculator automates mathematical equations, always providing the same reliable output from a user’s input. In a slightly more complicated scenario, an automated form will check that all fields are entered correctly and flag any issues a user may have missed before the submission is fully processed.
While LLMs and ML may become more common in research and grant management as the technology progresses, traditional automation is currently less resource-intensive and more reliable when it comes to improving workflows and increasing resilience at your organizations.
Effective Automation Solutions
Now let’s take a look at some of the key areas where automation can help resolve the issues mentioned earlier in this article, particularly time and resource constraints, errors and inaccurate information, and security vulnerabilities.
Time and Resource Constraints
Manual and disconnected homegrown processes naturally introduce delays to research and grant lifecycles. Manual submissions and reviews take more time to complete, and research and administrative teams often spend more time than they would like hounding contributors for questions, revisions, and even initial submissions. Manual and disconnected data storage can also make finding the right files and information a time-consuming and frustrating process.
Effective automation—in conjunction with centralized, cloud-based management software—provides a very straightforward solution to time and resource limitations. Automated forms and workflows can ensure a user is referencing the most recent version of a file and simplify submissions and reviews by pre-filling information where needed, flagging potential errors, and providing alerts when users need to take action. This saves a significant amount of time spent on administrative tasks and can free teams to spend more time on essential tasks.
Errors and Inaccurate Information
As mentioned in the previous section, automation can save administrators and PIs time by flagging errors in submissions, preventing them from moving to the next step before the issue is resolved to avoid a lengthy resubmission process. However, the error reduction benefits go beyond time savings in the high-stakes world of research compliance.
Anyone working in research and grants needs to be aware of the compliance risks involved in their work. Failure to maintain compliance can result in grant revocations, fines, lawsuits, and significant damage to an organization’s reputation, but fast-changing regulations can introduce risks for even the most compliance-conscious research teams.
When used effectively, automation improves compliance by checking submissions and proposals against current regulations, from IACUC to COI, and flagging potential errors before they become non-compliance hazards. This not only saves time for PIs, administrators, and reviewers, but also gives them extra peace of mind that their work will be conducted safely and accurately according to relevant regulations.
Security Vulnerabilities
Finally, automation can help prevent security vulnerabilities common to manual and even homegrown systems. While digital files in homegrown systems are more safe than paper files, they can still be misfiled, misplaced, or inadvertently shared with individuals who should not have access. In a worst case scenario, bad actors can take advantage of these hazards to steal sensitive data or even extort organizations.
The automated workflows in vendor-provided administrative software tackle these security threats by ensuring that all your data is only sent to and accessible by those with appropriate clearance. No more misplaced files means no more unnecessary security risks for your organization.
Automating Across Grant and Research Lifecycles with Cayuse
The Cayuse Research Suite utilizes effective automation to keep your organization more resilient through time and resource savings, assured compliance, and the modern security measures today’s teams need.
With Award Management, Compliance Management, Vivarium Management, and Technology Transfer solutions covering the full research and grant management lifecycle, your team can say goodbye to manual and homegrown systems and embrace more effective automation:
- Eliminate manual data entry with automated preparation and data verification
- Enforce deadlines and meet regulations with system alerts and email notifications
- Reduce compliance risks with smart forms, real-time error validations, and pre-populated and auto-fill capabilities
- Automatically track training requirements at the personnel, species, and activity level
- Auto-approve disclosures that have no potential conflict of interest
- Automate vivarium facility service charges, electronic invoices, and recurring animal orders
