While both stages are important, the pre-award stage is arguably more important for many organizations. If that’s true for you, pay extra care to whether the software you’re evaluating does all of the necessary tasks for a successful pre-award office.
Monitoring and tracking
Obviously, various types of monitoring and tracking are important during pre-award. While you can live without a few types of tracking or monitoring, others are absolutely vital. Monitoring capabilities that you’ll want to make absolutely certain your grant management software has include:
- Proposal type with the ability to understand new proposals
- Continuation proposals
- Competitive renewals
- Supplements and no-cost extensions
- Funding agencies and their necessary numbers
- Award types, including research Ro1, Title III, Training, and PPG
- Budget period dates, agency deadlines, project period dates, and submission dates
- Direct and indirect total costs, and cost sharing
- Principal and co-investigator amounts
Other important features
Monitoring and tracking aren’t the only important jobs of your grant management software. Many other features become absolutely vital if you are going to enjoy a successful pre-award process, such as:
- Compliance monitoring
- Effort reporting
- Proposal development
- Time reporting
Finding software that has every capability you need can be a challenge, but taking the time to do so is worth it. Software with high-quality features is also likely to be high quality in how long it lasts and how much trust you can put in the maker. So even if you have to shell out more upfront for better software, you’ll more than likely be saving yourself money in the long run, and you’ll enjoy a more successful awards process.
