Grants Management for CA Clarity PPM gives you the confidence to choose the RIGHT applicants, make the RIGHT decisions, award the RIGHT funds, and to

Transcription

1 SOLUTION BRIEF: Grants Management for CA Clarity PPM March 2011 Can you manage the lifecycle of grants, reduce unwanted paperwork, and track the performance of awarded funds? you can

2 Grants Management for CA Clarity PPM gives you the confidence to choose the RIGHT applicants, make the RIGHT decisions, award the RIGHT funds, and to meet the RIGHT objectives. 2

3 executive summary Challenge Deciding which applicant is the most compelling recipient of federal grants is no easy task. From streamlining the grants submission process, to making the right decisions on funds performance, to providing oversight and transparency to meet the administration s mandates, the grant approval process can be difficult when the data is incomplete or inaccurate, requirements are not well defined, and the performance status resides in disparate systems, such as spreadsheets or s. How can your agency decide which programs are meeting stated objectives and should continue to receive funding and which ones need to be canceled? In the present environment, an outdated, manual approach to managing grants is not a valid option for most agencies. Opportunity The Grants Management for CA Clarity PPM helps your agency manage the entire lifecycle of the grants process proving oversight with a central decision engine. The Grants Management Solution offers a simple, end-to-end solution for managing: All applicants All awards All funds All performance oversight mandates. Benefits With Grants Management for CA Clarity PPM, you can: Ease submissions for applicants Systematically review and approve grants Expedite awards and funds distribution Monitor and report program outcomes, milestones, and resources Gain oversight of program performance 3

4 Section 1: Challenge The need to manage grants Today s government agencies, like yours, face a complex, multifaceted challenge. Is your submission process manual and time-consuming? How can your agency decide which programs to fund? Are approved programs meeting stated objectives and are you able to determine which should continue to receive funding and which ones need to be canceled? Not only do you need to choose the most worthy applicant to receive funding, but you must also enable that each program meets requirements. Additionally you need an easy way to report the health of programs in your portfolio to enable results with oversight. Your team must make decisions at every phase of the lifecycle including how to handle unused funds, when to cancel underperforming projects, and how to streamline transparency requirements of the administration. And there s an added caveat any solution designed to accomplish these varied tasks must be rolled out quickly and cost-effectively, agency-wide, and be easy for non-technical users to master. In the present environment, an outdated, manual approach to managing grants is not a valid option for most agencies. Overwhelming volumes of applicants At any given time, you could face hundreds to thousands of potential applicants all vying for grant funding. Are applications coming into your agency through multiple, disparate systems? How do you compile and compare all applicants and choose the most compelling? And once you decide which submissions will receive funds, how do you systematically manage the award process? These are just a few questions that make a manual submission process untenable. Poorly defined program requirements Often program objectives are vague with poorly defined requirements. This makes it difficult to measure program results and determine that performance is on track and funds are being utilized properly. Are program milestones set in advance of awarding funds? Can you assess the consumption of funds against objectives? Can you make decisions to continue or kill a program based on facts and results? You would need a non-technical means of capturing requirements by program. Incomplete or inaccurate data Frequently, program data is managed in disparate systems such as spreadsheets or and is either incomplete or inaccurate. This makes your agency vulnerable to over awarding funds or underperforming results. At a time when every cent counts, it is essential to maintain a real-time view of project health and fund performance across the agency s portfolio. Lack of transparency for programs Whether you must comply with reporting mandates for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) or other transparency requests, you must have access to various levels of detail for every program. How can you compare funds performance across the agency? How do you decide how to best utilize unused funds or risk losing future funding? Are you alerted when performance measurements fail to meet standards? Can you prevent overpayment and mitigate risks for fact-based decisions? How do you manage critical timelines? Manual data gathering and inconsistent reporting processes are no longer an option. 4

5 Section 2: Opportunity Manage results throughout the lifecycle of grants Grants Management for CA Clarity PPM helps your agency manage the entire lifecycle of the grants process proving oversight with a central decision engine and offering a simple, end-to-end solution for managing applicants, awards, funds and performance oversight mandates. Whether you are a chief financial officer, a grants manager, or a program manager, this solution includes capabilities that specifically address your unique needs, yet integrate information in one central solution for executive oversight and transparency. The Decision Engine for Grant Performance Oversight Grants Management for CA Clarity gives your agency the ability to make decisions at key phases of the lifecycle including: Apply: collect, categorize, rank, and prioritize incoming submittals in a single location based on merits, eligibility, and program goals. Review: understand program requirements, resources, and milestones during the review phase. Award: automate application approvals and awards via workflow and integrate grants to financial systems for funds distribution. Monitor: leverage out-of-the-box reports and create tailored, real-time dashboards to streamline program oversight and decision making. Figure A Drive results through the lifecycle of grants. 5

6 Available as an add-on to CA Clarity PPM, the Grants Management solution includes: Grants Opportunity Center: a central forum for the application and award phase of the grants lifecycle including what if scenarios to assess the impact of attaining different levels of funding, from multiple sources and grant types. Online application: with Adobe LiveCycle Forms ES2 using customizable forms and definable workflows. Grants Repository: central storage for resources, tasks, and milestones mapped to individual grants for the review phase of the grants lifecycle. Grants Management Dashboards: single view for grantees to monitor and review performance, financial details, contributions and allocations across multiple funding rounds and sources. Technical prerequisites include: OS Support: Linux, UNIX AIX, Microsoft Windows Source Database Support: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or higher, Oracle Server 10.2 or higher CA Clarity PPM version 12 or higher or CA Clarity PPM On Demand Language: English Make Better Decisions. In the past, things were just siloed into paper across the department. It s great that we are able to see our data in one place and have higher-quality information to make better management decisions. Carlo Govia, First Deputy Commissioner and Chief Financial Officer, Chicago Department of Public Health 6

7 Section 3: Benefits The confidence to decide Grants Management for CA Clarity gives you the confidence to choose the RIGHT applicants, make the RIGHT decisions, award the RIGHT funds, and to meet the RIGHT objectives. With CA Technologies, you can: Ease submissions for applicants Systematically review and approve grants Expedite awards and funds distribution Monitor and report program outcomes, milestones, and resources Gain oversight of program performance Section 4: The CA Technologies advantage CA Technologies solutions include a broad range of integrated applications from one of the industry s most comprehensive enterprise IT management portfolios. You can choose CA Clarity On Demand to help you lower your IT costs and complexity with pay-as-you-go subscription pricing and greatly reduced infrastructure requirements. Available anywhere, our solutions are secure, rapidly scalable, and supported by our world-class facilities and professionals. Only CA Technologies offers the unique ability to evolve with the needs of your agency, throughout the entire lifecycle of managing grants. Section 5: Next steps Having a solution that helps you to systematically manage the entire lifecycle of grants is critical today. Contact your CA Technologies representative to help you: Eliminate outdated paper-based process with a single system for capturing grant submissions Reduce the risk of wasted grant monies by tracking and controlling the consumption of funds Increase transparency and accountability with automated reports and real-time dashboards. For more information on how solutions from CA Technologies can give you the confidence to decide, please visit: ca.com/us/products/industry-solutions/public-sector.aspx 7

8 CA Technologies is an IT management software and solutions company with expertise across all IT environments from mainframe and distributed, to virtual and cloud. CA Technologies manages and secures IT environments and enables customers to deliver more flexible IT services. CA Technologies innovative products and services provide the insight and control essential for IT organizations to power business agility. The majority of the Global Fortune 500 rely on CA Technologies to manage their evolving IT ecosystems. For additional information, visit CA Technologies at ca.com. Copyright 2011 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. CA assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the information. To the extent permitted by applicable law, CA provides this document as is without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. In no event will CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill, or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised in advance of the possibility of such damages CS0967_0311