Critical Capabilities for Grantor Management Software

Transcription

1 Industry Research Publication Date: 17 July 2009 ID Number: G Critical Capabilities for Grantor Management Software Massimiliano Claps The supply of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software for grantor management has grown in the past 10 years as a result of new vendors coming into the market, existing vendors that have merged and an increased interest from global software vendors. This research aims to support enterprise architects, application managers and sourcing managers who are considering COTS when replacing their legacy or paper-based grantor systems. Key Findings Vendors broadened capabilities to cover the entire grant life cycle, from new funding opportunity preparation and announcement, to application intake and review, to reporting and closeout. Grant management vendors developed their products by specializing in government domains, or products originated from the nonprofit foundations market. Therefore, functional capabilities such as online self-service, assignment to reviewers, budgeting and payments, and reporting vary among vendors. Specialized grant management vendors tend to be organizations of relatively small size, which affects their ability to scale products for very large users and service support to multiple customers. Recommendations Government grant-making agencies should: Verify the depth of product capabilities in key areas, such as application intake, configuration of new funding opportunities and reporting. Determine whether the vendor is able to provide out-of-the-box functionalities that comply with national legislation, such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act reporting guidelines, and where the gaps are. Complement product analysis with a solid vendor due diligence for example, to verify the number of people that the vendor can make available for on-site training and configuration, and its domain-specific expertise. Use this research as a starting point, but develop use cases that are specific to their organization for example, in terms of number of external reviewers, or type of documents that need to be included in the application, or key performance indicators for query and reporting. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although Gartner's research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 ANALYSIS Introduction Governments award large sums of money to other public-sector agencies, nonprofit institutions and for-profit enterprises in the form of grants (see "The Government Grants Management Domain: A Gartner Market Definition"). Traditionally, grant-making agencies have custom-built IT systems to support grant management, or, in some cases, they are still using paper-based processes. Mounting pressures exist to: Make processes more efficient. Make processes more transparent across the grant management life cycle; in particular, the stimulus packages that the U.S. federal government (see "ARRA: One More Good Reason to Modernize Local Governments' Grantee Management Tools") and other national governments are issuing put additional stress on reporting and audit processes of the grantor and grantees. Offer easier access to search and apply functionalities for grantees. Reduce the costs to maintain and upgrade legacy systems, which urge grantors to modernize those applications. Gartner has spoken about grant management application modernization with several grantmaking institutions at the federal and state level in North America, at the national level in Europe and with some of the Directorates Generals of the European Commission. Through those conversations, Gartner identified five macropaths to grant management application modernization that governments are undertaking: 1. Custom development: Some agencies have decided to build new custom solutions, based on a combination of ad hoc components developed on modern software platforms, such as Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and.net, off-the-shelf components, such as Adobe LiveCycle Forms, and Web-enabling parts of mainframebased applications logic and data. 2. Transfer: Gartner spoke to a North American agency that decided to acquire a solution developed by a peer agency. The originating agency would provide first-line support throughout the first year, and then transition responsibilities to the acquiring agency. 3. Shared services: Large agencies, or a consortium of agencies, especially within national and federal governments, are building new custom solutions and providing them (or some of their modules) to service-to-peer agencies. 4. Repurposing of ERP and CRM: Gartner spoke with a national government agency that decided to use Siebel CRM case management capabilities to satisfy core grant management business requirements, such as intake of applications, eligibility screening, and allocation to reviewers, and to fill the functional gaps in post-award administration through custom development. 5. Implementation of grant management COTS products: Global software vendors and niche software providers have developed grant management COTS products that are implemented (or being implemented) in several federal, state and local grant-making agencies. Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 2 of 18

3 Gartner recommends that government grant-making agencies evaluate their application acquisition options based on multiple criteria (see "When to Use Custom, Proprietary, Open- Source, or Community Source Software"), such as: Peculiarity of requirements Peculiarity of platforms Total cost of ownership Sourcing attitude Available skills Contractual, financial and political risks However, the objective of this research is not to analyze those alternatives. Instead, this research will help IT departments that consider COTS as their preferred option to screen products against the critical capabilities that are described below. Many of the capabilities discussed in this research could be of interest to nongovernment grantors, such as nonprofit foundations and higher education institutions, but readers should bear in mind that 90% of the end users Gartner talked to were governments. Product Class Definition Grant management systems provide government grant-making agencies the ability to automate the entire life cycle of a grant, from the pre-award phases, such as preparation of new grants funding opportunities and notification to potential applicants, to post-award phases, such as administration and closure of the award. Critical Capabilities Definition Grant programs differ by level of government, geography, award mechanism, administrative law regulating contracting with grantees, and so on. Nevertheless, six common macrophases can be identified for most programs: preparation, notification, intake of applications and relationship management, evaluation of applications, negotiations and contractual arrangements, and administration (see "The Government Grants Management Domain: A Gartner Market Definition"). Features and functions of COTS products are usually developed to meet business requirements across all six phases of the grant's life cycle. Gartner identified nine of those features and functions as being the most critical capabilities: Design of application forms: Ability to define the form structure, fields and validation for both budgetary and qualitative filing requirements. Online self-service: Ability to offer individuals and organizations functionalities for registration, grant search, preliminary application and final application form submission, revision of status of the application and so on, through the Web. Management and integration of attachments: Ability to receive attachments, possibly from different sources, and associate them with the original application package, and make them available to applicants, administrators and reviewers. Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 3 of 18

4 Assignment to reviewers: Ability to assign applications to internal staff, or external panels and single reviewers, to verify potential conflicts of interest of reviewers and to give access to all relevant application material. Application scoring: Ability to use defined evaluation criteria to score the application, create rankings, and provide comments and recommendations. Budgeting and payments: Ability to support forecasting and the appropriation of funds; to request payment or reimbursement of funds; to prepare paperwork, confirm mechanism and date to issue payment order and transfer of funds to appropriate accounts; and to calculate and account for unobligated funds, final payment or paybacks. These capabilities could be provided directly by the package or through realtime integration with accounting software. Reporting: Ability to analyze individual grants and overall programs to evaluate compliance with timeline, financial and programmatic objectives. Workflow: Ability to define business rules for tasks and roles of the grant program administrator, and internal and external reviewers, applicants' entitlement, applications' eligibility screening, review, peer reviewers' conflicts of interest and so on, along the entire life cycle of the grant program. Security: Ability to protect and encrypt data and manage grantees, government agencies' employees, and reviewers' authentication and levels of authorization. Use Cases Government grant-making agencies that evaluate and deploy grant management COTS products should consider various use cases to evaluate the functional capabilities of those systems. Gartner selected four primary use cases. The critical capabilities play a different role in supporting the various use cases. Table 1 provides weightings that each critical capability has for the various use cases; those weighing are to be intended as average across all potential government grantmaking institutions, but Gartner understands that there can be differences by type of program, such as grants supporting medical research vs. grants supporting economic development, and type of grants, such as block grants versus competitive grants: Preparation of a new grant opportunity: The program manager and staff use the system to identify the objectives of a new funding program and set up the requirements for the application, review and administration processes. The program manager must be able to configure new forms, workflows and tasks, preassign reviewers or panels, for example, based on their areas of expertise, and set up key performance indicators and forms for reporting. Flexibility and ease-of-use of task, roles and business rules, and security configuration will be of utmost importance. Applicants' submission: The applicants need to be able to easily search and find the grant opportunity, to use self-service application process and guidelines, to attach documents, to check the status of the application, to receive updates, and to negotiate parts of or the entire application if amendments are required. Program staff or external reviewer scoring: The program manager must be able to assign the application to reviewers, or create panels of reviewers. She or he must also be able to identify if some reviewers have conflicts of interest with a certain applicant (either the individual or the whole organization). Reviewers must be able to get access (preferably online) to all applications and related attachments, to provide quantitative and qualitative scoring throughout single or multiple rounds of review. The manager Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 4 of 18

5 must be able to collect all scores, perform final validation and assign a different weighting to the various scores for final approval. Workflow and security capabilities are necessary in this use case, because rules and roles need to be set and possibly tuned during the process. Post-award administration: Once the funds have been awarded to grantees, the grant program manager and her/his staff need to process expense sheets and reimbursement claims, disburse money, amend appropriations awarded to a single grantee or an entire program, and monitor financial and programmatic performance. Budgeting and payment capabilities are at the core of this use case to administer payments and check actual performance against that forecast in the budgeting phase. Workflow is important if tasks and role in the administration are to be redefined, or if subsequent rounds of review are necessary. Administrators also need to review attached documentation. Reporting is becoming the most important item as government agencies try to measure outputs and outcomes of programs. Table 1. Weighing for Critical Capabilities in Use Cases Critical Capability Overall Preparation of a New Grant Opportunity Applicants' Submission Program Staff or External Review Scoring Post-Award Administration Management and integration of attachments 5% 0% 20% 10% 5% Assignment to reviewers 10% 5% 0% 25% 10% Application scoring 10% 0% 0% 35% 10% Budgeting and payments 15% 20% 0% 0% 20% Reporting 15% 10% 0% 0% 30% Workflow 20% 30% 15% 10% 15% Security 10% 25% 15% 10% 10% Source: Gartner (July 2009) Inclusion Criteria Taking into account the relatively early stage of maturity of this market, the study included: Vendors of COTS grant management software for government grant-making institutions therefore, vendors that only address the private nonprofit foundation market were excluded. Software products that address the entire cycle of grant management from preparation of new funding opportunities to closeout of grant awards. Vendors that have at least one government customer that was using the grant management software at the end of 2008, globally. Based on these criteria, we included eight vendors in this evaluation: Agate Software, Altum, Compusearch, Dulles Technology Partners, Grantium, MTW Solutions, SAP and SmartSimple Software. For Altum, two products were analyzed (proposalcentral and Easygrants). Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 5 of 18

6 Critical Capabilities Rating Each product that meets our inclusion criteria has been evaluated against the nine critical capabilities, on a scale from 1.0 to 5.0 (see Table 2). The rating reflects the existing product capabilities. Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 6 of 18

7 Table 2. Product Rating on Critical Capabilities Critical Product Capabilities SAP: Grants Management for Grantor MTW Solutions: GMS Grantium: G3 Dulles Technology Partners: WebGrants Agate Software: IntelliGrants Compusearch: PRISM Smart Simple Software: GMS Altum: Easygrants Altum: proposal- Central Design of application forms Online self-service Management and integration of attachments Assignment to reviewers Application scoring Budgeting and payments Reporting Workflow Security Source: Gartner (July 2009) Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 7 of 18

8 Critical capabilities are attributes that differentiate products in a class in terms of their quality and performance. Gartner recommends that users consider critical capabilities important criteria for acquisition decisions. This methodology requires users to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products. Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative importance overall, as well as for specific product use cases. (The sum of weights across capabilities equals 100%.) Next, products are rated in terms of how well they achieve each of the critical capabilities. A score that summarizes how well they meet the critical capabilities overall, and for each use case, is then calculated for each product. Ratings and summary scores range from greater than 1.0 to 5.0: 1 = Poor: most or all the defined requirements not achieved 2 = Fair: some requirements are not achieved 3 = Good: meets requirements 4 = Excellent: meets or exceeds some requirements 5 = Outstanding: significantly exceeds requirements Ratings are the result of three sources of information: A questionnaire that each vendor responded to An online demo that each vendor provided Gartner interviews with at least two reference customers for each vendor To determine an overall score for each product in the use cases, the ratings in Table 2 are multiplied by the weightings shown in Table 1. These scores are shown in Table 3, which also provides our assessment of the viability of each product. Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 8 of 18

9 Table 3. Product Score in Use Cases Use Cases SAP: Grants Management for Grantor MTW Solutions: GMS Grantium: G3 Dulles Technology Partners: WebGrants Agate Software: IntelliGrants Compusearch: PRISM Smart Simple Software: GMS Altum: Easygrants Altum: proposal- Central Overall Preparation of a new grant opportunity Applicants' submission Program staff or external review scoring Post-award administration Product viability Good Fair Good Fair Good Good Fair Good Fair Source: Gartner (July 2009) Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 9 of 18

10 Product viability in Table 3 is our assessment of the vendor's strategy and its ability to enhance and support a product over its expected life cycle; it is not an evaluation of the vendor as a whole. Each product is rated on a five-point scale from poor to outstanding. Four major areas are considered: Strategy includes how a vendor's strategy for a particular product fits in relation to its other product lines, market direction and its business overall. Support includes the quality of technical and account support, and customer experiences for that product. Execution considers a vendor's structure and processes for sales, marketing, pricing and deal management. Investment considers the vendor's financial health and the likelihood of the individual business unit responsible for a product to continue investing in it. Each area is scored on a 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent) scale. Ratings of the four areas were summed up to define the summary scoring: Sum of four areas from 4 to 6 = Poor product viability Sum of four areas from 7 to 10 = Fair product viability Sum of four areas from 11 to 14 = Good product viability Sum of four areas from 15 to 17 = Excellent product viability Sum of four areas from 18 to 20 = Outstanding product viability Table 3 only provides a summary assessment of those four areas. Readers should look at the qualitative comments provided in the following section to better understand the vendor's ability to provide service support directly or through partners, the market segments they serve and the technical requirements. Product viability is distinct from the critical capability scores for each product. It is our assessment of the vendor's strategy and its ability to enhance and support a product over its expected life cycle. Vendors Agate Software Solution background: Agate Software first developed a grant management system in the mid-1990s. Since then, it has entirely focused its employees and R&D efforts on the Intelligrants product line. Customer base: Intelligrants (currently in its fifth release) is used by 28 government agencies, primarily at the state and regional level. Product characteristics: The implementation across various government domains, such as community and housing, transportation, criminal justice and education, proves the flexibility of Intelligrants' configuration capabilities. Intelligrants is releasing a new version that will improve the navigation interface for program officers and applicants for example, by creating a dedicated tab for reporting. Thus, it received a score of 4 for the online self-service capability. Gartner also spoke with agencies that considered purchasing Intelligrants, but decided not to, because of some gaps in the functionalities needed to handle complex external peer reviewer panels that are, for example, Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 10 of 18

11 Altum necessary for agencies that grant money to medical research centers. As a result, it received a 2.5 score for that critical capability. Users that should consider this product: North American state, regional and provincial government agencies that manage block grants programs should always consider Agate. However, the primary focus on U.S. state customers has prevented Agate from proving its product viability for other market segments. Service capabilities: Agate implements and supports all instances of Intelligrants. Technical requirements: Intelligrants is a.net-based product, which runs out of the box on Microsoft's operating system, database and application server platforms. Some out-of-the-box integration capabilities have been developed to interface with SAP ERP modules. However, the primary reliance on Microsoft's platform has been indicated as a challenge by some customers for example, when upgrades had to be pushed through previously working PDF documents that could not be opened or filled out anymore. Solution background: Altum is a $10 million COTS product vendor that has 70 employees. The vendor provides custom software development services to federal government departments, such as the National Institutes of Health. Altum's offerings include two product lines for grantor management: Easygrants and proposalcentral. Customer base: 75% of Altum's revenue is generated in the government sector. Its customer base includes 13 government agencies in the U.S. Altum has a good degree of expertise in health-related research grants. Product characteristics: Altum built its product portfolio through acquisitions. Easygrants and proposalcentral are two distinct products with different features. They are targeted at separate audiences: proposalcentral is a software-as-a-service solution that is being used by organizations that handle less than $25 million to $30 million of annual grant awards, or by larger organizations, but only to handle single grant programs with a limited life. proposalcentral's core capabilities are in online application management and external review management, while post-award management and reporting modules have only been built in the past three years. Customers that Gartner spoke with indicated that they would have needed some more flexibility to set up different levels of access authorization for employees Thus, it received a 2.5 score for its security capability. Easygrants is a more traditional grantor management solution that provides features and functions for the entire grant life cycle, which enables users to have a higher degree of configurability of forms, tasks, validations and so on. As a result, Easygrants received a higher score than proposalcentral for workflow capabilities. Both products have budgeting and payment functionalities limited to budget appropriations and rely mostly on custom-developed, batch integration with the ERP systems that Altum's customers are using thus, the relatively low scoring for that capability. Both products scored a 4 for the attachment management capability, because they provide a feature that enables organizations to collate all the attachments of any format into a single PDF. Altum does not foresee integrating the two products in the near term; it has only built a common reporting module. The reporting module is the same for Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 11 of 18

12 both products. As a result, we assigned the same score to the reporting critical capability. Users that should consider this product: proposalcentral should be considered mainly by medium-to-small organizations that require a solution that is easy to implement and has low management costs, since the application is hosted and managed by the vendor. Easygrants can be considered by larger organizations that require more configurability. However there are no very large organizations, such as U.S. federal government departments, that have completed the automation of the entire grant life cycle using this product. Only recently has Altum started to implement Easygrants for two U.S. federal agencies to handle American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) grant programs. Service capabilities: Altum provides implementation and support services directly through seven professionals dedicated to proposalcentral and 13 dedicated to Easygrants. Technical requirements: Easygrants and proposalcentral applications are developed on a Microsoft.NET platform and run on Microsoft's operating system and SQL server. Compusearch Solution background: Compusearch develops and markets the PRISM Suite, and provides support services to its public-sector clients. The PRISM Suite is focused on the automation of two macrobusiness processes specific to the U.S. federal government sector, which must comply with the mandated, regulatory-bound rules grants management and procurement management. Customer base: The PRISM Grants (currently in version 6.3) is fully dedicated to U.S. federal government agencies, and it is being used by six of them. Examples include NASA, USAID and the Small Business Administration. Product characteristics: Compusearch's focus on federal government grant business requirements drives the availability of the functional capabilities of PRISM. In fact, the product does not provide full capabilities in some areas (see Table 2), but provides interfaces to systems that already exist in the federal government to automate certain processes. For example, we scored design of application forms 1 because the solution does not provide it, but it interfaces with Grants.gov for online search and apply capabilities. We scored the online self-service capability a 2.5 because, besides interfacing with Grants.gov, Compusearch also provides an applicant relationship management access point through FedConnect. We scored budgeting and payment 2.5, because the solution provides only some capabilities for appropriating funds, but Compusearch has built real-time interfaces with the most common ERP packages used by the various departments for payments and fund reconciliation. Users that should consider this product: The focus on the federal government market positions PRISM as a primary grant management COTS provider for this segment, but limits its applicability and comparability with the other solutions described in this research for other jurisdictions. Service capabilities: Compusearch offers implementation, configuration and training services, but works also with system integrators, such as SRA and IBM, as a subcontractor. Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 12 of 18

13 Technical requirements: The product runs on multiple application servers and operating systems, but only on Oracle's database server. Dulles Technology Partners Solution background: Dulles Technology Partners (DTP) is a 10-person company focused entirely on grant management. Its WebGrants product is designed to support grant-making agencies, while the MyWebGrants subscription-based system is aimed at providing grant management software to grantees. Customer base: WebGrants (current version 3.1) is used by 13 government customers, including U.S. federal, state and local government agencies, and 13 higher education and private foundation grantors. The solution has been scaled to accommodate some relatively large customers at the local and state level in the U.S., such as State of Utah Department of Community and Leisure, and the entire State of Iowa (300 grants programs), where by June 2009, three pilots were completed and agencies started to go in full production. Product characteristics: The WebGrants user interface is extremely intuitive. Navigation is made easy by logically organized tabs for program officers and applicants/grantees. The most important improvement of the latest version of the product is the Form Creator module. This module allows end users of the system to change all forms in the system, such as a person's profile, funding opportunities, applications, review forms, grant forms, status reports, and closeout forms, as well as to create and modify business rules. Potential challenges are related to integration with external systems (packaged and legacy). The relatively small customer base drove DTP to develop mostly ad hoc interfaces thus the 2.5 score attributed to budgeting and payment capabilities. For example, the awards module enables users to match funding sources with appropriated budget; once approved, the claim can become a voucher, which is an electronic file that needs to be exported from WebGrants into the client's financial accounting system. Users that should consider this product: One federal department is implementing the system for a specific program, but the product is not yet in full production for any crossprogram federal grant management systems, nor with clients outside the U.S. WebGrants should be considered in particular by local and state government customers that want an easy-to-manage and affordable solution. Service capabilities: DTP can provide implementation, training and support services. However, DTP product development efforts are predicated on increasing the ease of use and ease of implementation of the platform to hand over responsibilities to customers to configure and manage the product since the early stages of implementation and use. The vendor has never worked with large system integrators. Technical requirements: WebGrants leverages open-source components extensively, such as Jasper for reporting capabilities. It runs out of the box on a JBoss application server and on the most common databases and operating systems. Grantium Solution background: Grantium is a 45-employee vendor headquartered in Canada. The G3 grantor management system is its sole product. Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 13 of 18

14 Customer base: G3 (current version is 2.8) is used or is being implemented in 13 government agencies in the U.S. and Canada, and in one government jurisdiction in Australia. Product characteristics: G3 provides capabilities across the entire grantor management life cycle. Some customers have implemented the end-to-end grant management capabilities, but most of them have started from front-end online grant search and application submission capabilities thus, it scored a 4 in this area. The G3 business intelligence solution is based on Business Objects and includes ad hoc reporting and dashboarding capabilities, as well as support for standard reports written in Crystal Reports. G3 workflow includes standard grant-making steps, which can be used in any order and as many times as necessary. Each step has a form type that is associated with it, which can be configured to meet the grant program's requirements. Users that should consider this product: G3 should be considered by clients of all sizes and for any type of grant program; however, deployment for very large organizations should take a phased approach on a program-by-program basis. Service capabilities: Grantium offers implementation, configuration and training services, but has also worked with system integrators, such as SRA, Deloitte, CGI and BearingPoint. Some customers have highlighted that implementation and postimplementation support can take longer than expected; however, they also indicated that the service capabilities have been improving over time. Recently, Grantium set up an agreement with CGI to offer Grantium's G3 Grants Recovery Act Management System (GRAMS), a solution with built-in ARRA compliance requirements via a hosted application at CGI's Federal Shared Service Center in Phoenix. Technical requirements: G3 is a Java-based product, which runs out-of-the-box on Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Linux operating systems, Oracle and Microsoft databases, and JBoss, Oracle and Sun application servers. MTW Solutions Solution background: MTW is a 25-person firm with experience in state government environmental quality and grant management consulting. In 1998, MTW's Grants Management System (GMS) was developed as a result of those customer engagements. Customer base: MTW GMS (current version is 3.5) is used by eight customers, all of them state departments of education. Six customers are using the packaged solution, while MTW developed a custom solution for the other two. Product characteristics: The strong focus on state education agencies enables MTW to provide prebuilt templates for education-specific programs. For example, the system accommodates two-tiered reviews one in county offices and one at the state level. The most important addition to MTW GMS v.3.5 was a data warehouse capability that enables end users to build queries and run reports, while previously customers had to ask MTW to extract data for them. The configuration designer does not directly handle security authorization and administration, but requires navigation to a different tool thus the 2.5. score for workflow capability and the 2.5 score for security capability. The new version provides more ease of configuration for end users, not only from a reporting point of view, but also for other capabilities, such as configuring outbound s and security authorization. Various modules, such as budget planning and program Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 14 of 18

15 SAP management, and application summary and scoring, require navigation across separate browser sessions, rather than tabs within the same session. Users that should consider this product: U.S. state departments of education will benefit from MTW specialization, which speeds up the implementation time and reduces costs. However, such a degree of specialization may make configuration for other government domains complex. Service capabilities: MTW takes care directly of implementation, training and support services. The vendor has never worked with system integrators. Technical requirements: MTW GMS is based on Microsoft's.NET platform. Thus, it runs primarily on Microsoft operating system and database tools, but some customers run it on Oracle database server. Solution background: SAP Grants Management for Grantor is based on SAP Business Suite 7. It uses the SAP CRM platform and interfaces with ERP for all fund management and financial execution capabilities. Customer base: SAP started to develop a dedicated solution for grantors in 2003, and the system is currently used or being implemented by 14 government agencies and one nonprofit organization in North and South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific. Product characteristics: The solution leverages the SAP CRM application with out-ofthe-box integration to ERP for funds management and financial execution using the SAP Public Sector Collection and Disbursement application. The standard SAP Grantor solution can also be extended outside traditional "Grantor" solutions to include marketing, campaign, contact and call center management, loans management, portfolio and resource management, physical (e.g., legal) document creation, financial planning, performance management, risk management, and segregation of duties control. SAP Grants Management for Grantor's biggest strength consists of deep financial and budget functionality, such as account assignment, budget control, and collection and disbursement management The Business Objects solutions are expected to add to reporting capabilities. As a result, these two critical capabilities received scores of 4. However, some agencies indicated that the definition of program-specific rules, such as payment profiling based on the type of expenses for low-volume high-value awards and the integration with legacy systems, took more time than expected. Rule engine capabilities were originally based on Haley software, which has been acquired by Oracle. SAP has started to upgrade some of its own rule engine capabilities to respond to customer needs; however, some processes, such as conflict of interest control of peer reviewers have not yet been implemented thus the 2.5 score for the workflow capability. SAP recently launched a new solution, based on SAP Business Objects portfolio, to support the management and reporting of economic stimulus funds. Users that should consider this product: Government grant-making agencies that have other SAP products already built into their enterprise architecture, can leverage existing skills for implementation and long-term support, and can integrate data, services and reporting would be the ones benefiting the most from the implementation of this product. Service capabilities: SAP offers implementation, configuration and training services. Among the vendors included in this study, SAP is also the one with the longest Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 15 of 18

16 experience and the most structured approach to collaborate with global system integrators, due to its long history of ERP and CRM implementations. Technical requirements: The solution runs out of the box on the most common operating systems and databases. SmartSimple Software Solution background: SmartSimple is a 20-employee software vendor, with approximately 200 customers, that develops an information management framework that is used to provide solutions in a variety of domains, such as case management, CRM, talent management, and research and grant management. SmartSimple GMS is the product name for the platform when configured to support grant management. Customer base: GMS is used by approximately 20 customers in Canada, the U.S. and Ireland. These include a mix of government agencies and private nonprofit foundations. Product characteristics: SmartSimple (current version is 8.1) is not a grant management specific product, but a highly configurable platform that enables users to set up workflow rules, roles and security authorizations for grant opportunity notification, application intake, review and administration. For example, Gartner spoke to a user that created fully adapting logic for online application. Fields show up for completion only if a business rule triggers them thus the 4 score for the workflow capability. However, the relatively little availability of out-of-the-box templates for grant-specific functionalities requires the intervention of staff with technical expertise in Java programming to support the business requirements of grant officers. SmartSimple set up a wiki ( that makes its product architecture and configuration information available to everyone. Approximately 50% of the government and nonprofit customers use the solution with a software-as-a-service model. Users that should consider this product: The solution has been scaled to accommodate some relatively large customers, such as the Science Foundation of Ireland and the Ontario Provincial Government Trillium Foundation, both arm's-length government agencies. The latter handles approximately 2,000 grants and 5,000 applications every year for a number of programs that amount to CDN$100 million; however, the product should be primarily considered by small-to-midsize government organizations that require an easy-to-manage and affordable solution. Service capabilities: SmartSimple provides most of the implementation and support services directly. It only works with one partner for some customer engagements. Gartner spoke with some customers that complained about the viability of some of SmartSimple's service capabilities, such as training sessions and on-site support. Customers indicated that SmartSimple personnel are very knowledgeable, but stretched very thin. Technical requirements: The typical architecture requires a Linux or Windows operating system, a MySQL database and a Tomcat application server. BOTTOM LINE The grants management COTS market for government grant-making agencies is entering an early mainstream phase for the North American market, but it can be considered still adolescent from a global perspective. Most vendors are niche players, dedicated to a specific market segment, in terms of level of government, or in terms of domain areas, such as education, or Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 16 of 18

17 community and housing. Therefore, government agencies that need to modernize their grant management applications can consider those vendors, but must clearly define use cases and business capability requirements to evaluate product offerings. Government agencies should further consider that the medium-to-small size of most of these vendors has, so far, limited their ability to work with large system integrators, and, in some cases, to make their product compatible out of the box with multiple operating systems, database servers and application servers. Therefore, the ability to interface with existing architectures is also a major critical evaluation factor. The critical capabilities Gartner has selected may not represent those most important for every government grant-making agency. Government CIOs and enterprise architects should use this analysis of critical capabilities as one of several sources of input about a product before making an acquisition decision. For example, if a jurisdiction has multiple departments that distribute grants, such as the European Commission across various Directorate Generals, and considers implementing an enterprisewide standard grants management system to be used by all departments, then it should consider additional capabilities, such as service-oriented architecture for reusability of services, and additional use cases, such as cross-agency reporting. RECOMMENDED READING "The Government Grants Management Domain: A Gartner Market Definition" "Case Study: Grants.gov Is a Step Toward Streamlining Grants in the U.S. Federal Government" Critical Capabilities Methodology Critical capabilities are attributes that differentiate products in a class in terms of their quality and performance. Gartner recommends that users consider the set of critical capabilities as some of the most important criteria for acquisition decisions. This methodology requires analysts to identify the critical capabilities for a class of products. Each capability is then weighted in terms of its relative importance overall, as well as for specific product use cases. Next, products are rated in terms of how well they achieve each of the critical capabilities. A score that summarizes how well they meet the critical capabilities overall, and for each use case, is then calculated for each product. Ratings and summary scores range from 1.0 to 5.0: 1 = Poor: most or all defined requirements are not achieved 2 = Fair: some requirements are not achieved 3 = Good: meets requirements 4 = Excellent: meets or exceeds some requirements 5 = Outstanding: significantly exceeds requirements Product viability is distinct from the critical capability scores for each product. It is our assessment of the vendor's strategy and its ability to enhance and support a product over its expected life cycle; it is not an evaluation of the vendor as a whole. Four major areas are considered: strategy, support, execution and investment. Strategy includes how a vendor's strategy for a particular product fits in relation to its other product lines, its market direction and its business overall. Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 17 of 18

18 Support includes the quality of technical and account support, as well as customer experiences for that product. Execution considers a vendor's structure and processes for sales, marketing, pricing and deal management. Investment considers the vendor's financial health and the likelihood of the individual business unit responsible for a product to continue investing in it. Each product is rated on a five-point scale from poor to outstanding for each of these four areas, and it is then assigned an overall product viability rating. The critical capabilities Gartner has selected do not represent all capabilities for any product and, therefore, may not represent those most important for a specific use situation or business objective. Clients should use a critical capabilities analysis as one of several sources of input about a product before making an acquisition decision. REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS Corporate Headquarters 56 Top Gallant Road Stamford, CT U.S.A European Headquarters Tamesis The Glanty Egham Surrey, TW20 9AW UNITED KINGDOM Asia/Pacific Headquarters Gartner Australasia Pty. Ltd. Level 9, 141 Walker Street North Sydney New South Wales 2060 AUSTRALIA Japan Headquarters Gartner Japan Ltd. Aobadai Hills, 6F 7-7, Aobadai, 4-chome Meguro-ku, Tokyo JAPAN Latin America Headquarters Gartner do Brazil Av. das Nações Unidas, andar World Trade Center São Paulo SP BRAZIL Publication Date: 17 July 2009/ID Number: G Page 18 of 18