Exceptional Functionality Comparison with Industry Best Practice Functionality
Grants Management System Out of the Box Functionality Comparison with Industry Specified Functionality Preparation Identification of goals of the grants program Definition of eligibility and process requirements Ability to support workflow of internal discussion and approval of objectives and scope of the program Ability to support workflow of internal discussion and approval of applicant eligibility, merit review criteria (in case of competitive Grants) and process business rules Preparation of grants program documentation Ability to support preparation, revision and approval of program plan documents * Allocation of budget Ability to support forecasting and approval of funds to be committed for the grants program. Notification Announcement/publication of grants program Reminders to potential applicants Intake of applications and relationship management Ability to prepare grants notice document and publish it on multiple media and official journals (such as the Official Journal of the European Union). Ability to prepare and notification to those who should apply. May include grantees whose previous grant is expiring, those who were rejected the previous cycle or other invitees. Design of application forms Ability to define form structure, filing data requirements and so on. Online self-service Capture of application Ability to offer individual and organization registration, grants search, preliminary application and final application form submission, revision of status of the application and so on, through the Web. Ability to assign an identity to the application, pre-assign to appropriate committee and/or program staff, create the application file, and include and count off a related preliminary application if there was one. External Process
Management and integration Ability to receive attachments that are allowed to come in, possibly from different sources, and associate them with the of attachments original application package. Ability to hold the application until sufficient content is received. Conversion of formats Printing or scanning paper (fax, mail, e-mail) Preliminary validation of application Inbound correspondence management Outbound correspondence management Ability to verify in real time if the application is directed to the correct program, identity of applicants, filing requirements and so on. Ability to manage incoming documents, such as preliminary applications, final applications, complaints, and requests for amendments, proposal withdrawals and resubmissions and so on. Ability to manage courtesy reminders, award notices, declines, withdrawals, reconsiderations and so on. Collaborative correspondence management Contact management Release of application information Ability to offer online forums where applicants can get advice. For example, some programs allow an application to be submitted as draft for comments before the actual application is submitted. Coaching should be provided as a service by program staff or may be done by organizations or individuals that have already received the same grants; thus, they can advise on the preparation of application and optimal usage of funds. Ability to automate applicant/grantee registration (individual, organization and consortium) and manage identity credentials (role, updates, authorization to apply for multiple grants and so on). Ability to make available to the public, on request, an application that results in an award except for privileged information or material that is personal, proprietary or otherwise exempt from disclosure under law. Evaluation Finalise eligibility assessment Ability to complete review of formal requirements of the application after real-time validation, such as entitlement of applicant, completeness of data, timeliness of submission, analysis of funds already received via previous or parallel programs and so on. Allocate/assign to staff Ability to identify and assign roles to program office staff members. This is necessary for competitive grants.
Allocate/assign to committees/panels Allocate/assign to external reviewers Ability to determine which committee members will act as reviewers, and in what capacity. Includes load balancing, negotiation, identifying conflicts and possibly self-selection by members. This is necessary for competitive grants. Ability to select internal and external reviewers not included in panels that have to evaluate the merit of the proposal. This is necessary for competitive grants. Provide access to review Ability to make application material available to the internal, committee and external reviewers that need to see it, material including access windows, views and so on. This is necessary for competitive grants. Review application Ability to read, research and create notes and comments for the application. This is necessary for competitive grants. Score application Collate evaluation score Meet and discuss evaluation Evaluation results approval Ability to use the defined evaluation criteria to score the application by creating ranking and recommendations. This is necessary for competitive grants. Ability to collect results of feedback on the merit of the proposal from internal and external reviewers. This is necessary for competitive grants. Ability to support adjudication meetings to evaluate each application. Typically involves comments by readers, discussion, voting for new scores, assigning factors that will be taken into consideration when adjustments are made to competition wide criteria. Organize logistics of site visits when this are used as part of a multipart adjudication. This is necessary for competitive grants. Ability for program officers to approve all collected feedback to support award or decline decision and create a ranking of individual and competitive grants. Prepare evaluation report Ability to create an evaluation report summarizing results and suggesting changes for the next cycles of evaluation Decision Ability to record the final decision to award or decline of grants funding. Announce grants awards Ability to notify grantees of award or decline decision and to publish results on the media when necessary. Appeal management Ability to support resubmission and reconsideration of the case if the applicant disagrees with a decline.
Negotiation and contracting Grants agreement negotiation Ability to support workflow of discussion of amount and nature of expenses to be reimbursed under the grants (direct and indirect, capital and operating), timeline of disbursements and reporting, inclusion of sub-grantees and so on. Negotiation results approval Ability for program officers to approve grants agreement and commit funds to individual grantees. Preparation of contract Ability to prepare grants agreement documents. Acceptance and signature of contract Ability to collect signature of grants agreement documents from program officers and grantees. Administration Individual grants amendments Ability to change management, time frame, budget of grants awarded to a single grantee or full withdrawal. Program amendments Ability to change management, time frame, budget of a grants program or full withdrawal. Periodic report intake Ability to intake quarterly or annual financial and operating reports about individual grants. Periodic report assessment Ability to analyse individual grants reports to evaluate compliance with program goals, budget, schedules and so on. Feed report into agency reporting Ability to input individual grants reports into the program and overall grant-making organization reporting. Submission of reports to external committees Ability to send periodic report to external committees that oversee the grantor operations. Validation of payments Ability to confirm disbursement after assessment of reports. Withdrawal of funds Ability to withdraw funds in case reports show lack of compliance. Payment profiling Ability to break down disbursements between operating and capital expenditure, direct and indirect costs, or other categories relevant for the program.
Initiate payment/refund Ability to request payment or reimbursement of funds, prepare paperwork, and confirm mechanism and date. Authorize payment/refund Ability to issue payment order and transfer of funds to appropriate account. Make payment/intake refund Ability for the treasurer to execute authorized payment/refund order. Final report Ability to assess financial and operating report once the grants cycle has run its course. Final reconciliation of funds Ability to calculate and account for unobligated funds, final payment or paybacks. Closure of fund release Ability to close the mechanism according to which payments and refunds were being done. Closure of grants agreement Ability to terminate contract between grantor and grantee. Common services across phases Case management Ability to create, manage and track case activities or claims relating to individual applicants and grantees. This includes cross-program information and the ability to link case events to process workflow. Workflow Ability to define business rules and roles along the life cycle of the grants program. Document and records management Ability to capture and store data from multiple sources and in multiple formats; to associate information with a particular case; to comply with retention policies; and to audit record usage. Data services Ability to display currency, dates, times. Ability to provide enterprise relationship diagrams showing layout of tables, fields and data entity relationships. Ability to provide XML interface to seamlessly update and exchange data and provide the capability of populating and producing reports. Data warehouse Ability to extract, transform and load large amounts of data. Analytics and reporting Ability to create disbursement reports (such as U.S. Federal Cash Transaction Reports), budget and outcome analyses, and so on.
Text search Ability to search against database values and documents attached to grants application forms. Security Integration services Ability to protect and encrypt data and manage grantees and grant making agencies' employees' authentication and levels of authorization. Ability to integrate with financial management systems to ensure reconciliation of payments and accounts. Integration with country specific systems, such as the U.S. Federal Government Grants.gov and the Research Councils U.K. Joint Electronic Submission (Je-S) platforms. *These s are partially compliant Notice: All the statements in this report represent F1 Solutions interpretation.
Contact Us Contact Information For more information please contact us! Gus Boman Director E: gus@f1solutions.com.au M: 0412 612 385 Zarthost Boman GM Applications Development E: zar@f1solutions.com.au M: 0407 179 830 Miles Hamilton-Green Client Engagement Executive E: milo@f1solutions.com.au M: 0419 301 854 F1 Solutions Building Level 3, 97 Northbourne Avenue Turner ACT 2612 T: 02 6245 7999 F: 02 6245 7900 W: www.f1solutions.com.au