What are the benefits of grants management software?
Objectives
The primary objectives of implementing grants management software for most organisations are as follows:
- Efficiency improvement
Streamline grant management processes to reduce manual effort and improve overall efficiency. Less time spent on administrative processes, means that you can spend more time on complex tasks that have a direct impact on results. - Data accuracy
Enhance accuracy and reliability of grant-related information by eliminating manual errors. Reliable grant-related data lays the foundation for better and faster decision-making and continuous improvement, ultimately contributing to your outcomes in a positive way. - Workflow integration
Integrate grant-related workflows into a single, cohesive system, eliminating the need to work across different tools. Connecting different systems and data sources increases efficiency and quality of your processes, boosting your outcomes. - Transparency and reporting
Facilitate transparent and seamless reporting, providing stakeholders with accurate and timely information on grant activities. This gives you, internal and external stakeholders rich insights. This data is needed to make the right decisions regarding for example process improvements or future funding.
Key benefits
Time savings
By automating repetitive tasks, you reduce the time spent on manual data entry and administrative processes. This leaves you with more time to focus on things that actually matter and help your bottom line. For example, you can spend more time on improving the performance indicators you measure, in order to enhance the impact on communities.
Accuracy and consistency
When you have manual processes in place or work with disparate systems an data in multiple places, the chance of errors or incorrect data increases. Minimising errors by automating tasks and processes significantly improves the effectiveness of your work. Ensuring data accuracy and consistency across the grant management lifecycle due to the entire process being managed in one central place enhances the quality of your work, future grant activities and outcomes for beneficiaries.
Streamlined workflows
Consolidating grant management tasks into a unified system, eliminates the need to work across multiple platforms and improving overall workflow efficiency. This can be a complete game-changer, as it ensures easy collaboration to bring together perspectives and increase the overall quality of the work. Additionally, workflows simplify, speed up and improve the process of various aspects of grant management, such as contract management and the assessment process. Try Enquire’s workflows here
Compliance assurance
As regulations continue to change, your processes need to adapt as well in a timely manner. Grants management software helps you ensure compliance with regulations and grant requirements by leveraging built-in compliance tracking and reporting features. The ability to self-configure the system contributes to stay compliant in a responsive way as well.
Reporting capabilities
Managing the entire grant lifecycle in one central space ensures accessibility to data. Built-in reporting tools allow you to organise this information, linking to set performance indicators and forecasted outcomes. The ability to generate comprehensive and real-time reports provides valuable insights for decision-making and stakeholder communication. Depending on the grants management software advanced reports enable you to slice and dice information exactly to your needs. Advanced reporting capabilities like the Enquire Reporting Warehouse form the basis of dashboards and visualisations, reporting across entire programs, rounds and projects and linking results to costs in a structured and automated way.
Enhanced collaboration
One centralised platform with secure accessibility from anywhere facilitates collaboration among team members, stakeholders, and applicants. An external client portal improves the communication between external parties and the grants team using workflows for application amendments, approval processes and assessment steps.
Data security
By implementing a robust grants management system, you’ll have everything related to your grant management in one place. A secure and ideally cloud-based system like this improves the security of grant-related data, decreases the risk of data breaches and reduces the loss of data.
What are the costs of grants management software?
Implementing a grants management system brings with it costs. How high these are and what it included in this depends to the vendor or system of choice. Generally, the expense of implementing an end-to-end grants management system consist of a range of factors.
Costs
Implementation fee
An end-to-end grant management system is rarely a complete out-of-the-box solution, as it has to be tailored to your process. In order to configure the system to your organisational requirements, initial configuration will need to occur. This is often captured in the implementation fee. This expense depends on the amount and size of your programs, the complexity of your process and other organisational requirements.
Recurring monthly/annually SaaS costs for using the system
This can be based on the amount of grant money administered, per user, or per published round. The Enquire pricing is user-based, with two types of licences, charged on a monthly basis. Find out more about Tactiv’s pricing here.
At Tactiv, we believe in transparent cost models and typically operate with a simple implementation fee schedule and annual SaaS costs. Where other vendors might charge for things like configuration, training or support, at Tactiv this is all included in the implementation and SaaS cost.
Change management
As with all changes related to digital transformation, the cost of change management is to be factored in as well when you decide to implement a grants management system. When managed well, a large part of this will be handled during the implementation. During Enquire’s implementation we provide you and your team with training and resources. This ensures a smooth transition into your new way of managing grants. Additionally, within the organisation, key users will be identified to act as super users and as trainers for the broader team.
➔ More about how Tactiv handles change management to optimise the adoption of grants management software Enquire
So, is grants management software worth it?
We absolutely believe so. Whether you have no system in place and handle the process manually in disparate, ineffective systems or you want to take your grant management to the next level, gain more insights and make more impact – it provides tremendous value. To get a better understanding of the effect grants management software can have on your organisation, it’s helpful to go through a needs assessment. In doing so you compare your current and future process to make a accurate estimate of return of investment. This is the basis of your business case.
Assess the negative impact of your current process
Conducting a needs assessment reveals the negative impact of current manual and fragmented grant management processes. These hinderances to your ability to efficiently manage grants identify your needs. A common list of needs include:
- A unified system to consolidate grant-related activities.
- Automated workflows to reduce manual intervention.
- Enhanced reporting capabilities for better decision-making.
- Improved collaboration among team members and stakeholders.
Identify improvements compared to current processes
Comparing between the current manual and outdated processes and modern grants management software, you can expect significant improvements to the efficiency, quality and outcomes of your grant programs.
Time savings
A unified system connects and streamlines the end-to-end processes of your grants management, reducing the time you spend on grant activities. Automations and improved collaboration through workflows add to the time savings, making the entire process significantly more time efficient. Time savings translate to cost savings, that either can have a positive effect to the financial bottom line or can be spent in more value-adding areas.
Accuracy
Handling your grants management process in a streamlined way, using automations and workflows will significantly increase the accuracy of your data. This in turn provides you with information that you can rely on, enabling you to make better decisions for more impactful and high-quality outcomes.
Insights
One central space with all your grant data allows reporting tools to utilise, aggregate and report on this information, while being able to link it to performance indicators, costs and outcomes. Depending on the tool, it gives you an incredible insight into your grants management and allows you to continuously improve to increase impact on your beneficiaries. Additionally, it allows you to show this impact to stakeholders as well increasing the ability to ensure future funding to continue your work.
Return on investment (ROI)
Anticipated benefits from the implementation of grants management software include time savings, reduced errors, data accuracy and improved reporting and insights. These are expected to result in a positive ROI within roughly 1 to 2 years. This is an indication, as it depends on the complexity and therefore the initial implementation costs of your programs, the choice of vendor and your current process.
Additionally, implementing grants management software allows you to be more flexible in terms of compliance, up- or downscaling in the size of your programs, changed circumstances in your application and assessment process. Additionally, it makes your process more responsive. This is difficult to translate to financials, but definitely add value to maintain, sustain and ensure running high quality grant management programs.
➔ Do you know the value of grants management systems, but need help convincing your stakeholders? Contact us for help building a business case.
Next steps to take
Are you convinced that grants management software is worth it and will add value to the impact you make? Then these are the next steps:
System selection
Identify and select a suitable grants management solution vendor based on organisational requirements. Do you need help? Read this guide.
Implementation
Your vendor will help you design an implementation plan based on your process. You will have the ability to test and gradually expand to full implementation. When implementing Enquire, well take a step-by-step approach to ensure a smooth transition to the new system.
Data migration
Define what data you would like to migrate from your current system or manual process. By migrating existing grant-related data to the new system, you’re ensuring data integrity and continuity. Utilising a clear, structured plan to manage data migration is important for your piece of mind.
System adoption
The adoption of a modern grant management system is crucial to overcome inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and challenges associated with the current manual and outdated processes. A grants system will address these immediate needs. On top of that it also provides a scalable and efficient solution for future grant management requirements.
Given the fast-changing market conditions and external requirements, the costs of acquiring and implementing a grant management system will be surpassed by the business value a grant management system provides within short timeframes. A sustainable solution for effective grant management for impactful long term results, grant management software is the way forward.
Get a free demo of Enquire Grant Management Software now.
