Research funding plays a critical role in driving innovation, advancing scientific discovery, and addressing some of society's most pressing challenges. Yet while research itself continues to evolve, many organisations still rely on outdated approaches to managing research grants.
Spreadsheets, email chains, disconnected databases, and generic software solutions remain surprisingly common across funding bodies, universities, and research institutes. These tools may have been sufficient in the past, but they struggle to support the growing complexity of today's grants landscape.
Effective research grants management is no longer simply about processing applications or tracking payments. It requires organisations to coordinate multiple stakeholders, manage ethics and compliance obligations, monitor project delivery, and demonstrate long-term impact — across every stage of the grant lifecycle, from pre-award through to acquittal.
The challenge for many organisations is that their technology has not kept pace with these demands.
The research funding landscape is far more complex than it was even a decade ago. Grant programs are larger and more diverse. Collaborative projects often involve multiple institutions, researchers, and external partners. Governments, foundations, and sponsors expect greater transparency and accountability. At the same time, researchers face growing administrative requirements, from ethics approvals to variations and progress reporting, that compete with their core research activities.
This growing complexity is reflected in the broader shift towards collaborative research ecosystems. OECD research on the global research ecosystem highlights that responsibility for research integrity, security, and oversight is distributed across many actors, national governments, funding agencies, universities, research institutions, and international organisations, rather than sitting with a single body. This places greater demands on funding organisations to coordinate programs, partnerships, and compliance across a growing network of participants.
Managing these relationships and processes effectively requires more than administrative efficiency. It requires a connected approach to grants management that supports the entire grant lifecycle — pre-award, award, and post-award.
However, many organisations still operate using a collection of systems that were never designed to work together. Some rely heavily on spreadsheets for tracking applications and awards. Others have implemented generic CRM platforms or legacy grant management software that only address part of the process. In many cases, critical information, including ethics sign-off, budget variations, and acquittal status, is scattered across multiple systems, making it difficult to maintain a complete picture of grants activity.
The result is often fragmented data, duplicated effort, and limited visibility.
When organisations think about modernising research grants management, they often focus on operational efficiency. Reducing manual work is certainly valuable, but the true cost of disconnected systems goes much deeper. When applications, peer review, ethics approvals, financial data, and acquittal reporting are stored in separate systems, every stakeholder experiences friction.
Grants managers spend time reconciling information from multiple sources. Researchers repeatedly enter the same data into different platforms. Institutions struggle to gain oversight of active grant portfolios. Sponsors and funding providers face challenges when attempting to measure outcomes and demonstrate impact.
These inefficiencies accumulate over time. More importantly, disconnected systems create blind spots. Organisations may struggle to answer seemingly simple questions:
Without reliable, connected data, these questions become difficult to answer with confidence. This affects program impact and stakeholder reporting, which in turn affects the future of the program.
One of the most common misconceptions about research grants management is that it primarily serves funding organisations. In reality, every participant in the research ecosystem is affected by the systems used to manage grants.
Funding organisations are under increasing pressure to manage grant programs efficiently while demonstrating accountability. They need to oversee application and peer review processes, manage awards and contracts, monitor progress, track acquittal, and report on outcomes. When information is fragmented across multiple systems, gaining a clear understanding of program performance becomes significantly more difficult.
Modern research grants management should provide funders with real-time visibility across the entire grant lifecycle, from application through to acquittal, enabling faster decisions and more effective program management.
The research management fund lifecycle
Researchers often experience the administrative burden created by disconnected systems more directly than anyone else. Many are required to maintain profiles across multiple funding portals, repeatedly submit similar information, navigate ethics and compliance sign-off, and manage reporting obligations through a variety of platforms. While these processes may appear manageable individually, they create a significant cumulative burden.
Every hour spent navigating administrative complexity is an hour not spent conducting research, mentoring students, publishing findings, or pursuing innovation. The scale of this burden can be substantial. An Australian study of NHMRC Project Grant applications found that preparing a new proposal required an average of 38 working days of researcher time, while resubmissions required 28 working days — an estimated 550 working years of researcher time spent preparing applications in a single funding round.
Improving the researcher experience is not simply a convenience. It is an opportunity to maximise the value generated by every grant dollar.
Universities, hospitals, and research institutes occupy a unique position within the research ecosystem. They are responsible for supporting researchers, ensuring compliance with funder and ethics requirements, managing resources, and maintaining oversight of funded projects, including variations, extensions, and acquittal. Yet many institutions struggle to obtain a complete view of their grants activity.
When data is distributed across departments, systems, and external platforms, institutions face challenges forecasting resources, managing compliance, and understanding portfolio performance. As research activity becomes increasingly collaborative, and as frameworks like the Australian Universities Accord push for greater accountability across the sector, institutions are expected to manage relationships with funders, researchers, external partners, and regulatory bodies simultaneously.
Effective research grants management requires a central source of truth that enables institutions to make more informed decisions, backed by a purpose-built system rather than a patchwork of spreadsheets and portals.
Whether funding originates from governments, charitable foundations, industry partners, or private donors, sponsors increasingly expect evidence that their investments are generating meaningful outcomes. This reflects a broader shift towards outcome-based funding and accountability. Funding organisations are increasingly required to demonstrate not only how funds were allocated, but also the scientific, economic, and societal value generated through those investments. Reliable portfolio-level data is becoming essential for measuring impact and informing future funding decisions (source: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2022/06/integrity-and-security-in-the-global-research-ecosystem_2bd8511d.html).
Sponsors want to understand how funding contributes to research outputs, collaborations, innovation, and long-term societal impact. They need access to reliable, portfolio-level information that supports strategic decision-making and demonstrates accountability, something disconnected systems often make difficult to achieve.
The most effective organisations are moving beyond traditional grant administration towards a more connected model of grants management. Rather than treating funding as a series of isolated transactions, they view it as a continuous lifecycle, pre-award, award, and post-award, that connects multiple stakeholders and processes.
A modern research grants management platform should support:
More importantly, these capabilities should operate within a single connected environment.
When funders, researchers, institutions, reviewers, and sponsors work from a shared source of information, organisations can eliminate duplication, improve collaboration, and gain greater confidence in their data. The result is not simply improved efficiency. It is improved decision-making.
Many organisations are already on a journey towards more modern grants management practices. Typically, this progression follows four stages.
Processes are managed primarily through spreadsheets, email, and manually maintained records. While this approach may work for smaller programs, it becomes increasingly difficult to scale and introduces significant operational risk.
Organisations adopt software tools to support specific functions, but information remains spread across multiple systems. Although some processes become more efficient, visibility and integration challenges remain.
Purpose-built grants management solutions centralise workflows, track compliance and acquittal, improve reporting, and reduce administrative effort. Organisations gain stronger oversight and more consistent processes.
At the most advanced stage, technology supports the entire research ecosystem. Funders, researchers, institutions, reviewers, and sponsors interact through a shared platform that provides real-time visibility, streamlined collaboration, and meaningful impact measurement across the full grant lifecycle.
This is where organisations begin to unlock the full strategic value of their grants management function.
Learn more about Tactiv - the purpose-built all-in-one solution to take your funding programs to the next level
The future of research grants management is not simply about automating administrative processes. It is about creating connected ecosystems that enable better funding decisions, reduce administrative burden, improve transparency, and ultimately increase research impact.
As grant programs continue to grow in complexity, organisations that rely on spreadsheets, disconnected systems, or generic software will face increasing challenges. Those that invest in modern, purpose-built research grants management platforms will be better positioned to support researchers, manage funding effectively, and demonstrate the value of every grant they administer.
The question is no longer whether grants management should be digital. The question is whether your technology is helping you administer grants, or helping you maximise their impact.
Want to learn more or discuss your situation? Do not hesitate to contact us.