Grant management software (GMS) is a vital tool to help your organization stay streamlined, efficient, and compliant throughout grant lifecycles. If you don’t have the right solution in place, it may be difficult to accomplish grant-related tasks. When selecting a GMS, it’s important that you fully understand the type of software you are buying, including the implementation timeline and costs.
Configurable Purpose-Built Grant Management Solutions
A purpose-built, standalone solution is designed specifically for grant management based on industry best practices. Key grant management features are built into the system and available out of the box.
Some of the many available features include:
- Configurable workflows, including automatic tasks and reminders
- Fund management
- Performance and budget tracking capabilities
- Research tools for identifying grant opportunities
- Subrecipient monitoring
- Time and Effort certification
- Configurable and ad hoc reporting
Purpose-built grant management solutions are designed to meet financial and programmatic reporting requirements without excessive costs or implementation timelines. Systems can be fully implemented in as short as six months.
Product updates and maintenance are included in the subscription price and rolled out to all customers en masse. This way, your technology is always equipped to support the latest compliance regulations and security requirements without additional expenses.
Many purpose-built solutions are also highly configurable, allowing organizations to update existing workflows and modules to meet their unique grant management needs via the user interface.
Custom-Built Grant Management Solutions
Custom solutions (and features) are built specifically for your organization either from the ground up or on top of an existing CRM, ERP or BPM platform.
Generally speaking, custom solutions are considered most by organizations that already have a strong CRM, ERP, or BPM system in place, and are looking to extend that platform’s capabilities into grant management. Another scenario is that an organization is managing very complex grant processes and desires a highly individualized software instance designed specifically for their needs.
While in-house built solutions can provide extreme customization capability, for the most part they are costly, time consuming, and resource intensive to implement. It can also be challenging for grant managers to translate their needs for their IT team or consultant who are unfamiliar with the intricacies of the grants process. The combination of resource drain, timeline and disconnect, may make it harder to justify this approach.
Why are these solutions typically more expensive?
- The system is being built from the ground up or extensive grants management features are being designed as an extension of a non-GMS system.
- Software developers must write or edit code whenever a change is needed (e.g., to build new workflows or reports).
- Internal resources and business process expertise must be leveraged to ensure customized systems are running smoothly and workflows are set up to meet grant compliance requirements.
- Custom solutions are built to fit your needs now, but not necessarily in the future. When your internal processes need to adjust to evolving federal regulations, additional time and money is needed to adapt the system accordingly. Standard maintenance and changes to the system come at a cost.
- The build-out of custom systems and modules is time-consuming, often taking up to two years before implementation is complete. This means the status quo that you desire to change, remains in place for the foreseeable future.
Which Approach is Best?
An ideal solution will depend on your organization’s grant management process complexity, existing technology stack, budget, and internal expertise.
Before making a purchasing decision, consider the following:
- Alignment: What features are available out-of-the-box, and which would need to be custom-built for our organization?
- Configurability: How different are our needs from those of other grant managers? Do we need a custom solution or will configuring a purpose-built system fit our needs?
- Scalability: How will this software scale as we grow? Can new features and users be added quickly, or would it require a new build?
- Adaptability: Will this solution be able to adapt to changing federal regulations and reporting requirements?
- Timeline: How quickly do we need to implement a new system? How long will it take to implement a custom system vs. a configurable solution?
- Costs: What is our budget? Can cost savings be achieved with an existing purpose-built product? Are there additional costs to be considered with either solution?
- Maintenance: How often is the product updated? Is maintenance, customer support, and hosting included in the cost of the solution or is it an added expense?
- Expertise: Are features built based on industry best practices and tested by others? Will our organization be the first to work out kinks? Does our IT department have the GMS expertise to build a custom solution? Does the vendor bring industry knowledge that goes beyond system set up to help with processes, implementation, and ongoing grant management success?
- Experience: For the purpose-built systems I’m considering, what comparable experience does the vendor have? What feedback would their customers give?
Now What?
To truly weigh your options, you’ll need to create your grant management system requirements list. Here’s a worksheet to help you.
Next, you’ll need to understand how to assess solution providers. Use this guide to evaluate your options.
It does not have to be difficult to get the support you need. Every day we help grant managers navigate this decision-making process. The best step to take is to schedule time to chat with one of our solutions experts so we can better understand your grant management needs and discuss how best to support them. Schedule a demo today!
