Grant management software or an in-house solution?

Do you want to maximize your funding efforts? There are a lot of possibilities out there for you, but implementing a grant management system is one of the most cost-effective options. It can also save you a lot of time with more automation!

Another option is to build an in-house solution. However, this can cause a lot more problems than it’s worth. Sometimes team members struggle to get the hang of it as they won’t be focusing on a single task. It is also a lot more difficult and time-consuming to implement than outsourcing a solution. When working with a software provider, you benefit from a team of experts with fresh perspectives, new ideas and creative solutions.

In this article, we’ll investigate the differences between implementing a grant management software solution and an in-house solution to find the best solution for you and your team.

Benefits of a software solution

1. Grant management from call for applications to project close

With a software solution, you can take care of all aspects of grant management on one platform with ease. No need to spend hours and hours developing different systems for candidate applications, application filtering, application rejection and selection, and contacting the candidates. Thanks to available and established solutions, you can save time by doing all of this in the one place, no development involved. 

2. Team management all in the one place

We all know that team management is a stressful task. Trying to assign tasks, contact your team, align on projects and coordinate calendars can be an absolute nightmare without a proper system in place. Manual processes or trying to develop an in-house solution can leave your IT and management teams tearing their hair out. Thankfully, with a software solution, you can do all of this on one platform. No need to spend hours trying to coordinate team members and projects when you can streamline this process with technology!

3. Time-saving and cost-effective

Saving time and money is paramount to surviving today’s economy. Wasting your organization’s time and resources, such as gifted employees or investments, on systems and processes that are not efficient can be incredibly frustrating. It makes sense, in this case, to invest in software to be able to automate this process for you. Although the initial investment may be more than an in-house solution, it will surely save your organization a substantial amount in the long run.

4. Scalability

Manual processes and in-house solutions are all well and good until you need to scale up your projects. Oftentimes, it is a time consuming and frustrating process to maintain your solution while your project grows, especially if aspects of that project take place across different systems (e.g. Excel for budgets, IM for communication, etc.). Adopting a software solution eliminates this problem. The system grows and adapts as your projects do. 

5. Automated filtering

Once of the most painstaking processes in revising applications is going through each individual application and looking for the perfect fit. With a software solution, you can select and score criteria that is most important to you, allowing you to automatically reject and select projects and applications that best suit your organization. 

6. Save and export data how you like

With an in-house application, often you are limited in reporting as the data is unorganized and only exportable in Excel. By adopting a software solution, you have the option to organize and export this data in any form you’d like, such as Excel, CVS, Word Documents, graphs, and charts to name a few. 

7. GDPR compliance

Grant managers are increasingly faced with the challenge of remaining compliant with GDPR laws. With the right software system, there is no need to worry about data not being stored and backed up in accordance with GDPR. 

How can Optimy help you?

With Optimy, you can be assured that all of the activities mentioned above are encompassed on the one, singular platform. On our platform, you can:

• Manage all aspects of the grant management process, from the call to apply all the way to notifying candidates whether or not they were successful.
• Manage your team’s tasks, budget, calendar, and so much more. 
• Keep in touch with applicants and team members globally, all on the same platform. 
• Save time and resources by centralizing all your tasks and data, automating workflows and creating easily exportable reports. 
• Scale your projects with ease as they grow.
• Automatically filter applications with pre-determined and scored criteria and automatically respond to applicants.
• Be assured that your data is safe, secure, backed up, and GDPR compliant on our cloud-based system, which is monitored 24/7. 

Interested to find out more about how Optimy could work for you? Get in touch with us today or request a demo!

Not sure how changing from manual processes or in-house solutions to Optimy will benefit your organization? Check out this article from Capital Power in Canada and see how they saved time and resources by adopting the Optimy tool!