ENNCLOUD’S Journey To Better Grant Making Thru Business Process Improvement

Post COVID-19 has brought unprecedented opportunities for grant funding in America.  Public, Private, and Non-Profit entities across the country have been tasked with spurring economic development, workforce development, infrastructure improvements, and building back our communities.  At the heart of this growth and revitalization movement are several unique entities:

1. Policy Makers – Those who idealize and distribute policies that frame how we will grow and how much funding will be allocated to achieve economic, workforce, infrastructure, and community development.
2. Grant Makers – Public, Private, and Non-Profit entities who are keepers of the funding sources and managers of grant administrative processes.
3. Grant Applicants – Idealist and Innovators in search of funding opportunities to fulfill the goals and objectives of Policy Makers by way of project submissions to grant opportunities.

In recent years, Policy Makers have begun to set more exacting standards in the form of accountability reporting for funding dispersed by Grant Makers and awarded to Grant Applicants.  The new table stakes for all entities in the grant process include reporting on economic impact, job creation and retention data, diversity data, and measurable equity across the constituencies served.  The day has come for increased qualification and quantification of policy-aligned project outcomes that are funded by traditional donors and citizens tax dollars.

Traditionally, the administrative processes designed to handle grant management range from complex highly customized software solutions to completely manual paper forms processed with fax machines and US Mail.  ENNCLOUD Technologies supports the grants management landscape with a Grant Advisory Service offering that is powered by technology but anchored in our human-centered services methodology.   We deliver modernization and simplification to the grants management process.

Delta Regional Authority (DRA), a regional federal agency responsible for awarding millions in tax-payer funding to public infrastructure, workforce development, and strategic planning grants, approached ENNCLOUD Technologies with a series of business challenges.   The agencies administrative grant operations were saddled with multiple legacy grant software solutions, layers of manual document processing steps, and no central repository for reporting across grant programs that could meet new accountability standards.

The agency defined successful business transformation by achieving the following objectives:

• Unification of grant operations into a single new role-based grants management portal; serving Policy Makers, Grant Applicants and DRA Grant Program Staff
• Completion of business process redesign for grant operations to include a growing remote workforce.
• Adding post-award management activities to actively funded grants and future programs to automate compliance reporting requirements.

ENNCLOUD met the challenge by using our proven human-centered approach to technology advisory services; Investigate, Impact, and Innovate.  INVESTIGATE started with LISTENING.  We focused on listening beyond the problems DRA presented in the sales cycle and discovering root cause grant operations challenges.  DRA communicated the need to replace a single legacy grant management software solution.  ENNCLOUD identified two additional grants management systems in use; a new SaaS subscription solution being used by remote team members unfamiliar with the legacy grant system, and another undocumented spreadsheet system developed through traditional office collaboration tools and file sharing (e.g., Excel, SharePoint, and Outlook).  Each of these operational systems carried fractions of grant program data required for reporting on the portfolio of grant funding sources and programs managed by DRA.  Further, the task of preserving and migrating historical data, attachments, and forms from multiple systems had not even been identified as a primary challenge or objective.  Once these root-cause challenges were discovered and communicated back to agency leadership, new properly aligned objectives could be scoped to meet expected business transformation objectives and outcomes.

ENNCLOUD Grants Advisory Services IMPACT consisted of rapid solution deployment using “off the shelf” industry-leading SaaS grant software that had the flexibility of customization.   We were able to account for business process changes like role-based security to accommodate dynamic staff assignments of grant program job duties, and grant application process modernization elements like:

• Conditional logic built into application questions, coupled with smart form design that helped simplify and expedite application completion.
• Revised scoring rubrics with refreshed evaluator and approval tasks that fulfilled a requirement for removing potential bias from the review and scoring processes.
• Secure portal login that uses 2-factor authentication, bringing the agency into technology compliance with ZERO-TRUST Secure Technology Framework for agencies handling federal resources

Technology solution delivery that includes an effective human-centered approach means keeping final objectives and outcomes at the forefront of system design and any needed customizations.  For the agency, this meant grant management process design had to answer another root-cause process challenge; The WH- Question Principle (Who, What, Where, When, Why).  Who is the audience for the product, service, or task?, What data is being collected?, Where will the data live throughout the process?, When is the data you expect to report on being collected?, and Why is the data needed (objectives alignment)?  Answering the WH- Question Principle provides the foundation for the final element of successful technology advisory service delivery – INNOVATION.

ENNCLOUD Technologies was able to use business process redesign and automation as a foundational element of Innovation at DRA.  Key grants management innovation came in the form of:

• Adding electronic form fill, and E-signature to a highly paper intensive grant management process
• Automated financial estimations and even formula-based calculations for grant budgetary elements and complex matching funds grant requirements where constituent audiences are typically non-technical Grant Applicants
• Updated scoring rubric for the grant evaluation process that removed demographic and biographical data from reviewers/evaluator tasks to reduce grant selection bias.
• Client and staff email notifications, deadline reminders, and automated approval routing to reduce staffing requirements and improve overall effectiveness of grants management.

This proven technology solution delivery approach ensured that DRA’s expected business outcome of meeting new federal accountability reporting requirements was met by the technology solution deployed.  As DRA continues its partnership with ENNCLOUD Technologies, the new grant management system has laid a foundation for launching additional innovation in the form of ad-hoc reporting engine using the new central reporting repository.  Customized reporting dashboard(s) for each staff level (Program Administration, Finance, Compliance, and Executive Leadership) created using simple business intelligence visualization tools link Microsoft Power BI.