Research Administration Platform

The Vendor is required to provide for an Electronic Research Administration Platform (eRAP).
- The platform will manage complex research awards end-to-end, including proposal development and submission, negotiation, award setup, compliance tracking, sub award management, reporting, and closeout.
- The solution must meet federal award requirements, accessibility standards, State laws, cloud security (FedRAMP), AI compliance, and institutional policies.
- requires that the eRAP solution includes a comprehensive suite of research administration and compliance modules. These modules must operate as an integrated ecosystem, either natively within the platform or cross-platform through secure data sharing, using standards-based middleware techniques. All modules must support seamless workflow orchestration, shared data models, and unified reporting capabilities.
- The objective is to acquire and implement a secure, accessible, and interoperable eRAP system that:
• Streamlines Sponsored Projects tasks across pre-award, award, and post-award phases.
• Enforces compliance with federal and state regulations, agency policies, and institutional policies.
• Provides robust automation, workflow orchestration, notifications, and role-based handoffs.
• Enables full data access for analytics, regulatory reporting, and research administration dashboards.
• Allows for customizable and accessible data fields and forms, providing options for selective cascading (e.g., updating only active records, not archived ones).
• Integrates with institutional systems and identity platforms while maintaining strong security and privacy.
• Eliminate reliance on offline spreadsheets and shadow systems by providing complete system-based functionality for proposal tracking, award management, financial visibility, and reporting.
• Provide a centralized, searchable institutional repository for all proposal and award records across all agency component institutions.
- Sponsored Projects Lifecycle
• The eRAP must support the full lifecycle: opportunity discovery, intent to submit, proposal creation, internal routing/approvals, sponsor submission, Just-in-Time (JIT) and negotiation, award setup (projects, accounts, budgets), effort certification support, sub award and subcontract management, amendments/modifications, deliverables, progress/final reports, and closeout.
• The system must maintain a centralized, auditable record of all proposal and award activity, including full version history, routing actions, approvals, and modifications.
• The system must support institutional proposal and award repositories with advanced search capabilities across metadata fields (e.g., PI, sponsor, department, funding type, status, dates).
- Financial Visibility
• Tracking of obligated, awarded, expended, and remaining balances
• Budget-to-actual comparisons at summary and category levels
• Burn rate and spend forecasting
• Cost share tracking and reporting
• Sub award financial tracking
• Designated field to capture the fund number generated by our financial system would be very helpful.
- Automation, Workflows, and Task Handling
• Configurable workflows for pre-award routing, sponsor submission readiness checks, compliance holds, and post-award actions.
• Automatic reminders and escalations for upcoming deadlines (e.g., proposal due dates, report submissions, compliance renewals).
• Role-based task handoffs
• Auto-calculation of indirect costs and fringe benefits.
• Budget templates and validation against sponsor rules.
• Ability to effectively utilize middleware and/or APIs to integrate data to and from: Enterprise Resource Planning ERP software, (e.g., accounting data, finance data, HR data), compliance software systems, research data repositories, or any other software deemed necessary to facilitate research operations.
• Automated routing for approval of projects and sufficient notifications of routing and task approvals.
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) timers, queue management, and audit trails for each tasks.
• Calendar integrations and notification channels (email, in-app, Teams, Webex, or Zoom).
• Customizable forms for custom workflows, allowing for evolving needs of the research lifecycle while not compromising data integrity or workflow interruptions.
• Customizable forms must contain data validation features and conditional logic.
• Updates to custom forms, fields and internal data tables do not disrupt the API data configuration or existing workflows. All integrations consume data through a stable, versioned and consistent API configuration.
• (m)System configuration allows for customized rules that trigger automated reminder emails, notification emails, waterfall workflow notification emails, and routing authorization emails.
• System provides dashboards for various user roles (Administrators, Investigators, and Reviewers) to easily navigate tasks and projects.
• Automated routing of applications through multi-stage review and approval process.
- Data Security, APIs, Integrations, and Interoperability
• Cross-module workflows (e.g., proposal routing triggering COI checks, IRB linkage, export control review).
• Published, versioned Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for CRUD operations solution, providing full support for API-based data access to all requested data points. This includes the ability to retrieve, update, and manage all data elements through secure, well documented APIs. Proposer must also support configurable data fields and allow for adjustments to data structures, endpoints, or payloads as business needs evolve, without requiring major redevelopment or Proposer only intervention.
• Support for modern integration patterns (REST/JSON; webhooks/events).
• SSO/identity integration (SAML 2.0/OIDC), RBAC, and SCIM provisioning preferred.
• Native connectors or implementation support for Enterprise Resource Planning ERP data, Finance (e.g., accounting data), HR/People, IRB/IACUC/IBC, COI/COC, COIRC, export control, compliance systems, research security, and research data repositories.
• Connectors must be able to populate and store necessary cross-platform data directly to forms determined by the customer.
• System must utilize processes for strong layered security of data, through authentication, authorization, and comprehensive encryption both in transit and in rest of the data.
• System must monitor and log API activity, to detect and respond to potential threats, to aid in auditing and incident responses (when necessary).
- Data Access and Reporting
• Full export capability for all data; accessible via APIs and bulk extract.
• Data dictionary, schema documentation, and reporting layer suitable for enterprise BI tools.
• Standard reports for sponsor and agency reporting (NIH/NSF/CDC), compliance dashboards, and ad hoc query support.
• Support for analytics on workload, cycle time, and on-time performance.
• Support for data changes or adjustments, including transparency and communication.
• Data cannot be stored outside of the country boundaries.
• End users must be able to create, modify, and export reports without requiring Proposer intervention.
• The system must support cross-functional reporting across proposal, award, financial, and compliance data domains.
• The system must provide a centralized reporting layer accessible to Sponsored Programs administrators and leadership.
• Data export in non-proprietary formats Data exports must be available in non-proprietary, analysis-ready formats (e.g., CSV, Excel) and must include the ability to export complete datasets
• End-users must be able to create, modify, and export reports without Proposer intervention.