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MUSC implements new grants allocation management system


MUSC has instituted a new grants allocation system through the use of a new software program developed by Austin, Texas-based Lombardi Software Inc., the company announced May 6.
 
Teamworks, a business process software management suite, is being used to post the university’s post-award financial grants allocation processes.
 
“The financial grants process is the life-blood of our research business. Teamworks helps us manage it faster, gives us more visibility and lets us be more efficient than before,” said Stewart Mixon, MUSC chief operations officer.
 
MUSC depends upon financial grants as a primary means of funding its medical research. The university manages the post award grants allocation process in which about 3,000 requests for grant fund distribution changes are made every quarter. Previously, this process was entirely manual. Information had to be keyed into different front-end and back-end systems, which resulted in significant backlogs and delays, as well as many errors and rework efforts, according to Mixon. Due to error rates and other contributing factors, there were more than twice as many forms submitted in the manual process than are processed using the Lombardi Teamworks-based process, Mixon added.
 
Universal Business Solutions’ (UBS) team assisted MUSC with the process planning and implementation efforts. UBS is a Lombardi consulting and services partner. The new Lombardi Teamworks process has helped leverage the university’s existing legacy systems while automating and simplifying the grants allocation process.
 
This new process has delivered significant benefits for the university, enabling it to proactively catch and eliminate errors at the point of entry, reducing the per-grant error rate from 85 percent to 90 percent to about 2.5 percent. Through the use of Teamworks, MUSC also was able to cut down on staff hours in the grants allocation process by 65 percent, which has allowed the university to free up several staff full-time equivalents (FTEs) for other important tasks.
 
In addition, the use of Teamworks dashboards enables MUSC management to receive key performance indicators containing real-time status information of all of its financial grants distribution activities. This important metric was impossible to collect prior to implementation of the new process.


 


 

Friday, May 29, 2009


The Catalyst Online is published weekly by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. The Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to The Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Publications at 849-1778, ext. 201.