SAP Solution Brief
Public Sector
An efficient grants management
process is vital for organizations
involved in grant or sponsorship
programs. The SAP® Grants
Management application meets
the needs of grantors giving
financial assistance and grantees
competing to receive it by offering
tools to manage a wide range of
grant programs and automating
the grants management life cycle.
SAP Grants Management im-
proves access to grant services,
streamlines business processes,
and reduces the cost and com-
plexity of the grants environment.
GRANTS MANAGEMENT
IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
For public sector organizations struggling to obtain funding,
there’s a lot at stake.
Billions of dollars are available to grantee organizations from
grantors in government, private, and nonprofit sectors. But for
both grantors and grantees, the grants process is often inefficient
and cumbersome. Critical financial and business information
is too often stored in disparate systems in multiple locations,
hampering any attempt at automating the requisite process
steps, document status, and work tasks. Information cannot be
integrated into a single view, and users must navigate multiple
systems and extract and compile key data manually. This drives
up administrative costs, reduces productivity, and slows
customer service.
Grantors have unique challenges. The public demands trans-
parency and accountability for how they manage funds and
what productive outcomes result from awarding those funds.
They strive to offer customer-oriented, grant-payment processes
that provide common access to grant-assistance programs and
information for stakeholders. In addition they must ensure all
transactions and data are auditable. Too often, they have to
accomplish this with no single view of the grantee because the
data is scattered and incomplete and access to the grantee’s
information is restricted.
For grantees, the variety of ways in which sponsors process appli-
cations is complex. Sponsors have different requirements for how
their funds may be used and how to show accountability. Grantees
often use multiple accounting methods to manage these funds,
and many organizations have developed expensive, customized,
in-house software to address the audit and monitoring require-
ments of the grantor.
To streamline the grants process for both grantors and grantees,
SAP offers the SAP® Grants Management application, which ad-
dresses the delivery, administrative, and compliance require-
ments of grant program management.
Integrated Case Management
The SAP Grants Management application includes comprehen-
sive functionality that supports the management of public finan-
cial assistance programs by specifically addressing the following
needs of grantors:
• Grantees demand easy-to-use, easy-to-understand govern-
ment services and programs, while grantors want better ways
to interact with grantees.
• Grantors want enhanced transparency to be sure that grantee
organizations use their budgets responsibly and can provide
measurable results.
• Hampered by limited budgets and finite workforce resources,
grantors need to be able to deploy people and programs
efficiently and cost-effectively.
• Because of tightened regulations for security, governance, and
data protection, grantors need new, appropriate security and
risk mitigation strategies.
SAP Grants Management functionality for grantors supports a
broad range of business processes including program definition,
application, assessment, agreement, claim, change request, grant
payment, monitoring, and analysis. The software improves access
to grant services by supporting Web-based processing of grants,
claims, and change requests as well as automated application
workflow for approvals and notification.
Complemented by the SAP Records Management application and
the case management functionality that comes with the SAP for
Public Sector solution portfolio, SAP Grants Management helps
organizations manage cases, documents, and records – in both
paper and electronic formats – to support the file management
and documentation requirements of the grant process. The soft-
ware also delivers robust reporting functionality through the SAP
NetWeaver® Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI) component,
which helps organizations measure and improve performance.
SAP Grants Management improves the effectiveness of the fol-
lowing essential business processes:
• Program management – Keeps the grant process transparent
to facilitate internal and external accountability and controls,
defines how granting activities are managed and funded, and
how the grants are delivered to the grantee.
• Application process – Easily manages application processing,
eligibility assessment, and award amounts, helping the poten-
tial grantee receive information about the grantor program
and apply for a grant either online, by telephone, or by letter.
• Grantor agreement – Captures the terms and conditions of
the awarded grant and triggers billing and payment activities
when an agreement is finalized.
• Change request – Manages changes to a grantor agreement
after the agreement has been approved and released, evaluates
important changes to the agreement, and generates new ver-
sions of the agreement as PDF documents for internal tracking
and external processing.
• Claims management – Provides a Web-based claim form for
a specific agreement with which a grantee can submit requests
for payment or reconciliation of payment. Claim items are
verified manually or automatically for eligibility and availability,
with checking executed against the agreement. Claims are then
approved, released, and paid.
• Case management – Provides a central location for all docu-
ments, data, and transactions related to a particular grant appli-
cation and its follow-on processes. Grantor cases can be linked
to other cases based on program or grantee, or created on an
exception basis for audit purposes.
• Monitoring – Stores and quickly retrieves project status
reports, financial statements, and performance status reports
that detail the efficiency and effectiveness of programs. Meetings
and site visits can be arranged, recorded, and integrated into
workflows to track grantee activities.
• Analysis – Performs standard queries that support application,
agreement, claim, and program analysis as well as full life-cycle
analysis. Customized reporting is also supported.
Capture All Available Program Funding for Those
Seeking Grants
Grantee organizations want solutions to help win sponsored
program funding in a competitive environment where other
organizations are vying for the same financial assistance. SAP
Grants Management is the ideal management software for
grantees because it helps them overcome the following challenges:
• Address disparate sponsor requirements for the application
and administration process
• Surmount reporting difficulties caused by discrepancies
between sponsor and internal fiscal cycles
• Identify inaccurate, outdated, or inconsistent financial data
spread across various systems
Grantee organizations need a solution with an integrated ap-
proach that enhances their chances for success and provides op-
portunities for support and collaboration among their colleagues.
The solution must also balance sponsors’ guidelines and compli-
ance requirements. Because SAP Grants Management creates a
unique view based on the sponsor requirements, grantees can stay
well-informed, enabling them to report quickly and accurately in
response to their sponsor’s programs.
SAP Grants Management supports all business processes a
grantee must engage in, starting with preparatory activities prior
to receiving funds to the accounting and reporting activities re-
quired after grants are awarded. With SAP Grants Management,
grantees have support for the following activities:
• Prepare grant applications – Support all preliminary
activities using centralized document management and
built-in workflows.
• Record sponsor’s details – Record the attributes unique
to sponsored program management, such as budgeting, cost
sharing and matching, billing, and indirect cost and overhead
calculations.
• Execute the awarded grant – Manage sponsor receivables,
standardize business processes across all organizational units,
and automate the budget process. An agency’s financial
administrators can manage and control grant transactions
and postings and perform availability checks to ensure that ex-
penditures comply with agency budgets.
Improved Efficiency, Reduced Costs
The SAP Grants Management application creates an integrated,
streamlined grants management life-cycle process that delivers
the following benefits for both grantors and grantees:
• Increased cost-efficiency due to accurate revenue and expenses
planning, careful budgeting for internal and external funding
sources, and precise calculation of overhead costs
• Efficient, cost-effective deployment of people and systems to
counterbalance reduced budgets and a shrinking work force
• Improved efficiency through having separate views of grantor
and grantee financial transactions and by associating grantor
requirements to the grantee’s financial structures
• Enhanced flexibility that can accommodate the different
funding periods of grantee and grantor organizations and
different currencies
• Better customer service by efficiently managing grant-related
documentation and transactions online and providing faster
access to relevant, high-quality, accurate data across multiple
channels
 www.sap.com/contactsap

• Faster decision making enabled by access to real-time informa- To Learn More

tion, streamlined workflow, integrated business processes, and SAP Grants Management software is scalable for all sizes of public
standardized management practices sector organizations and can be used by any entity that gives or
• Greater regulatory compliance through increased visibility receives grants, funds, or pledges, such as educational and research
into all financial management and administrative functions. institutions, as well as by international, non-governmental, and
Managing public funds transparently contributes to fulfilling not-for-profit organizations and foundations.
legal regulations concerning security, governance, and data
protection. SAP for Public Sector helps more than 1,500 public sector organi-
zations connect silos of information to increase efficiency, make
Powered by SAP NetWeaver processes more transparent, and improve communication with
SAP Grants Management is powered by the SAP NetWeaver their constituents. SAP for Public Sector reflects best practices
platform. SAP NetWeaver unifies technology components into a garnered from SAP’s 30 years as the leading provider of enterprise
single platform, allowing organizations to reduce IT complexity resource planning solutions, with experience in more than 25
and obtain more business value from their IT investments. It industries in over 100 countries.
provides the best way to integrate all systems running SAP or
non-SAP software. For more information on SAP Grants Management and SAP for
Public Sector, visit our Web site at www.sap.com/publicsector/.
SAP NetWeaver also helps organizations align IT with their
business. With SAP NetWeaver, organizations can compose and
enhance business applications rapidly using enterprise services.
As the foundation for enterprise service-oriented architecture
(enterprise SOA), SAP NetWeaver allows organizations to evolve
their current IT landscapes into a strategic environment that
drives business change.

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