Your grants system can tell you exactly what you submitted to a funder last year. Ask it what is coming, and it has almost nothing to say. A grant rarely starts as a proposal. It starts as a funder work programme in draft, or a partner asking an academic to join a bid, and only the full proposal ever reaches a system. Everything before it lives wherever each person and each school finds workable.

That matters because the decisions that shape an application happen early: who can apply when a funder caps submissions at three, whether a department can carry unfunded staff time, whether the academic has capacity at all. None of it reaches a system, so the forecast runs on personal spreadsheets, four schools produce four versions of the same intention-to-bid form, and one application ends up spread across the grants record, a due diligence tool, an inbox and HR, with no single place that holds the whole of it.

The fix is not another form. It is recording the application the moment it is first declared, through one configurable expression of interest, then carrying that same record through costing, approval and handover so reporting is a read and not a rebuild. We work this through one process area at a time, walking your current process first and demonstrating against it live. If that sounds familiar, read the full perspective, or book a short discovery workshop and see exactly where your pre-award record is going missing.

Download the full whitepaper below