July 18, 2024

All eyes on research – not admin – at Maastricht University

What grants did we receive? How much research budget is left? When should we submit a progress report? University researchers lose quite a bit of time pondering about these questions. Too much time, in fact, because they really just want to concentrate on their research projects. That's why Maastricht University decided to leave research management up to the Flexso Research Management Package.

Maastricht University, the youngest and most international university in the Netherlands, has around 22,000 students and 5,000 employees. Research is at the forefront of the university's activities, with almost 60% of the staff being researchers.

The challenge: Excel-based research management

Research projects involve a great deal of project and funds management. “Fortunately, our principal investigators can count on a team of

internal financial consultants and controllers for help,” explains Fred Offerein, project manager at Maastricht University. “The internal financial consultants monitor the entire research project, keeping a meticulous eye on the grants, budgets, and deadlines, and reporting to finance as well as management.”

Excel has long been the faithful ally of Maastricht University’s researchers and controllers. “They love it, as Excel is flexible and easy to work with,” Fred continues. “Yet the manual work was time-consuming and our finance team had difficulty keeping track of all the spreadsheets. The accountants demanded more transparency and overview, and so did the management. Last but not least, the European Union imposes increasingly stricter rules on academic research too. To manage research efforts faster, more accurately, and more transparently, we really had to go digital.”

To manage research efforts faster, more accurately, and more transparently, we really had to go digital.
Fred Offerein - Project Manager, Maastricht University

Impressing critical minds

The in-house request for digital research management aligned perfectly with the university’s digital transformation journey, initiated in 2019. After migrating finance, HR, and procurement to SAP S/4HANA, Fred and his colleagues started exploring Flexso’s Research Management Package.

“While the S/4HANA suite included a solution for research management, SAP advised to explore Flexso's higher education applications. So, together with Flexso, we developed a proof of concept, which confirmed that the apps add real value to our research efforts. I was so happy that our researchers, who are often quite discerning, were enthusiastic about the features, ease-of-use, and look and feel."

4 building blocks to ensure stellar academic research in SAP

Our Research Management Package is a modular suite of applications developed to make academics’ lives easier. Featuring customizable workflows, the system centralizes data, streamlines and automates processes to reduce the administrative burden on the academics, and keeps the research budget and expenses under control.

The package combines a variety of apps, providing support in every step of a research project, from the pre-award process over operations and reporting, all the way through to closing

Dive deeper into our research management solutions

Building trust by investing in change management

Together with Flexso, the team defined the scope and prepared the technical settings. There is a massive amount of data to migrate, so we decided to take it one step at a time. From experience with new projects, we know that ‘trust arrives on foot but leaves on horseback’. We took our time to get into deep detail to ensure we’d extract the most from the implementation. A 14-strong project team, both from the university and from Flexso, helped us monitor progress and cut knots where needed.”

To build the trust, the project team made – and is still making – significant investments in change management. At every stage of the project, financial experts from all six faculties are invited to an information session. During these sessions, Flexso provides updates, gathers feedback, and prepares the participants for the next steps.

“The technical features and performance are just one aspect of an IT implementation”, says Fred. “Like I mentioned earlier, university employees are quite discerning at times. By engaging them in the project and taking their feedback into account, we create ambassadors – fans even.”

360° view on every research project

As soon as the app is up and running, Fred expects real, tangible benefits, such as efficiency gains and better budget and cost control, for everyone involved:

researchers will have real-time insight into their budget;
project controllers will have all the real-time data at hand to interpret grants, monitor the money spent and the budget left per project and per researcher;
the university CFO, accounting and management will have access to real-time dashboards that provide a 360° view on every research project, including: financial performance, resource performance, associated expenses, shared invoices, …
compliance with EU legislation will become easier.

In a next phase, Maastricht University will embrace the milestone tracker app in Flexso’s Research Management suite to help all stakeholders understand project responsibilities, due dates, and next actions. This will help the university’s research ecosystem to further streamline their processes – in order to fully concentrate on socially relevant research.