Written by Nils R. | May 11, 2021 7:00:00 AM
Grant Dashboard for Higher Education Institutions
What is a
Grant Dashboard
? Grant Dashboards are considered financial analysis tools and are used by Financial Executives and Grant Managers to monitor grant metrics and related activities. Some of the main functionality in this type of dashboard is that it enables analysis of grants from six different perspectives: 1) KPIs for granted amounts, requested amounts and granted as a percent of requested amounts, 2) Granted and requested amounts ranked by school, 3) Granted and requested amounts ranked by major, 4) Table with grants by school and measures for granted amount, requested amount, variance %, and variance amount, 5) Table with grants by type (based on filter seen in lower left corner of dashboard), and 6) Grants by type comparison chart. You find an example of this type of dashboard below.
Purpose of
Grant Dashboards Universities and colleges use Grant Dashboards to have an easy way to monitor the organization's grant activities. When used as part of good business practices in Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) and Grant Management departments, an organization can improve its grant program strategies and decisions, and it can reduce the chances that leaders don't have a clear understanding of grant requests and uses.
Example of a
Grant Dashboard Here is an example of a Grant Dashboard with KPIs and ranked comparisons of granted and requested amounts seen from various perspectives. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2560"]
Example of a Grant Dashboard for Higher Education Institutions[/caption] You can find hundreds of additional examples
here
Who Uses This Type of
Dashboard
? The typical users of this type of dashboard are: University officials, boards, CFOs, grant managers, budget managers, strategic planners.
Other Reports Often Used in Conjunction with
Grant Dashboards Progressive Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) and Grant Management departments sometimes use several different Grant Dashboards, along with Detailed grant reports, financial dashboards, financial statements, detailed budgets and other management and control tools.
Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From? The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others. In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models or from professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions.
What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards? Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:
- Native ERP report writers and query tools
- Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
- Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Cloud Solutions and More Examples
