Abstract

Institutional Reporting is key to evaluate the performance of an institution, both internally and externally, to a wide range of stakeholders, that includes funders, governmental agencies, trustees and the society.

Accurate institutional reporting is important to ensure transparency and accountability of the actions, make informed decision-making, compliance and regulation, performance measurement and stakeholder communication, including society.

As a research center, the institutional reporting is both conducted at grant management level (projects unit) and at a more institutional level, with all non-research departments involved (administration, communication, HHRR Dept) using pre-agreed key performance indicators (KPIs).

Some challenges of reporting are: accuracy of data reported, data definition and technical compilation, data replication, reporting schedules and templates than can be widely different amongst reports requests.

At ISGlobal a standardisation approach was started back in 2020 at part of a Key Action of the Strategic Plan 2029-2023. At that time, it was detected that information was scattered and unconnected, collected in different systems and sometimes in duplicate, thus greatly increasing the time involved in FTEs when reporting.

The approach combined the identification, definition and collection method for each KPIs as well as it envisaged a one single system for reporting, with links to current systems, such SAP Bussines ONE and internally developed tools, plus one person dedicated to it.

The aim of restructuring institutional reporting was to streamline the process and optimise resources, systemize KPIs definition, KPIs compilation and robust reporting implementation, reducing repetitive reports and resources allocated.