Abstract

In the evolving landscape of research management, the role of Pre-Award (PA) offices has become increasingly vital in securing funding, ensuring compliance, and facilitating successful grant and contract applications. Currently, there are no standardized performance metrics to guide PA offices. Therefore, we propose a strategic and structured set of guidelines for implementing quantitative and qualitative Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of PA offices within research centers and organizations, focusing on effectiveness, efficiency, compliance, and communication. These guidelines should be tailored to ensure alignment with organizational goals, challenges, and operational context. Therefore, they must set realistic and achievable targets, reflecting the office's workload, organizational capacity, and external factors. Notably, the lack of literature addressing KPIs specifically for PA offices, makes this approach valuable to understand performance.
Drawing on Pre-Award best practices from at least 7 research centers with different scientific fields from management, mathematics, fundamental biology to engineering in Portugal, this on-going study compiles and identifies critical KPIs that encompass dissemination, proposal support development, proposal submission, secure funding, stakeholder engagement and trainings, considering the strategy of the research centers. Building on this initial data collection, a questionnaire will be developed to collect and compile the KPIs used from worldwide PA offices in INORMS 2025, enabling a more robust analysis of performance metrics and best practices across diverse regions.
The presentation of KPIs guidelines is designed to provide a comprehensive evaluation of an office's performance, enhance accountability, and drive continuous improvement.
In summary, we present actionable recommendations for developing a KPI-driven culture that promotes transparency and professional development among research management professionals. By leveraging KPIs, research organizations can enhance the collaboration with PA offices in their roles, optimize proposal development processes, and ultimately increase the success rate of securing competitive funding.