Planning for the future
eResearch, the university's platform for research administration, will need to be replaced because the current vendor is discontinuing support for its software products. The systems impacted by this change include:
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Preparing for the transition
In preparation for this transition, a cross-disciplinary team has been developing a strategy to move the university's research administration services to new solutions with minimal disruption, while ensuring continuous support.
Project Status
Request for Proposal in Progress
Winter term 2026 marks the start of the Request for Proposal (RFP) phase. This phase includes vendor evaluation, partner selection, and the beginning of contract negotiations. Opportunities for input from the university community will continue throughout this work.
Planning and Discovery Completed
The Planning and Discovery phase concluded at the end of fall term 2025. During this time, the university gathered business requirements, reviewed potential market solutions, completed an initial fit-gap analysis, and developed a strategic recommendation to migrate all four product lines by the required deadline.
What we learned
Peer Benchmarking
Peer institutions had positive experiences with both small and large vendors. Interviewed peers recommended:
- Phased deployments, starting with core modules
- Prioritize “must-have” functionality for initial launche
- Create dedicated project teams and plan for backfill support
- Engage stakeholders early and throughout the process
- Empower decision-makers to support smoother changes and adoption
Request for Information
The RFI helped the university explore the software market to better understand available research administration solutions and prepare for the RFP process. Key findings and impressions included:
- Configurable forms, workflows, notifications, and role-based workload management were important factors in higher survey scores
- Outdated user interfaces contributed to lower product demo ratings
Feedback from vendors, campus survey participants, and RFI participants helped shape our RFP requirements and evaluation criteria.
Suggestions and Questions
The project team appreciates all the insightful survey feedback shared about current eResearch systems, ideas for improvements, and concerns regarding the eventual replacement. Survey results can be found by clicking "Survey Findings" in the left navigation.
If you have additional ideas or concerns, submit feedback via this form, or email the project team directly at [email protected].