Ideate

Full Economic Costing is complex, but it doesn’t have to be difficult.

While we leveraged the latest web technologies to deliver a compelling FEC application, we also used some traditional techniques – first we listened to some pretty smart folks, then we thoughtfully deconstructed the problem before trying to solve it.

Ideate makes it easy to fulfill FEC requirements by making the application logic apparent to the end user. If you know FEC, you already know how to use our solution. The system manages all the factors and rules so busy researchers and administrators can focus on what’s important – who and what is in the budget – rather than fret over the confounded calculus.

The proof is in the pudding of course, so we invite you to see a demo. In the meantime, here are just a few of the really good FEC-ing features.

Personalized dashboards featuring Ideate’s LIVE REPORT – a real-time listing of all the records a user can access. The LIVE REPORT is searchable and filterable so users can quickly identify records of interest, and you can export those results with a single-click export to PDF, Excel, or CSV, If you want a closer look, individual records can be viewed directly from the LIVE REPORT. Moreover, based on the user’s permissions and the state of the record, the user can initiate applicable actions on the spot (e.g. perform a review, create an award, submit a modification, closeout the record, etc.). The system logs all activity and a summary of “who did what when” is available on demand.

Moving between Ideate screens is near instantaneous even with the auto-save the system performs in the background – most all system functions, except for the most processor intensive functions, run in a second or less, which makes navigation fluid.

Configurable schedules for Salary Bands, FEC Rates, and Salary Grades with ability to publish new schedules with version control and rollback (NB: standard features for all Ideate application tables).

Configurable Field-level context sensitive help.

Develop multiple versions of your costing to consider different scenarios (e.g. with or without equipment; for various sponsors; with or without inflation).

Budget in different currencies, with the system performing exchange rate calculations on-the-fly. You can view a budget in a sponsor currency, or when buying an item from a foreign country you can use their currency to enter the exact amount, and you can flip between these currencies while always retaining the GBP equivalent. .

The Ideate Quick Search utility provides fast table look ups, even for tables with thousands of records, from a single Google-type text box. The Quick Search interrogates multiple data elements and supports partial string searches to facilitate retrieval (people can be looked up by any part of a name, id number, department; sponsors can be looked up by any part of the organization name, id number, or acronym; etc.).

Sophisticated rule-based workflows support one or more levels of approval, and multiple rounds of revisions.

Watch for an upcoming announcement about our latest utility (hint – it’s related to JeS). Ask for a preview at ARMA.

Tags: Adaptable, Applications, Flexible