Ideate

Ideate makes the management of research as compelling as the pursuit of discovery! The innovative solution brings together the latest web 2.0 technologies to provide unprecedented ease of use - technically complex budgeting is intuitive and historically tedious data entry is almost fun.

· 100% browser-based with one unified interface for managing the system, design and run-time environments, with support for all mainstream browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer; Mozilla FireFox; Apple Safari; etc.). · Service Oriented Architecture that supports customer interoperability requirements and the development of plug-ins and widgets for custom functionality.

Ideate takes a holistic approach to service orientation. Instead of modelling a research process as a single monolithic flowchart, Ideate has thoughtfully deconstructed complex research lifecycles into loosely-coupled Services. A Service Oriented Process, or process fragment, represents a single step or series of related steps that collectively fulfil an abstracted business need (e.g. form completion; error checking; internal review; account establishment; project startup; etc.). Ideate’s approach gives it unprecedented support for long-running human-centric processes that involve frequent ‘wait’ periods, extensive conditional branching, complicated decision trees, and interrelated processes. Importantly, the architecture manages all these variables in a consistent and structured way that provides for governance and change management.

Personalized portals summarize all tasks in one convenient location, and feature interactive dashboards with graphs and charts that provide real-time insights into research activity. Users can view statuses, trends, and projections at a glance, and flexibly filter, sort, and drill into reports.

Importantly, with change being a constant in the research arena, Ideate was built from the ground up with thoughtful consideration of the Information Architecture challenges. As a result, the Service Oriented Framework provides for unprecedented governance and change management, and includes an elegant data repository. Ideate maintains copies of all versions of a process to ensure a complete audit history and supports process-level roll-back. Administrative modifications to a research process can be submitted through an internal review before any changes are implemented. Data captured in older versions of a process remains available for reporting and can be optionally viewed in their original page layouts.

The Ideate Framework is purpose-built to accommodate the dynamics of the research enterprise. The light-weight Framework is based on a Service Oriented architectural style. Instead of hard-coding a solution to a generalized business specification, Ideate deconstructs business requirements into discrete functional components called services, which act as flexible building blocks for assembling applications to suit varied needs. This service paradigm supports far greater customization and adaptability than traditional monolithic development methodologies.