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.

Though Ideate applications can standalone, they are designed to work together to support tight coordination across research offices; facilitating inter-office data sharing and minimizing duplication. Ideate applications use a project folder metaphor, where the project serves as a convenient metafile for organizing all related details pertaining to a single research study.

When a researcher launches a project all related applications are joined-up in an umbrella process. The project acts as a one-stop-shop logging all changes and tracking all components on behalf of the stakeholders. As details change over the lifecycle of a research project, Ideate reacts accordingly, updating relevant administrative offices and/or notifying additional business units. Instead of separately coordinating with multiple offices and then juggling the related tasks that might follow, Ideate connects all the dots for a singular unified experience.

Researchers benefit from a single rationalized process; Administrative offices achieve active compliance and tight inter-office coordination; and the organization gains a comprehensive end-to-end view of each project.

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.

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.

Benefits of Service Orientation

·   The elimination of hard-coded business logic and integration;

·   Repository of re-usable service components;

·   Capacity for dynamic composition enables mass customisation;

·   Allows business to compose process from a palette of infinitely reconfigurable functions;

·   Decomposition of Line-of-Business (LOB) applications facilitates sharing of cross-functional services for composite applications;

·   Extreme loose-coupling for ubiquitous separation of concerns;

·   Ability to evolve services independently allowing non-disruptive incremental improvements.

In Ideate, the only hardcode is the framework itself that enables the filing and execution of processes. Instead of tens of thousands of lines of hopelessly entangled code, Ideate offers the harmony of a well organized library of system resources.

The architecture is straightforward and elegant. System resources – services, rules, process maps, data mart entities, etc – are stored in a virtual file system. Each resource is a discrete component that can be configured individually. The virtual file system provides version control, and features audit history and roll back capabilities. The resources can be readily retrieved by name, type, author, date, etc.  In addition, each application gets a file folder with hotlinks to all of its constituent resources. Individual resources can be shared across multiple applications. An entire application folder can be copied to jump start a new version or a new application.

Ideate’s architecture is optimized for performance as user interactions never invoke more than a handful of small files at any given moment. If a process gets ‘stuck’, the resources involved for that transaction can be isolated quickly, reviewed and repaired, while all other processes continue to run in the background.

This model allows for rapid assembly of highly customized applications from existing ideate resources, while maintaining product support for the underlying Ideate services. Ideate’s componentization of processes and disciplined separation of concerns allows for incremental, non-disruptive change for continuous process improvement.

“…from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859