In order to use PeopleSoft Grants you must have PeopleSoft Financials 7.5
and as reported in The Chronicle for other PS systems much money, staff,
and time to get it installed and supported. With out other PS systems and
all the infrastructure and outside consultants needed, GRANTS is not a
viable option.

GAMS is still in development.  The University of Mass, Amherst, using a
version not completely Quality Assured Tested (but QA'd for most of the
forms and budget parts) processed 5 real proposals in 5 months and
generated some 140 requests for fixes (60 fixed).  The person to ask for
real life experience there is Paul Kelley xxxxxx@resgs.umass.edu  GAMS
has much potential but still needs to be finished up a bit.  You would need
a full time administrator (although you can contract with the vendor for
service) to manage all the components.

Unlike GRANTS, it is fully web enabled.   It allows users to complete
government forms (including attachment of a rich text abstract) and prepare
a budget, and attach the scientific text.  It prints out the forms for most
government agencies.  It also has capability to send a Transaction Set 194
via EDI directly to sponsor (no need for service bureau).

For a view of one university's attempt to use it for a full grants data
management system, contact Sarah Wasserman  xxxxxx@oba.uiuc.edu

I do not know the current price but must be in middle to high 6 figures.
The original consortium of universities that participated in early
development is dissolving so new users would be licensing the product
directly from the vendor.  I do not know what role new users would play in
any further development.  Note that it runs on a system called UniVerse and
not on Oracle or such systems and this needs to be factored in to any cost
consideration.  So unlike GRANTS or other PS programs which can be modified
easily at each site by using PeopleTools, GAMS is modified only by the
vendor.  We do not have GAMS in production for live proposals at UMich but
are still testing it.  We do not have PS Financials 7.5 so cannot consider
GRANTS yet.  We participated in both development groups.

Hope this gives you some useful info.

Bob

Robert Beattie
Manager of electronic Research Administration
 and Senior Project Representative
The University of Michigan
xxxxxx@umich.edu

--On Fri, Feb 11, 2000 10:21 AM -0500 Beverly Blakeney
<xxxxxx@ZOO.UVM.EDU> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Our office will be looking at Grant Management systems such as InfoEd,
> GAMS and PeopleSoft.  Would you be willing to share your experience,
> positive as well as negative, with us concerning those systems or other
> systems? We will not have in house computer support available, so we're
> looking for a system that can be supported by non-techies.  Thank you.
>
>
> *************************************************************************
> ** Beverly A.Blakeney
> Assistant Director
> Office of Sponsored Programs
> University of Vermont
> 340 Waterman Building
> Burlington, VT 05405
>
>
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