I won’t bother listing the various justifications for automation because they are legion. Automation is one of the first steps many institutions take when attempting to increase the effectiveness of their research administration apparatus’ because it represents the opportunity for enormous growth and significant competitive advantage. As an example, my organization reported research expenditures of approximately $700 million per year utilising a paper-based funding proposal review, approval, and submission process. Proposals were printed on paper, faxed or couriered around campus for various departmental reviews and approvals (often coming back to the PI for changes), re-routed, finally reviewed at the institutional level (often sent back yet again for additional changes), repeated a couple of times and finally mailed on to the sponsor. This process represented months of effort, resulted in missed deadlines, and efficiency and performance metrics were all but unmeasurable.

Roughly two years after the automation of this processes, the institution’s research expenditures have increased to approximately $1.2 billion per year. I don’t intend to argue that automation is solely responsible for this increase, however, automation made it possible. In other words, automation represented the opportunity for significant growth.