Getting help out to communities faster with improved grant management.

Department of Families, Fairness and Housing

Background

The Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) works to empower communities to build a fairer and safer Victoria. The department is responsible for child protection, prevention of family violence, housing, disability, multicultural affairs, LGBTIQ+ equality, veterans and the offices for Women and Youth.

DFFH offers a wide variety of grants to various groups and organisations. The majority of these grants are less than $10,000 each, with the department offering over 4000 individual grants.

The challenge

With the large volume of grants being assessed and granted by the department, DFFH wanted to find more efficient ways to get money out as soon as possible to where it would make a difference in the community.

The department established the DFFH Grants Reform project to find a new end-to-end online grants management system that would fulfill the following objectives:

• Improve the user experience for both  internal and external users with a solution  that is engaging and intuitive to use.
• Simplify processes for staff and grant  applicants.
• Integrated financial data so all information is in one system, providing 360-degree view.
• Increased efficiency for the grant team at DFFH so they get more time to work with stakeholders.
• Consistency with the look and feel across all DFFH and Fairer Victoria systems and other grant pages.

“We collaborated with DFFH as one team to perform a detailed analysis and discuss best options. To ensure it was a successful system change, our trusted advice on change management and training was part of the end-to- end project planning.”

- Marianne Broeng, Senior Project Manager, Seisma

Our solution

Working closely with the Seisma team, DFFH wanted to leverage years of experience with grant management solutions, based on the existing Program360 accelerator built on the Salesforce platform.

Seisma worked closely with the core DFFH project team on the details of the design and development to achieve the critical outcome needed. As a result, the Seisma team were able to provide DFFH with a scalable solution that is stakeholder centric and business process driven. For internal users, we built a system called Grants360 to help team members better manage the grant process. Some key features included:

• Payment automation with Oracle finance  integration, which allows payments to be automatically made on time
• Breakthrough improved contracting end-to-end process with the implementation of Conga Contracts, including Conga library of clauses and automated Conga Sign process. The digital contracting includes selecting signatories and attachments to include in the email when sent out for signing.
• Application form creation based on a number of templates, allowing the grant team to create their own forms when needed.
• Improved data collection and reporting  streamlining the assessment process and eliminating spreadsheets.

For external users, we created the Grants Gateway to give applicants a more streamlined and simplified experience when applying for and managing their DFFH grants. Some key features included:

• Self-service portal where applicants and  grantees can manage their details online and view deliverables for awarded grants.
• Improved integration when applicants enter ABN and address data online to ensure the information is validated at the point of data entry.

As well as training 140 team members to use the new system, Seisma also provided a specific training suite for grants staff to support the change across the department and embed best practice.

The outcome

The result was a tool that allowed DFFH to better and more efficiently help the communities they serve.

The system automation saves team members from having to manually create contracts or schedule payments, meaning they have more time to work directly with their stakeholders.

The improved transparency the system provides also helps team members focus their time on the areas that need their attention, including accounts with missed milestones.