Global grant management, project design & monitoring platform

Having been unable to find technology that was a good fit for their work, United Bible Societies decided to create their own. We helped them create a platform that drives grant funding, facilitates global collaboration, develops and teaches best practice in project design and underpins regular, high-quality impact reporting.

United Bible Societies (UBS) coordinates the funding and implementation of numerous mission and development projects run by more than 150 Bible Societies around the world.

UBS engaged us to design, develop and manage a bespoke web application — the “Solomon Project Registry” — to be used by both UBS and individual Bible Societies’ staff. It needed to support a set of complex workflows involving multiple users from UBS and other Bible Societies and integrate with data and workflow events from external systems. As such we have conducted numerous process modelling sessions with stakeholders across the organisation. We also conducted user research and business case analysis before the project was underway which led to UBS updating their original roadmap in light of new information from our research and alternate approaches. Our early guidance unlocked new opportunities that UBS hadn’t envisaged.

The Solomon Registry supports many of UBS’ core business functions with features such as:

• Interactive tools guiding users through the design and implementation of effective mission Projects with full version history of all changes to proposals.
• Project search & filtering, powered by ElasticSearch, for Grant makers to discover Project proposals that fit their specific funding criteria.
• Grant management tools for Bible Societies to pledge, commit and transfer funds to Projects they select.
• Powerful workflows and email notifications guiding users through complexprocesses.
• Communication tools allowing Grant makers and Project implementers to collaborate directly on the platform.
• Administrative tools for UBS staff to provide feedback on Project design, resolve Grant disputes with stakeholders, manage Bible Societies and more.
• Real-time read and write integration with other UBS systems including their central SalesForce CRM, accounting system and central media library.
• A responsive web UI adapting to any device.
• Integration with UBS’ single-sign-on system, Kore (also developed by Suru Partners).

The impact of Solomon has been substantial. User adoption and satisfaction are high, and many of UBS’ processes have been streamlined and improved through Suru Partners’ ongoing consultation. We have remained closely involved with UBS and continue to evolve and grow the application on a continuous deployment schedule, respond to UBS’ changing needs and allow UBS to take advantage of new opportunities quickly.