Industry: Government
Services: Airtable Database Design, Airtable Automations and Integrations
Airtable Use Cases: Grant Management, Collaboration, and Reporting
Introduction: MassTech - Spearheading Technological Advancement in Massachusetts
MassTech, also known as the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, is a unique public agency that supports business formation and growth in the state’s technology. Since its inception, MassTech has enabled companies to lead in the global digital economy. It has overseen more than $739 million in public funding, providing grants and other financial assistance to thousands of projects across the state of Massachusetts.
When MassTech approached Claribase, it was in search of a solution to improve the visibility and tracking of how grant funds were being allocated across its six divisions. Over the previous two years, the volume of funded programs/sources had increased, and with greater complexity (ex. MassTech needed to budget for multi-year grants), the management team was looking to develop transparency in their grant pipeline, centralize their data, and develop new lenses into their data to improve internal decision-making.
In this success story, we delve into how MassTech, with the expertise of Claribase, not only was able to bring their 17 tracking spreadsheets under one database but also how the transition to Airtable increased the velocity of internal decision-making. MassTech’s improved efficiency within their departments resulted in weekly time savings of 45 minutes per person for their team.
The Problem: Aligning Six Divisions into one Grant Management System
MassTech is made up of six divisions – The Broadband institute, The MeHI, The Mass Cyber Center, The Centre for Advanced Manufacturing, The Northeast Microelectronics Coalition, and the John Adams Innovation Institute – all of which are involved in the delivery of grants and various programs that support tech businesses across Massachusetts.
Internally, the team hoped to bring all their data under one roof, eliminate the need for the dozens of tracking Excels floating around the organization, and consolidate all data into a single, centralized system for reporting. This move aimed to develop insights and structure the data within the organization, establish a unified landscape of grant status, and enhance operational efficiency and strategic decision-making within MassTech. MassTech had four primary objectives for their new system:
A Single Source of Truth
Masstech’s first and primary objective was data centralization and standardization. This was both to improve visibility for their internal departments that overlapped across the divisions (like legal, accounting, finance, IT, and communications), and for their management teams that operated at each divisional level which centralized data would allow them to make better and more fully informed decisions about their programs and grants.
A Flexible System
Given the diverse divisions and programs being integrated into a single system, MassTech required a flexible data structure. This structure needed to accommodate the unique requirements of tracking multiple programs and grant rounds while maintaining enough standardization for team members to easily find information on grant statuses, allocations, awarded values, requested values, and timing.
Tracking for Grant Funding/Status’
Beyond centralizing data, MassTech aimed to develop a clear pipeline view of all grants within their system. The objective was to easily track the inflows and outflows of funding across various funds, programs, and grants over time. The system needed to handle multi-year programs and multiple rounds of grants, providing team members with accessible and accurate information on the status of each grant.
Geographic Insight & Data Visualization
MassTech also sought to understand the sector and geographic overlap of their grants. Organizing data across divisions and funds was essential, but equally important was the ability to visualize this data geographically. This geographic insight would allow MassTech to see the distribution of grants across different regions, enhancing their strategic planning and resource allocation.
The Solution: A Customized, Scalable, and holistic Solution
With Claribase as their partner, MassTech embarked on the journey to architect their new Grant Fund Management system using Airtable.
Phase 1 – Grant Management System Design
In the first phase of the project, Claribase collaborated with MassTech to design the grant management base’s architecture, ensuring it could support the various levels, and divisions of their funding system. They worked to establish the types of reporting and data requirements of the different teams and divisions – and set off to design a system that would allow for the tracking of grant information and status’ across years, geography, sector, and their various delivery levels (at the fund, program, and grant levels).
Phase 2 – Enhanced Interfaces, Reporting, and Automations
In the second phase, Claribase built several custom Airtable interfaces and reporting dashboards. These dashboards offered high-level insights into grant patterns, such as the number of grants awarded by the same institution and the amount of grant money allocated to different technological sectors. The system provided comprehensive reporting capabilities, improving data accuracy and operational efficiency.
Phase 3 – Data Visualization
Additionally, Claribase integrated an automated connection to a Tableau dashboard, creating an interactive map of Massachusetts that displays grant funds at the state, county, and city levels.
The Result: Funding Transparency, Collaboration, and Time Savings
MassTech’s transition to Airtable marked a significant improvement from their previous, spreadsheet-reliant processes. The centralized data is now easily accessible across all divisions, allowing for better grant management and progress tracking against multiple funding sources – resulting in significant improvements in MassTech’s team collaboration and operational efficiency. It has completely removed any uncertainty about the grant pipeline and has led to significant time savings for their team:
“We’re seeing great utilization by our different teams. We now have 45 people on our team using Airtable, and since we’ve launched our pipeline view in Jan – we’ve gone from our grant review meetings taking a hour and a half once a week, down to to 30-45 minutes. Fifteen people attend the weekly grant meetings so we are saving 5-10 hours a week through that one meeting alone!”
The implementation of Airtable has also facilitated a more streamlined flow of information within the organization, enhancing communication and collaboration among team members and across different divisions.
“Airtable has allowed us to get better at understanding internal bottlenecks.”
Redundancies have been eliminated, inefficiencies reduced, and overall productivity improved. Additionally, the team can quickly query the data and derive insights faster. The Airtable base has helped them make better decisions and facilitate conversations about the data:
“We are now starting to ask better questions about our data. Our new Airtable Grant Management System has helped us facilitate conversations about how we want to prioritize different tech areas and sectors to be more strategic.
It’s been a great thing for us. Our Airtable base has given our directors, and board members visibility into our data they never had before. We can now look at key decisions, sometimes even months ahead, when before we were talking days or weeks before key meetings and everything before had to be in a report.”
And the success has made its way all the way to the top. In a recent meeting with the CEO speaking about the Airtable base and the pipeline, and our reporting interfaces, she said:
“Wow. You’ve put the tech back into MassTech.”
Experience Working with Claribase: Leading with Listening
When asked about their experience working with Claribase, MassTech had this to say:
“You guys are very collaborative, very patient, and very iterative. You’re very good at listening to what we would like to accomplish, but you are also very good at providing timelines or communicating that we may need to try in order to get the best result. Ultimately we were very happy to have the expertise that you brought to our project.”
Key Takeaways: A powerful example of Airtable Success for Grant Funding
As a result of implementing Airtable, MassTech has achieved several significant improvements to its operations:
Centralized Information Management: MassTech transitioned from using multiple disparate systems to a centralized Airtable interface. This new platform holds all relevant data from their six divisions, providing a unified and accessible view of grant information.
Time Savings: The new system has led to substantial time savings across the organization. Grant review meetings, which previously took an hour and a half, have been reduced to 30-45 minutes, resulting in 5-10 hours saved for the team each week along with hours saved from having to aggregating spreadsheets for board meetings.
Improved Data Accuracy and Reduced Errors: By consolidating data into a single system, MassTech has significantly reduced data errors and improved overall data accuracy. The elimination of multiple spreadsheets has minimized the risk of data loss and inconsistencies.
Enhanced Team Collaboration: The centralized Airtable system has greatly enhanced collaboration among team members. With all necessary information accessible in one place, communication has become simpler and more effective, ensuring everyone stays on the same page.
Improved Decision-Making: The comprehensive reporting capabilities of Airtable have provided MassTech with unprecedented insights into their grant programs. The management team can now make more informed decisions, sometimes months ahead, enhancing strategic planning and resource allocation.
Visualization and Geographic Insights: Integration with Tableau has enabled MassTech to visualize grant distributions geographically, offering a clearer understanding of the impact across different regions. This capability has improved strategic planning and resource allocation.
Increased Efficiency and Productivity: The new system has streamlined workflows, reducing redundancies and inefficiencies. This has led to overall productivity improvements and a more efficient operational structure.