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Research Administration and Sponsored Programs for Higher Education

Research enterprises face growing regulatory demands and pressure to scale. We help universities strengthen operations across administration, compliance, and technology so your faculty can focus on discovery.

Building sustainable research operations together

Research administration requires managing competing priorities: increasing research expenditures while strengthening compliance, modernizing technology while controlling costs, and building workforce capacity despite turnover. We collaborate with research leaders across the university to address these challenges holistically, strengthening operations across administration, compliance, technology, and talent to reduce burden, mitigate risk, and build sustainable infrastructure.

  • Innovating grant management with Washington State University

    When Washington State University needed a solution for complex grant forecasting, it selected Deloitte to design an industry-first tool using Workday Adaptive Planning. This approach combined institutional and technical experience to create a system that forecasts facilities and administrative (F&A) costs, projects personnel expenses, and enables scenario planning. The solution supports more than 900 researchers, standardizes reporting, and serves as a national model for research administration.

  • Positioning an R1 for research excellence

    Deloitte collaborated with a large public R1 university to assess its research administration enterprise. Our team analyzed organizational structure, workloads, and staffing across sponsored programs, compliance offices, and post-award operations. Through benchmarking and more than 100 stakeholder interviews, we developed optimal staffing models and a prioritized implementation roadmap, enabling the institution to support rapid growth while maintaining its standard of excellence.

  • Designing the future of research administration

    A premier biomedical research university engaged Deloitte to reimagine research administration ahead of a transformative financial and grants management system implementation. We conducted 25+ workshops, analyzed more than 100 process documents, and developed future-state recommendations spanning the research life cycle. Our detailed process maps, policy updates, and change strategies positioned the institution to enhance research operations and enable effective technology adoption.

  • Innovating grant management with Washington State University
  • Positioning an R1 for research excellence
  • Designing the future of research administration