Supply, Installation & Maintenance of a Research Information System

SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies) is the only Higher Education institution in Europe specialising in the study of Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East. Uniquely combining language scholarship, disciplinary expertise and regional focus, it has the largest concentration in Europe of academic staff concerned with these regions.

The School was founded as the School of Oriental Studies in 1916, relocated to Russell Square in 1941 and took its present title in 2014.

Over the last century SOAS has built a strong academic reputation throughout the world and especially in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It has outstanding facilities, both scholarly and practical and is a global academic base and a crucial resource for London.

We are now seeking a provider to: supply, install and maintain an "off the shelf" Research Information System (RIS); train staff to use it; and work with SOAS to deliver a suitably configured system to support research lifecycle business processes.

The RIS will specifically cover the pre-award part of the research life cycle. The core business processes within scope are:

• The development of grant applications from inception to the point of submission.
• The costing of grant applications and creation of budgets for the subsequent project(s)
• The review and approval process of grant applications
• The ethics approval process
• The peer review process
• The collection of management information on the above processes
• The delivery of user-friendly and tailored enquiries and reports against this management information

However SOAS anticipates the purchased system to be extensible to support the full end-to-end research lifecycle when funding allows.

Bidders may choose to partner other organisations in order to supply their proposed solution and SOAS would accept this approach. However, should such a bid be successful, to ensure satisfactory performance, SOAS would wish to enter into a single contract.