When internal proposal volume nearly triples in a single year, a process that worked for a decade stops working. Northwestern University's Office of Research Development reviewed 83 limited submission applications in 2024 and 239 in 2025. Competitions rose from a steady 12 to 16 a year to 23.
In a Peer Spotlight webinar, Katya Klyachko, PhD, Director of Research Development at Northwestern, showed how the university met that growth with InfoReady. Her session, From Manual to Manageable, used limited submissions as a case study explaining what the process looked like before, what problem needed solving, what Northwestern built, and what it learned.
Northwestern's limited submission process follows a path familiar to most offices of research: opportunity dissemination, letter of intent (LOI), internal proposal, committee review, and Vice President for Research authorization. Behind that path sat Smartsheet forms, SharePoint folders, and an SOP more than 40 pages long. Each reviewer had a separate Smartsheet, every applicant was added to it by hand, and completed reviews were copied into one spreadsheet for analysis.
The system held up at lower volume. It could not hold up at 239 applications, run by a single person for whom limited submissions are about 20 percent of the portfolio. Then an LOI from a department chair was missed, and the case for a new system made itself.
Katya framed the goal on two levels. The first was people: reduce administrative burden and make submitting and reviewing easier, because good reviewers are hard to recruit and worth keeping. The second was scale: one place for applications, reviews, and decisions, with a standard core process flexible enough for very different competitions.
Three competition types, one system.
First come, first served for low-interest opportunities.
An LOI for planning, collecting only name and department, when high interest is expected.
An LOI with abstract when interest is uncertain. Knowing early that a competition has 40 LOIs tells Katya to build a triage step and recruit more reviewers while there is still time.
Review workflows sized to the competition.
With 5 to 6 proposals, every reviewer reads every application.
With 7 to 15, each reviewer scores a subset, then advancing proposals open to all reviewers for discussion.
Above 15, a triage round with its own reviewers narrows the pool first.
Exporting all reviews into one file lets her summarize scores before the committee meets.
One record of activity. With the help of a consultant, Northwestern built a master database from InfoReady exports. When leadership asks how many applications arrived last year, which schools took part, or which departments supplied reviewers, the answer is in one place.
LOIs and proposals now arrive in one place instead of through forms and email. Reviewers open their assigned proposals directly and submit scores and comments in the InfoReady platform. Reminders and follow-ups are automated, and data is centralized for reporting.
Reviewers noticed. Katya reported that her 18-member committee is far more positive about the process, and that members no longer leave after a single year. "I spent so much less time managing the process that it allowed me to manage the competitions," she said. Her SOP is also much shorter.
The recording of Katya's presentation and the audience Q&A is available on YouTube.