Infonetica Ltd

Research Management Platform

"Research Flow" is an end-to-end Research Information Management System supporting administration, approval processes, document management, compliance requirements, data protection impact assessment, partner due diligence processes and contracting needs for the full lifecycle of all research projects carried out by a research institution (e.g. university, hospital, government body, institutional review board)

Features

• Manage end-to-end admin, processes and approvals for any research
• Track and manage Pre-Award grant and funding applications
• Integration with Finance & HR for automated project costings
• Incorporate Export Control checks and workflows at required milestones
• Full ethical compliance review and approval workflow (EthicsRM)
• Data compliance through guided Data Protection Impact Assessments
• High-level and Detailed Financial and Capability Due Diligence
• Document management and maintenance for all Partner / Collaborator Contracts
• Role based dashboards and research portfolio status reporting
• Full audit trails of all research admin activities and files

Benefits

• Seamless management of end-to-end admin and processes for research
• Improved research grant and funding success rate
• Streamlined ethics compliance processes which automated approvals
• Improved data compliance through compliant Data Protection Impact Assessment workflows
• Export Control compliance assurance through guided assessment and licencing management
• Reduce risk through effective Contracts management with Partners and Collaborators
• Reduced workflow complexity, missed deadlines and information gaps
• Easily access all project documentation and updates
• Create significant cost savings through efficiency and accuracy
• Significant time savings for PIs and Research Office

£120,000 to £130,000 a licence a year

• Education pricing available
• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at Russell.Pridmore@infonetica.net. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

651645506521826

Contact

Russell Pridmore
0208 334 6900
Russell.Pridmore@infonetica.net

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: No
• Cloud deployment model: Private cloud
• Service constraints: None
• System requirements:
  • Internet
  • Web browser

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Tickets are classified into 4 groups depending on the nature of a ticket and the severity of the incident. The response rate is dependent on the severity. A table detailing response rates and escalation routes is included in the contract.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: No
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: No
• Support levels: We provide training to system administrators to build forms and workflows as well as to manage and use the system. These training sessions are provided at the start of the service and subsequently on a needs basis.; The system has been very intuitive that users have not needed any training to use the system.; In addition, we offer telephone, email and support via an Online Jira platform for any system related queries or issues. ; Clients would also have a single point of technical contact as further support.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: We train system administrators to set up the system for optimal use. We train them to create and amend forms, workflows and templates. Training is provided onsite or online. We also provide user documentation.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats:
  • PDF
  • Other
• Other documentation formats: DOC
• End-of-contract data extraction: We extract and provide customers with their data in the native format.
• End-of-contract process: An extract of customer data in a native format in the timescales provided in the contract is included in the price of the contract. Any change to format (where possible) and timescales incur an additional cost.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
• Application to install: No
• Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
• Differences between the mobile and desktop service: None
• Service interface: No
• User support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: Using the API, users can export data to and import data from other systems. The API can consume as well as output in XML or JSON data.
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats:
  • PDF
  • Other
• API sandbox or test environment: Yes
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: System administrators can customise forms, workflows and branding. They can also customise screens and dashboards for various user types. Administrators and reviewers can customise their personal work area.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: All customers run in their own resource pool. While the system is capable of utilising excess resources if required, we can also clamp the resources to ensure a single customer does not impact other users.

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: Applications, users, reviewers, status, outcome and storage.
• Reporting types: Reports on request

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• Government security clearance: Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Managed by a third party
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
• Equipment disposal approach: A third-party destruction service

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: Users are be able to download their applications which include data they submit. At the end of the contract, clients would receive an extract of their data in the native format.
• Data export formats:
  • CSV
  • Other
• Other data export formats:
  • DOC
  • PDF
  • JSON
  • XML
  • HTML
• Data import formats:
  • CSV
  • Other
• Other data import formats:
  • XML
  • JSON

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network: TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: Service level agreement (SLA) for availability is included as part of the contract terms and conditions, which also includes details of refunds if guaranteed levels of availability are not met.
• Approach to resilience: All servers are virtualised and clustered. It is designed to be self healing so a working server will always take over from a failed server. We maintain a second facility that keeps a realtime copy of the Data and ensures the whole service is resilient from any hardware failure right through to entire data centre failure. Hourly backups with 90 day retention ensure partial data can be restored from a partial corruption or error.
• Outage reporting: A customer dashboard displays overall SLA levels for the past 12 months.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication:
  • Username or password
  • Other
• Other user authentication: The platform supports standard forms of authentication out-of-the-box. It also supports various forms of Single Sign-on including ADFS, Azure and Shibboleth. It also supports authentication directly through LDAP. We also offer dual authentication for institutions that have chosen a single sign-on system. This will allow both internal and external reviewers to access the system.
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: We have tightly controlled privileged account access. Support require permission from clients to access their account through the management interface of the site. ; ; Support have no direct access to backend systems and data. Direct management of internal systems controlling the data is tightly controlled by 2 senior employees.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Management access authentication:
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users have access to real-time audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: Between 6 months and 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • CyberEssentials (CyberEssentials+ is being finalised)
  • DataCentres are ISO27001
  • We are PCI DSS compliant through self assessment.

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: Other
• Other security governance standards: CyberEssentials+; Our DataCentres are ISO27001
• Information security policies and processes: We have a full ISMS set of policies and processes covering all aspects of our Security and operations. This can be provided on request.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: We maintain a fully secured source control and change management system. All changes are peer reviewed before committing. Deployment of change is only possible from a committed change. We work on lots of small changes rather than significant bulk updates. If we make a substantial change to the solution security, this would trigger a fresh penetration test.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: Aside from regular penetration testing, we operate enterprise grade Malware and intrusion detection. This analyses our logs and services looking for vulnerabilities that match criteria supplied from common threat notification services. These services include IBM, Cylance & Alienvault OTX reports.; ; Patch management systems are in place to ensure critical updates are immediately deployed with Bi-Weekly patch reviews of non critical updates.
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: Both our Malware detection and Security Management systems detect threat activities from application behaviour or logged events. If a potential compromise is detected, both are capable of tracing back the source of the compromise which helps identify what that compromise had access up to it's prevention or termination.; ; Potential compromises are investigated as a top priority and we have a full Incident response process to ensure we respond internally and notify users of any breach within the the ICO guidelines.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: We have a full incident management process detailing incident grading and response times. This can be provided on request.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Supplier-defined process

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: No

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Equal opportunity

  Fighting climate change

  As a cloud-based service, our Research Flow platform offers reduced electricity consumption, higher utilisation rates across the cloud infrastructure and reduced reliance on infrastructure than any on-premise application

  Equal opportunity

  We are an equal opportunities employer with a diverse team. We have active equal opportunities policies for topics such as anti-discrimination, our equitable recruitment and selection process, and flexible working. One of our Core Values, which we use as a selection criteria for recruit, assess performance against, and demonstrate consistently, is 'Respect' which we define as including 'treating others as equals'.

Pricing

• Price: £120,000 to £130,000 a licence a year
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: A free instance of the service with limited users and user roles for a period of 6 months. Set-up support and customisation may be charged depending on complexity.

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at Russell.Pridmore@infonetica.net. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.