Over time, grant management has become more complex, with meticulous guidelines and requirements in both pre and post-award periods. Exploring opportunities, assessing eligibility and evaluation criteria, preparing proposal applications and submissions requires extensive collaboration and paperwork. Similarly, tracking and managing awarded grants is also challenging with team members often located in different locations across the world.

On top of these are internal institutional requirements, adding an additional layer of prerequisites prior to applying for a grant. Often, interdepartmental requirements and approvals make the process demanding, which often leads to difficulties in meeting tight, competing deadlines for applications.

The System for Research and Grants Management (Sa Re Ga Ma), developed by AKDN dHRC in collaboration with the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, aims to make the grant application process more efficient. Sa Re Ga Ma assigns user-based rights according to team member roles, which allows users to conveniently manage the application development and post-award process.

It can be deployed in any entity or department with a need to organise research projects, proposal documents, and tracking status of grants.

Through the application, users are able to upload multiple versions of documents; view and download documents; and keep track of progress of the grant application, along with donor reporting. A useful feature even generates notifications to relevant team members when an action is taken on a proposal. After a grant is awarded, users can also manage post-award documents such as agreements, ethical review applications, budgets, and grant extensions.

Since June 2018, Sa Re Ga Ma has been tested at the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health at AKU. After further customisation and final tweaks, the application was officially launched in January 2019.