University at Buffalo Success Story: Bringing Research to the Next Level

I right. Hello everyone and happy Tuesday. Before I dive in a couple of housekeeping items, we do have the chat and Q&A open, so feel free to have the chat and Q&A open, so feel free to post in there throughout the webinar. We're actually gonna post in there throughout the webinar. We're actually gonna wait and do questions at the very end. We're actually gonna wait and do questions at the very end. So if you have a question that comes up, through questions at the very end. We're actually gonna wait and do questions at the very end. So if you have a question that comes up, throw it in the Q&A and we'll address it later at the end. And then also this webinar is being recorded. So if for some reason you have to hop off early or you'd like to re-watch it, we will be posting that recording. So thank you for joining us to our special webinar that we're having today. We are going to dive into the success story of the university at Buffalo and how they've taken their research endeavors to the next level through their partnership with us.

It's truly an exciting journey. I love listening to the story and I'm thrilled to have you all with us to the story and I'm thrilled to have you all with us to hear it as well. And I'm thrilled to have you all with us to hear it as well. I am Kaitlin Mclean. I am the director of marketing for Red Path but you did not come here to hear from me. I am the director of marketing for Red Path, but you did not come here to hear from me. So without further ado, you did not come here to hear from me. So without further ado, I am going to turn it over to our very own Jen Claude. Thanks, Caitlin. Yes, Kaitlin mentioned. My name is Jen Clod and I'm the account executive for our higher education, practice here a good path. And joining me for our conversation this afternoon are a long time partners. So Tracy, Kracheck, Chydell, and Tom Mathini, from University of Buffalo.

So, and Tracy are going to introduce themselves in a few moments and we're just so excited to have it with us this afternoon. And so I want to tell you a little bit about Red Path for those of you that don't know us yet we are a Salesforce solutions and strategic support partner. And we've been in the space since 2,009 really focused in on serving the nonprofit and higher education clients. So specifically within higher ed, we've had the. Ability to work with several clients in the tech transfer and research spaces and so today thrilled to be talking with Tom and Tracy our longtime partners. From university at Buffalo's business and entrepreneur partnerships office and they're going to share how Salesforce has amplified the work that they are all doing in the research. And commercialization space. So Tracy, I'm gonna pass it over to you and Tom, so you can introduce yourselves in your roles at UB and tell us a little bit about your offices Tracy and who you serve.

Great. Nice to be here. Thank you, Jen. We are very honored to be working with you and continuing to do work with you. So my name is, Course Tracy and I have come from private industry. So I hadn't been in higher ed, came to private industry and been with you B for over 6 years. I oversee marketing communications and digital operations for the research and the economic development enterprise. My colleague Tom, if you'd introduce yourself and then I'll tell them a little bit about you B. Yeah, thank you, Tracy. Thank you, Jen and Caitlin. My name is Tom Mathini. I'm the CRM marketing manager for business and entrepreneur partnerships at the University of Buffalo and like Tracy I came from private industry as well and I've been at UB for 5 years and I am our Salesforce admin as well as I work with our team members on digital marketing and oversee our economic impact. Thanks, Tom. So for those who don't know, University of Buffalo, or UB as we, finally call it internally here.

We are New York's largest and most comprehensive public university. We have 12 schools, 3 campuses that are located in and around the city of Buffalo and we're Buffalo is the second largest city in New York State. And we are blessed with very close access to the Canadian border. We are a flagship university as declared by the governor of New York State. And of the SUNY system in New York State. So that. Gives us a recognition of being. A leading research and institute in public. And pride our public higher ed. So we over have over a hundred research institutes and centers and many thousands of faculty that are working on research. And focus areas such as artificial intelligence, climate tech. Robotics. Or advanced materials and energy. So this work continues to help us advance our institution to the top 25 public research universities. So to kind of give you a scope of the size, of the research enterprise that we have here and revenue that we bring to UB is we really steward about 450 million dollars of research expenditures in a year and we also capture impact to the region of about 3 billion.

So that being said, those successful entrepreneurial communities, whether they're on campus or off campus, are really a key element of how we're continuing to grow the research enterprise and also deepen relationships and partnerships with constituents. That helps us accelerate knowledge, transfer knowledge, and also increase that positive storytelling, which starts to attract students and researchers and also helps us amplify in the in the media. It really is a strategic way to, amplify our stories to funders. So let me tell you a little bit about our story and how it started. So our story starts with economic development. And the unit within the research office, which is called the business and entrepreneur partnerships. Is an area where we work to really build stronger businesses and R&D. That is really the growth with in our unit. And so in the last decade, you as research universities or universities on themselves have probably seen a number of research deals increasing with universities and industry.

And, we know that companies and collaborators outside the university has really been reducing their spending on research or basic, apply translation research and last step. Few decades. And the larger funds are coming from federal. And they increasingly. Turn to UB to perform that role. So our job is really to win. More common collaborations with commercial partners. And help take that. Research that is bearing discovery to market. So the BEP match company really matches companies and researchers and it takes our team to power this to move those innovations into the society. So we all partners continually grow and innovate and attract a great workforce. And so UB is starting to, better develop and refine, practices and take down the walls between units. So our team powers that, initiative.

Caitlin, if you could move the slides forward. And the next one. So let me frame our project and where we started. Our solution, our Salesforce solution was developed for the research and economic development innovation space. And we needed a way to really focus on a complete 3 60 view of that ecosystem. And like most other applications that you might have or that you're looking to implement the Salesforce platform for us, really helped us enable that vision. We really needed to track those potential collaborations. We had to track active engagements we had with collaborators. Those contacts, the funding sources, the active grants and the achievements. But most of all, we needed to bring that critical data into one single platform to give us the visibility to both measure, monitor, and also maximize impact that we were amplifying. So today we're gonna share some really concrete examples of the, of our Salesforce instance and we'll walk you through a 360 view.

How we put it into action and share with you some insights of really what did we accomplished in phase one, which is really about making connections with people and providing opportunities to better collaborate on bringing research revenue to the university and solving. Societal problems and public good. We also enable startup growth. So I talked about building stronger businesses. That research is also a enabled. A large portion of our portfolio is startups that are spun out. Or companies that obtain licenses. So we really want to consistently produce. Good stories and amplify those stories and this is what Salesforce has allowed us to do. So kind of let's talk about the nuts and bolts of really in your unit and probably, and I know in areas that you oversee, it's all about our partnerships and our constituents and our ability to share tribal knowledge or to talk among each other. So that we can achieve our goals together. And you know that a lot of people are on different times.

They have different. Projects and those. And those partnerships have to keep evolving at the pace that a university needs them to evolve. So we kind of categorize our constituents as primary and secondary audiences. And that's what we did for this to try to figure out what we were going to accomplish and with whom. So we tried to take the transactional partnership, which many of our partnerships start at in research and try to find one that has more lasting value. So moving those partnerships to more operational where there's more joint projects going in and out of the university to that long-term strategic partnerships, which is really a top priority for world class universities. Those create the most value and those also bring on follow on funding for research in many different ways. So the constituents we influence in our university, our internal and external and also with the state and the government. And we needed to have a way to sustain that contact information and that outreach and that was a priority for the university.

That's really what we focused on. Who we care about, who we talk to, who we interact with, and really how is that fueling what we do. We really have a shared goal, a growth mindset, and to focus on what brings revenue to university at Buffalo and what focuses on bringing more exciting R&D projects that really kind of float all bolts. With that in mind, we needed to stay close to those constituents. And be mindful in the process to really capture that engagement. So I want to take a little bit step back. About our opportunity. And Caitlin, if you could thank you. It's worth noting that our unit had a previous instance of Salesforce. So before I came to UB, there were many different units that were using a instance of Salesforce and the best way that they could. But at that time, there were many programs that were being stood up. Without any oversight. So out of 50 possible users, there's probably a handful of 3 to 5 that we're really using an instance of Salesforce, but it was built for a sole purpose and it wasn't flexible.

And so it was unmanaged and somewhat outdated and it really supported too few users. So we needed to revive the system and make everyone excited because as implemented limitations are often thought of is oh wow now what do I have to do how do I add one more thing onto my plate? So we need to revive the system and set everybody up for success. And by doing this, I played the solutions partner. How do I bridge between the university needs? The unit needs but then also think of it as a strategic level of growth. We needed a Salesforce admin and an internal project manager. I found out through my experience outside of higher ed that these are always critical. We really needed to, bring this to fruition. So we knew the opportunity was, going to cross many units. So the project began as an RFP for Salesforce, but most Importantly, that's how we met.

Red path. The thing that differentiated, I think a project. Like this that you be was that we had executive support at the highest level. When the university at that time didn't even have an enterprise solution. And so we were one of the first to kind of bring this to fruition. We aligned with the UBIT team, but they are not Salesforce developers. We didn't ask them to be. We really asked them to support our instance to really if we needed to integrate data. If we were gonna cause any risk to the exchange server, all kinds of different things that we thought of is that we brought them along and looped them in early. So when we took on these new projects and the when we scaled this instance of Salesforce, we had to make sure that it grew with our grant programs, our proposals and also our awards and that we could really start to build off of a methodology and a strategy. But in a way, also roll it up at the highest level. So we could see it from. A 3 60 view where you be leadership would be intrigued and then down to a unit or director level where they would look after what they were held accountable for.

So we are capturing what we were doing with different audiences in that 360 view internally and externally to sell up and out. To measure those outreach activities and reach milestones. And then this has allowed us to continuously approve and build upon. So our project achievements actually came really in the fruition of what our planning was with Red Path. Is that we had achievements that really helped us achieve collaborations across teams because we involved them early and often. We established business operations and processes that weren't there before because we involved our team more often. And we were then able to enhance the alignment. Instead of tribal knowledge or meetings, we replaced it with running reports in Salesforce and being able to trust that data and build transparency between what each person was doing at any stage of the game.

That led to impact measurements that really allowed us to provide more visibility into the effort. So Tom, let's dig in and why don't you tell them and show them a little bit about our instance of sales force and how it works today. Great. Thank you, Tracy. I appreciate that overview of BEP and our early Salesforce journey. Let's dig in a little bit like Tracy said and we'll talk about the power of partnerships. And some of our project goals and what we found out. Tracy mentioned that, executive sponsorship was very important and we did have a great leader to help us move the product forward. I help us work with our team members to identify what we needed. But we're looking at the project, we looked at the business unit progress tracking, having the ability to measure the outreach activities for business development and marketing. So we looked at our accountant contact management, our pipeline giving us the ability to look at leads and opportunity tracking.

Also looking at research and looking at our faculty members who wanted to look at intellectual property and have some transparency and integration with some other business units. On collaboration of milestones and achievements. Inventory management for space and resources for our incubator and other programs, as well as tracking some financial transactions. We found that that's very useful for our team members. Annual reporting and the measurement of key milestones is very important to all the members of BP as well as upper levels of University of Buffalo. And that's where we look at our yearly economic impact and academic alignment records. We do periodic and annual reporting for funders and we amplify the good work that's being done by BPT members and partners and we have a one place that we can actually see that information where Salesforce is our single point of truth. We support cross-functional collaboration and the coordination of activities to assemble positive narratives for to share good storytelling. Hey link for your next slide.

Here's an example of a dashboard that we have and you can see the 360 degree dashboard shows an overview of our different accounts and research activities. We put our audience and constituents first. Providing a more transparency and accessibility for all that are involved. We could see what's being done to maintain and build the relationships with accounts and how could we provide additional services and support leveraging additional BP business units and resources. We also want to see where things stand with our targets and growth. Salesforce allows us to identify new opportunities as BV evolves and this helps us identify the impact that BP has. And allows reporting from a single point of truth. Next slide, please.

You can see as we collaborate across units, we actually use the same functionality of dashboards and we can see a comprehensive view of the team members and we can see our pipeline who's coming in the door. And, what's stagnant? We could see a high level by business unit program department, the activities. We track opportunities and teams. The dashboard allows us to get a comprehensive view and a pulse check. What's coming in? What's stagnant for research? And then what's happening? Who needs help? As we reach our different milestones. What is the status of R&D products? These are all available on our different dashboards and then. The users have the ability to click in and next.

Big down and find out more about the. Reports that they need. Next slide, please. So if we're looking at the economic impact, that's something that's very important to UB. Many different areas. What we do is we track that through a survey that we do every year and then we bring it into. Salesforce and then this dashboard. Reflect that so we can see how many jobs were created from the different. Programs that we've managed. It's a comprehensive view and it's a real high level by unit. Program and department. Theativity tracking opportunities, teams, etc. It gives us a comprehensive view. We could actually look at the economic impact that's. Being done by our different customers as well as How can we actually take that impact and identify the needs moving forward and show how the impact been taking place to funders.

The impact also used for storytelling and digital marketing activities. Next slide, please. If we're looking at program specifics, we can actually see the dashboard offers a flexible insight into partnership pipeline and the active program engagements. Faculty members are linked to engagements and opportunities. Give an insight into the research. Their IP and startups. And the academic alignment reporting helps us track partner interactions with you be the hiring of UB students. And interns. Salesforce is integrated our economic impact survey. Those results combined with the engagements and activities allow us to easily report the economic impact.

The funders. We could actually see. The example here for how to capture the impact and the visibility into our effort and impact. Stakeholders have insight into types of accounts and Salesforce and the business formation type and ownership. The insight shows that DEI and funding information across all program types. And the achievements in Salesforce allow all members of BP to add success stories, milestones, and media mentions to complete the profile based on how they're interacting with customers. Now Tracy will wrap up and tell you how we leverage impact data to better provide storytelling to put it into play on the web, social, and in marketing materials. Thanks, Tom. So you saw how we work to build stronger pipelines and that could be from opportunity proposals to awards to collaborations with R&D and partners from corporate partners to industry in certain segments. Those outcomes of phase one have really built a robust platform and we've collected this data and found new collaborations and also positions ones that were successful in the news and it helps us tell a better, insightful, story.

So we continue to learn each day. And refine, and now we have data at our fingertips. So on the next slide you'll just see a way that we can use that data to amplify internally and externally. So from providing data to the state of the university to the president. To also providing data for the vice president of research and economic development who is our executive sponsor on this project and is on the cabinet level. That allows us to really be leading the way and showing how data and the amplification of data is important. We've been able to, integrate the single instance of truth. Into our web presence and to email campaigns. We also have built ties back to anyone that's working on any type of collaborative project they can copy easily their outlook emails and their campaign touches.

It makes onboarding a new team member or being able to filter on keywords to find some that's working in that space, especially with a faculty and a faculty profile, it allows us to really you know, build better proposals and keep awards moving in the right direction. Imagine capturing all the interactions in one place on an important aspect of what your business is. It's a great start for continued growth and we wanted to share some advice to prepare for your successful digital transformation. So I talked about where we fit, on leadership. And the next slide is just to really kind of talk about we made it part of everyone's performance. So here's some lessons learned. Is we all are held accountable by merit and performance reviews. And we were able to get that on everyone's performance review. So we were able to set expectations. We are outlining bandwidth needed for a project of the size.

And we needed every role and every level to be involved. So that strong executive sponsorship, was not our project. It was a priority for the university. It wasn't a marketing project, a communications project, a project that would benefit only a few. It benefited many. And together we defined our critical critical success factors early. We were transport parent about UV's prioritization price prioritization. It was a big factor in this. Collaboration and something we could always circle back to. So if anybody pushed back, we would, we were able to come back and say, well, this is what we all decided to do because we felt that this would move us forward. Based on the discovery that Red Path had done with us. We also agreed that, each collaboration and contact or account or engagement was worth, money to UB. We actually put a value and dollar amount on what that meant and how it would make us more efficient and actually save us money in the long run.

So Tom, can you give a little bit about, where and why did we go with an implementer like red path? Yes, thank you, Tracy. But we had a strong idea where we would need an expert red path built in those gaps to make us whole. We needed some help with project management. We needed to be dedicated as a true partner. We wanted a hands on approach. Somebody that gave us detailed and thorough discovery process, And we needed a neutral party to help us with some of those conversations to give proper guidance and best practices for our users. You don't know what you don't know. And, you may not be able to tell IT what's needed without a assistance. And Tracy. Oh sure.

Thanks, Tom. So we know that we have vision for the future and we also have, a lot of things that we're doing today. And it's a phased approach. But what I'd like to do is pause to see if there are any questions that we can answer at this time so that we can at least. Help you if there's questions that you are. Struggling with right now or if you haven't started or if you're in the middle of an implementation. Thank you so much, Tracy and Tom. I'm going to, we have a couple of questions in the Q&A. I'm going to, we have a couple of questions in the Q&A. I think Tracy, you touched on this, but we can just reiterate it again. Where does you be BP report in the UB leadership organization?

Yes, so I'll just touch on that again. So research and economic development is a cabinet level position. It's a vice president of research. Innovation and economic development and I see that second question it talks about like what is industry partnerships so there are many different partnerships with industry. Meaning there might be something that corporate relations is building alumni relations might be building philanthropy right gifts there's maybe down in the dirty R&D projects where you have a researcher and maybe some students that are working on researcher and maybe some students that are working on research. So it really covers the gametes that are working on research. So it really covers the gamut of industry or business partnerships with the university. So it really covers the gamut of industry or business partnerships with the university. And what we had to do is really categorize it Our instance of our Salesforce covers research and economic development and what we have to report back to the state and federal funders. So sponsored research projects and things that are already in the works. What What we did was Look at I talked about those transactional operational or the strategic accounts.

We took the industry partners that were most strategic based on our areas of growth and we started there. So it really is a comprehensive view to try to better understand what is that partnership look like. And there's walls. We can't deny that there's walls built out. There's some people that didn't want to work on the project at that moment. But what we're doing is we started in an area that we knew our unit from tech transfer to a different people that are interfacing with over, you know, 600 partners. From private industry we've had to find a way to start to prove what we knew to be true and we took a lot of best practices from, as you can see from other private type of companies that do opportunity management. Hopefully that helped. And yes, I see addressing the wall, silo issue is a challenge. And so what I would do is what we did is we worked this problem.

Backwards and said, you know, what is important to the university in regarding revenue and we then said if we were able to can sustain the revenue or increase it. We've been asked to, double our research expenditures. We knew that we would have to do a lot more monitoring of new faculty that was coming into our pipeline. New areas of focus. We had to better online what the federal government's looking for. What is our state government looking for? So those opportunities that needed to be managed, had to be dealt with like a revenue generating company on the outside does. And with that, it allows us to move at the speed. That needs to happen sometimes with business partnerships. But we still do a lot of basic research that leads to Discovery, which leads to in use and application in the field and then trying to get that to market.

How do we get that research to market? So anyone in your family can feel it so we can feel what it's like to solve. You know, MS or to work on something that's gonna change a water supply. So super exciting and, hopefully and we are open for any kind of outreach if you ever want to contact us. You can do that through red path and they'll route you right to us to give you, some stories and kind of help you along. Great. Thank you so much. We are at time for the day. So I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for attending this webinar and a special thank you to Tom Tracy and Jen for sharing this story with all of us today. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you.