The Best Robotic Process Automation Certifications Online for 2022
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It’s a well-known fact that organizational change never comes easy. Change management is a vast topic that encompasses a lot, so it’s easy to get lost when rolling out new changes. For example, workflow changes will have different needs than an IT change (such as switching to another system or implementing new software).
As such, you need a diverse array of change management tools to help you meet the needs of each type of change. More often than not, those tools include software. These tools and programs will help provide order to the often chaotic change management process.
The best change management tools will help you with:
Employee engagement
IT service management
Speeding up processes through automation
New employee training programs
New technology
Avoiding disruptions and eliminating resistance
As you can see, the right tools can help you implement changes with ease. But where can you find the most reliable change management software?
That’s the question that we’re going to answer today. Stay tuned to discover the highest-rated and most effective change management tools for 2022.
If you’ve never spearheaded major changes at a company before, you may not know why you need tools in the first place. After all, isn’t creating a robust change management plan and sticking to it enough to get the job done?
While a plan is undoubtedly necessary, implementing the changes included in the plan is far easier said than done. Consider this statistic — while nearly every company goes through changes these days — over half of all change management initiatives fail. In fact, only 34% report clear success, with 16% showing mixed results.
Organizational change is so difficult to pull off due to the nature of change itself. As humans, we’re naturally averse to change, especially if we’re used to things going a certain way for so long. For example, it’s almost always the case that some employees will resist change and want to maintain the status quo. It can be incredibly challenging to implement a change and sustain it into the future. That’s especially true whenever a change is highly urgent and necessary for the organization’s survival.
Luckily, specific software tools make managing change far easier. They can help you stay on track with your deadlines by using checklists and other helpful templates. These tools can assist with decision-making, project management, change control, etc. They can also help you engage with your employees to get them excited about the change instead of dreading it.
Let’s consider a brief example of software assisting with successful change management.
Say that a company has floundering returns and decides to reinvent itself with a brand-new focus. In doing so, their salespeople will have to sell completely new products. They’ll also need to learn how to use tablets and a new software program so they can pitch to clients on the go.
It’s a steep challenge that can go south without the proper plan and tools in place. The organization needs to fully support its employees as they go about redefining their roles and what it means to work for the company. To help, they use software to aid with employee engagement and training. They use the program to track changes and see which department needs help — such as a particular team struggling to grasp the selling points of the new product.
On the IT side, they use a program to create an interactive guide on how to use the new technology they’re rolling out (the tablets and software). The guide is user-friendly and contains PDFs, videos, and infographics — so the staff has no problem learning how to use their new gadgets.
Because of these tools, employees receive the proper training and support they need for a seamless change. That’s a simple example of how you can use software tools to make organizational change management more manageable and less chaotic.
By now, you should understand why tools are necessary for the change management process. Like anything else, not all change management software is created equal. That’s why you’ll want to use these criteria when evaluating a new tool:
It should have an attractive and logical user interface (UI).
There should be ample training and support available for the program.
The tool should have helpful metrics that you can use to measure your success.
There should be visualization tools like flowcharts and process maps.
Integrations are often useful and help you combine the functionality of two tools into one.
The pricing should be fair and include a lot of features for the money.
Without further ado, let’s look at the most effective change management tools out there today.
Best for: Employee onboarding and adopting new software.
Organization size: All sizes.
Most desirable feature: Intuitive step-by-step walkthroughs for adopting changes.
First, we have WhatFix, a platform best used for adopting new technology. It has a flexible pricing structure, and there is a free trial available, which is a plus. You can easily create workflows that serve as interactive guides for your employees. In other words, you can create customizable training programs for your staff on new software and more.
If you’re rolling out a new application at your company, WhatFix is a great tool to have by your side. You can seamlessly create contextual pop-ups and guided widgets to make instruction a breeze. Its dashboards also provide you with real-time updates on your change activity.
You’ll get to view:
How many queries you’ve served
How many times employees have played your workflows
Your most popular workflows
You can also track user progress to see how your employees are doing. That will enable you to discover who’s struggling with the changes the most so you can provide them with assistance.
Do you have zero experience with coding? That’s not a problem when you use WhatFix. You can create guides and workflows without writing a single line of code. That comes in handy for project managers that want to create instructional guides but aren’t familiar with code.
Additionally, if you have disabled employees at your organization, WhatFix, has built-in accessible technology that meets the compliance requirements of section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act.
The walkthroughs you create with WhatFix can appear in several different formats, including:
Videos
PDFs
Slideshows
Screenshots
This versatility comes in handy, as it grants you the freedom to select the best format for each guide. For example, you may find that your employees respond better to videos showing them what to do instead of PDFs with plain text. You can easily insert each guide into any help desk or LMS (learning management system).
Best for: Collaborating with teams.
Organization size: All sizes.
Most desirable feature: 400+ native integrations with popular applications.
Do multiple teams in your organization need to coordinate as part of your change management plan? If so, you’ll benefit from using Wrike. It’s a fantastic team collaboration software with over 400 integrations with other apps.
It’s also incredibly intuitive, so your staff can get started using it straight away — no training required. Users can effortlessly navigate dashboards, messages, reports, notifications, etc. That makes interdepartmental communication more accessible than ever. Managers can communicate and coordinate as well as stakeholders and executives.
Wrike comes with plenty of visualization tools as well, such as:
Business continuity templates
One-click Gantt charts
Kanban boards
Flowcharts
You also have the option to start using Wrike completely free — regardless of the size of your organization. If you’re interested in their premium version, you can enjoy a 14-day free trial, and plans start at $9.80 a month per user.
Clear, concise communication is one of the core components of any successful change management plan. Poor communication is one of the leading causes of resistance and disruptions. That’s why a tool like Wrike is so helpful. It makes it extremely easy for departments to coordinate and communicate at all times. Due to its many integrations, employees can use Wrike in conjunction with apps like Salesforce, Dropbox, and offerings from Microsoft and Google.
Should a team member have an essential question for staff from another department, they can simply leave them a message on Wrike.
Lastly, Wrike has fantastic customer support in place at all times for its users. Should you hit a snag with the program, there’s a bustling support community online ready to help you. Wrike also has interactive training guides and videos to use whenever you’re getting started.
Best for: Controlling IT changes
Organization size: Large
Most desirable feature: Dedicated ITIL (information technology infrastructure library) processes
If your large organization is rolling out IT changes, Giva eChangeManager is a must-have tool to have by your side.
It’s fantastic for tracking and navigating:
Server upgrades
System patches
Software implementation
Application changes
Compliance audits
You can use Giva not only to roll out change but also to plan it. There are detailed analytics in place that will help you measure KPIs with ease. It’s also one of the few programs with processes designed explicitly for ITIL. These speed up approval times and make document management effortless.
For larger organizations, it can be challenging to keep track of their IT changes due to moving at such a rapid pace. Luckily, Giva has an extensive reporting system in place. It keeps detailed records of all IT changes for long-term visibility. That means you’ll have an easier time keeping track of everything you’ve done so far in your IT department. As such, you’re far less likely to hit a snag or become confused by a new change.
Giva’s interface is highly customizable — so you’ll be able to tweak it to your heart’s content. You can customize fields, screens, business rules engines, and options to align with your needs. There are also workflow processes for routing new IT changes. That will help your staff keep all their ducks in a row when tweaking servers and networks.
Give enables you to send out notifications to your staff through several different methods, including:
Pager
Email
Cell phone
PDA
That way, you can always keep your staff informed with status updates and messages. Give eChangeManager has a 30-day free trial, and monthly plans start at $29 a month per user.
Best for: IT service management
Organization size: Medium to large
Most desirable feature: Documenting, monitoring, and coordinating change management requests
When rolling out a change, you’ll want to make sure your IT department is ready to handle all your process requests. A perfect tool to assist with that is BMC Ready Change Management 9, an ITSM (IT service management) tool from BMC software. It’s also an ITIL compliant process and has a customizable dashboard that’s easy to navigate.
IT staff can monitor change requests, create change plans, and manage new releases in one convenient location with this tool. Its automated notifications will go out to stakeholders to help streamline communication. The program also works on desktop or mobile phones, thanks to its cloud capabilities (it works on-premise too). That’s a valuable feature for managing change from any location, such as a hotel room or from home.
Other useful features include its automated collision detection and impact analytics. A collision occurs whenever you have two change requests with overlapping implementation schedules. As you can imagine, that will drastically affect the success of your change management plan. If a collision goes unnoticed, it can cause serious timeline problems for your strategy. BMC Ready Change Management 9 will automatically detect collisions, so you’ll never have to worry about them throwing a wrench in your plans.
The program’s impact analytics will help you identify key stakeholders in a change and assess the overall impact on your organization as a whole. That is invaluable information to have when creating a change management plan.
There are free trials available, and you can find information about pricing on their website.
Best for: ITIL and DevOps
Organization size: Enterprise
Most desirable feature: SLA (service level agreements) management
ChangeGear Change Manager was specifically designed to serve three roles: IT, DevOps, and business.
Change Manager has many valuable features, from PCI compliance to limiting bottlenecks in DevOps. In fact, it has built-in change model workflows for all three of its roles. The program also makes heavy use of automation to streamline changes and improve communication. The dashboard features visual reporting, key metrics, and KPIs that are easy to understand.
If you’re attempting to manage a significant change at an enterprise-level organization, ChangeGear Change Manager is the perfect tool. With it, you’ll have a central hub for all the changes that occur throughout the organization. That makes it easier to stay on track with your timelines and measure your success so far.
If you’re interested in ChangeGear, you can sign up to take a free test drive.
Best for: Managing changes for employees and customers
Organization size: Any
Most desirable feature: Error-preventing guidance tools
Do you need employee onboarding for Salesforce? If so, WalkMe is a tool you can use to simplify the process. That’s because the program has built-in guidance tools and onboarding for Salesforce, Jira, NetSuite, and many others. There are also guidance tools that can help you encourage desired behaviors from employees and customers.
For this reason, WalkMe is an essential tool for companies eager to make changes with their employees and their customer base. The tool also comes in handy for resource planning during changes via the way it simplifies back-office functions.
WalkMe has:
Effortless HelpDesk access
Custom desktop notifications
Insights into employee and customer behavior
Error-preventing tools
WalkMe has a free demo and starts at $7,500 a year. They also have custom pricing plans based on many factors.
Since effective change management never comes easy – it’s best to use every tool at your disposal to simplify the process. All the tools on this list will help streamline the change process and assist with essential tasks for IT, HR, sales, and DevOps.
No matter the size of your organization, software tools are often necessary for analyzing metrics, measuring success, and managing timelines.
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The editors at Solutions Review have compiled this list to spotlight some of the best free and open-source RPA tools worth considering.
Searching for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software can be a daunting (and expensive) process requiring long hours of research and deep pockets. RPA systems are popular for a reason, but they may provide more features than a non-enterprise organization needs. Thankfully, there are several free and open-source RPA solutions out there.
With that in mind, the editors at Solutions Review compiled the following list to highlight some of the top-rated free and/or open-source RPA tools in the marketplace.
Some of these solutions are offered by vendors looking to sell you on their enterprise product eventually. Others are maintained and operated by a community of developers looking to democratize robotic process automation.
Free RPA Tools Defined
Free RPA platforms refer to products offered commercially free by the solution provider. These offerings are usually trimmed-down versions of the expert or enterprise editions, offering basic functionality that enables users to back up their data.
Commercially free RPA tools typically offer less functionality than their open-source counterparts but are often a great way to gain more than a free trial if it’s a product you were already considering.
Searching for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software can be a daunting (and expensive) process requiring long hours of research and deep pockets. RPA systems are popular for a reason, but they may provide more features than a non-enterprise organization needs. Thankfully, there are several free and open-source RPA solutions out there.
With that in mind, the editors at Solutions Review compiled the following list to highlight some of the top-rated free and/or open-source RPA tools in the marketplace.
Some of these solutions are offered by vendors looking to sell you on their enterprise product eventually. Others are maintained and operated by a community of developers looking to democratize robotic process automation.
Free RPA platforms refer to products offered commercially free by the solution provider. These offerings are usually trimmed-down versions of the expert or enterprise editions, offering basic functionality that enables users to back up their data.
Commercially free RPA tools typically offer less functionality than their open-source counterparts but are often a great way to gain more than a free trial if it’s a product you were already considering.
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Open-source RPA software is software with a source code that anyone can inspect, modify, or enhance. These tools are publicly accessible and are commonly managed and maintained by organizations with a specific mission in mind.
It’s important to remember that some of the open-source offers included in this list require some development skills, which may make them less than ideal for your use case. We recommend reading each tool’s FAQ to see how much coding is required to take advantage of the software. The open-source tools usually do a good job of explaining the requirements for use on the download pages.
Description: Automai RPA streamlines business processes and reduces errors. The Robotic Automation Platform allows users to utilize the same automation scenarios for the lifecycle of all the applications used for their business processes. The tool is code-free, offering an intuitive scenario builder using recorder and user actions. With Automai, users have access to a single platform to serve the automation needs of their organization, development, and operations teams. While not an open-source solution, Automai offers a free trial that companies can use to start improving their processes.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Description: Automation Anywhere is an RPA tool that combines conventional RPA with intelligent elements like language understanding and reading unstructured data. The platform also offers intelligent automation for business and IT operations that use SMART automation technology to automate complex tasks, distribute tasks to multiple computers, and offer scriptless automation. The company’s RPA Workspace software is a low-code solution with a free trial that companies can use to test its capabilities.
Description: Automation Anywhere is an RPA tool that combines conventional RPA with intelligent elements like language understanding and reading unstructured data. The platform also offers intelligent automation for business and IT operations that use SMART automation technology to automate complex tasks, distribute tasks to multiple computers, and offer scriptless automation. The company’s RPA Workspace software is a low-code solution with a free trial that companies can use to test its capabilities.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Description: Blue Prism offers a diverse product portfolio, including intelligent automation, robotic operating models, Blue Prism Cloud, automation lifecycle management, and a process assessment tool, among other devices. Blue Prism’s intelligent automation platform offers no-code and pro-code tools and is available for on-prem, public cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments and SaaS deployments. Blue Prism can be implemented within four to six weeks and does not require programming skills during deployment. The solution offers a free trial.
Description: Blue Prism offers a diverse product portfolio, including intelligent automation, robotic operating models, Blue Prism Cloud, automation lifecycle management, and a process assessment tool, among other devices. Blue Prism’s intelligent automation platform offers no-code and pro-code tools and is available for on-prem, public cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments and SaaS deployments. Blue Prism can be implemented within four to six weeks and does not require programming skills during deployment. The solution offers a free trial.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Description: Capto is an open-source RPA provider based out of Europe and primarily works with clients of all sizes across the Legal, Financial Services, and Procurement industries. The company’s cloud-based, open-source, and fully customizable bots can help businesses optimize their operations, lower the cost of investment, and drive revenue. Capabilities include document generation, invoice processing, procure-to-pay (P2P), email automation, real-time reporting, automated data entry, excel workflows, new user onboarding, ERP automation, systems integration, tax return automation, and more.
Description: Capto is an open-source RPA provider based out of Europe and primarily works with clients of all sizes across the Legal, Financial Services, and Procurement industries. The company’s cloud-based, open-source, and fully customizable bots can help businesses optimize their operations, lower the cost of investment, and drive revenue. Capabilities include document generation, invoice processing, procure-to-pay (P2P), email automation, real-time reporting, automated data entry, excel workflows, new user onboarding, ERP automation, systems integration, tax return automation, and more.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Description: HelpSystems’ tool, Automate, is a comprehensive RPA platform developed to automate repetitive and manual processes across an organization. Automate has a strong ease of use, robust functionality, and the ability to scale automation strategies. HelpSystems offers a graphical workflow design to bring IT and business teams together, the ability to integrate with an extensive list of applications, centralized visibility, management, reporting, and analytics within distributed networks. HelpSystem offers a free trial for its Automate solution.
Description: HelpSystems’ tool, Automate, is a comprehensive RPA platform developed to automate repetitive and manual processes across an organization. Automate has a strong ease of use, robust functionality, and the ability to scale automation strategies. HelpSystems offers a graphical workflow design to bring IT and business teams together, the ability to integrate with an extensive list of applications, centralized visibility, management, reporting, and analytics within distributed networks. HelpSystem offers a free trial for its Automate solution.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Description: Kofax RPA offers an approach to acquiring, enhancing, and delivering information from any application or data source. The solution provides low-code and no-code development tools, enabling business users and citizen developers to design, develop, build, launch, and manage RPA across workflows. Kofax helps users to remove errors by automating data gathering and input, increasing operational efficiency with intelligent software robots, and monitoring and optimizing processes with robotic process intelligence. A free trial is available.
Description: Kofax RPA offers an approach to acquiring, enhancing, and delivering information from any application or data source. The solution provides low-code and no-code development tools, enabling business users and citizen developers to design, develop, build, launch, and manage RPA across workflows. Kofax helps users to remove errors by automating data gathering and input, increasing operational efficiency with intelligent software robots, and monitoring and optimizing processes with robotic process intelligence. A free trial is available.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Description: Linx is a no-code RPA platform that allows for the rapid development and deployment of automated processes and tasks. The platform also offers a no-code IDE designer that speeds up development and a hosted server for fast deployment. Linx also allows users to easily integrate with Software as a Service (SaaS) tools, legacy systems, and any ODBC, OLE DB, or NoSQL databases. Linx offers a free version of its software alongside several priced models.
Description: Linx is a no-code RPA platform that allows for the rapid development and deployment of automated processes and tasks. The platform also offers a no-code IDE designer that speeds up development and a hosted server for fast deployment. Linx also allows users to easily integrate with Software as a Service (SaaS) tools, legacy systems, and any ODBC, OLE DB, or NoSQL databases. Linx offers a free version of its software alongside several priced models.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Description: As part of the Pega Platform, Pega Robotic Process Automation delivers a range of capabilities. The solution offers Pega RPA Auto-balancing, a feature designed to ensure that a user’s investment in process automation yields positive results. The Pega Email Bot utilizes natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence to automatically triage, route, and respond to emails, giving employees time to focus on other tasks. The workforce intelligence tool also uses AI to determine where and when to automate for optimal impact. A free trial is available.
Description: The UiPath RPA Platform allows anyone in an organization to build and use robots. Developers with more experience can use a rich development environment, while citizen developers can automate simple, day-to-day tasks for themselves and their teams with StudioX. UiPath also enables users to test their processes with Test Suite. Additionally, the vendor offers a range of ways to engage with bots through Action Center, UiPath Assistant, and Chatbots. Users can also create and manage governance policies with Automation Ops. A 60-day free trial is available.
Description: Curated for Windows-based computers, VisualCron is an automation, integration, and task-scheduling tool. The software requires no programming skills to learn and build tasks and features an easy-to-use user interface. VisualCron has over 300 custom tasks developed with different technologies based on customer requirements and feedback. Additionally, users can control the flow of actions based on the type of error and output. A 45-day free trial is available.
Description: As part of the Pega Platform, Pega Robotic Process Automation delivers a range of capabilities. The solution offers Pega RPA Auto-balancing, a feature designed to ensure that a user’s investment in process automation yields positive results. The Pega Email Bot utilizes natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence to automatically triage, route, and respond to emails, giving employees time to focus on other tasks. The workforce intelligence tool also uses AI to determine where and when to automate for optimal impact. A free trial is available.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Description: The UiPath RPA Platform allows anyone in an organization to build and use robots. Developers with more experience can use a rich development environment, while citizen developers can automate simple, day-to-day tasks for themselves and their teams with StudioX. UiPath also enables users to test their processes with Test Suite. Additionally, the vendor offers a range of ways to engage with bots through Action Center, UiPath Assistant, and Chatbots. Users can also create and manage governance policies with Automation Ops. A 60-day free trial is available.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
Description: Curated for Windows-based computers, VisualCron is an automation, integration, and task-scheduling tool. The software requires no programming skills to learn and build tasks and features an easy-to-use user interface. VisualCron has over 300 custom tasks developed with different technologies based on customer requirements and feedback. Additionally, users can control the flow of actions based on the type of error and output. A 45-day free trial is available.
Learn more and compare products with the Solutions Review Buyer’s Guide for Business Process Management.
By Jon Gold
Senior Writer, Computerworld |
Adobe is bringing broader integration of its document management, tracking and validation services into Microsoft’s product ecosystem, including tighter connections to Teams and the Purview information protection framework.
At Microsoft’s annual Build software conference, Adobe announced a new single sign-on option for Acrobat for Teams, integration with Purview from directly within the desktop version of Acrobat, and Microsoft Power Automation functionality that will allow users to make repetitive tasks with Acrobat Sign easier, among other features.
Adobe also announced unified installation technology for all of the newly released features, meaning that IT staff can deploy them across their organizations with relative simplicity, as well as the achievement of FedRAMP Moderate (a government security standard) certification and Sign Graph connectivity, meaning that checking on signature status for things like sales contracts and onboarding is now faster.
Adobe also shared a tech preview version of Live Share from recent acquisition Frame.io, also in combination with Microsoft Teams. This feature, if and when it enters production, could allow groups of workers to collaborate live on a document, discussing it via Teams and reviewing it interactively.
The new feature sets are, in large part, a response to the pandemic-prompted spike in remote work, according to Adobe.
“Our new hybrid work reality has turbocharged the shift from paper to digital, and no one can afford to be left behind,” the company said in a statement.
IDC research manager Steve Charbonnier said that hybrid working models demand different methods of handling important documents — remote employees, after all, can’t simply walk down the hallway to HR to get a new copy of a crucial form.
“The reason they’re looking at this is … is that it gives the users lots of flexibility in terms of how they automate their sign-in processes,” he said. “It’s all managed, it has the correct audit trail attached to it.”
According to Charbonnier, the most important part of today’s Adobe announcements is probably the Power Automate integration with Acrobat Sign — automating the auditing of electronic signatures across the organization is a potentially powerful new piece of functionality.
“On the whole, it’s a lot of nice steps kind of across the board,” he said. “Even the Sign Graph connectors where they’re reducing the time to check on status, that’s a nice feature to include. But the Power Automate [feature] gives them much more robust capabilities.”
Jon Gold covers IoT and wireless networking for Network World.
Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.
Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.
WHAT: On September 30, 2022, President Biden signed the SBIR and STTR Extension Act of 2022, reauthorizing the SBIR/STTR programs to continue through fiscal year 2025. The SBIR/SSTR programs were set to expire on the day President Biden signed the Act, the result of lengthy negotiations over how to revamp the programs following recent high-profile SBIR fraud cases with ties to China. The changes to the programs, to include enhanced disclosure requirements and claw-back provisions, are illustrative of the federal government’s renewed emphasis on ensuring China does not use the SBIR/STTR programs as an additional avenue to appropriate the United States’ emerging technological advances.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR INDUSTRY: The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs provide an avenue for small businesses to engage with the federal government to jointly address the country’s unique science and technology needs. Small businesses compete for federal research funds in the form of federal contracts or grants to support their innovative projects, with the potential to commercialize their resulting products and services in the federal marketplace.
The SBIR/STTR programs are structured in three phases. In Phase I, the government evaluates the technical merit, feasibility, and commercial potential of the small business’ R&D efforts to determine whether further funding should be provided. Phase I awards are typically in the $50,000 to $250,000 range and extend for either six months (for SBIR awards) or one year (for STTR awards). In Phase II, the government awards small businesses around $750,000 to invest two more years into R&D. If based on the R&D efforts there appears to be commercial value in the resulting products or services, the small business may obtain further funding or production contracts directly from federal agencies in Phase III.
To participate in the SBIR/STTR programs, small businesses must be for-profit businesses located in the United States, be majority owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents (or owned by another small business concern majority owned and controlled by U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents), and have no more than 500 employees (including any affiliates). For the STTR program, small businesses must partner with a nonprofit college or university located in the United States, a domestic nonprofit research organization, or a federally funded R&D center.
The recent reauthorization imposed a number of new reporting requirements on agencies to ensure proper management of the SBIR/STTR programs. It also made the following changes which directly impact small business participants:
The new due diligence requirements demonstrate the federal government’s emphasis on protecting against foreign influence and interference in domestic science and technological advancements. The due diligence programs are required to assess the small business’s cybersecurity practices, employee composition, patents, and any foreign ownership or financial ties to determine whether any “foreign country of concern” may be surreptitiously behind the small business venture. This is further explored in the new disclosure requirements for any small business with ties to a “foreign country of concern.” What constitutes a relationship with a “foreign country of concern” is quite expansive, including having any owners who are a party to a foreign talent recruitment program, any foreign joint ventures or subsidiaries, any foreign contractual or financial obligations, any foreign technology licensing or intellectual property sales in the five-year period preceding submission of the proposal, and any foreign institutional investments.
These ties will disqualify the small business if they present concerns about conflicts of interests, pose a risk to national security, or were not timely disclosed to the head of the awarding agency. If it is later determined that the small business did not promptly notify the agency head of these potential issues, or if such issues arise during the performance of the award but were not promptly brought to the agency head’s attention, the small business will be required to repay the award.
While the reauthorization is good news for small businesses in the science and technology sectors, it is important that small businesses interested in participating in the SBIR/STTR programs take a close look at any foreign ties their business may have and ensure compete and accurate disclosure of those ties, as required by the new rules. The federal government is continuing its hard stance on protecting against foreign interference, especially from the People’s Republic of China, and companies would be ill-advised to get caught in the crosshairs.
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