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How to Choose the Right Abstract Management Solution

Trevor Strome

The advantages that can be achieved through the use of an abstract management solution are clear. Significant improvements in productivity and cost efficiency, and dramatic enhancements in the way abstracts are processed and handled, as well as an increase in the quality of the proposals submitted and selected, make the decision to purchase abstract management software a very wise one.

But as you begin evaluating the various solutions that are available, one important question is likely to arise. How do you know which abstract management software will best meet your needs?

Not all abstract management systems are created equal. But by looking for the following features and capabilities, you can set the world-class offerings apart from the rest.

Ease of Use
Presenters, authors, and other abstract creators are likely to get frustrated and abandon their efforts if the processes involved in submitting their proposals are time-consuming and complicated. If you want to entice knowledgeable and well-respected professionals to send in their proposals, then the abstract management solution you choose must be easy to access and use.

For example, the user interface must be simple and intuitive, and submitters should be able to post their abstracts at any time, and from any convenient location. This, in turn, will encourage a greater volume of high quality submissions.

But, submitters aren’t the only ones who require ease and simplicity. The system you select must also provide your abstract reviewers with maximum user-friendliness, and be completely free of complicated or confusing features and functions. All reviewers should be able to get up and running quickly, without the need for extensive training, so they can immediately streamline and accelerate their most important evaluation-related activities.

Simplified Administration
Every day, those who oversee abstract management activities, including your administrators and supervisors, juggle a variety of cumbersome and labor-intensive responsibilities. Therefore, you’ll want to empower them with a single, centralized, and fully-integrated suite of tools that can help to automate and improve all facets of abstract management. With a truly comprehensive abstract management solution in place, all activities associated with abstract collection and peer review can be enhanced, allowing administrators to assign, manage, and track all related tasks more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

Flexibility
Abstract management needs, and the processes that support them, will vary greatly from one organization to the next. If you’re a university or research society, they way you would gather and process abstract proposals would likely be quite different from the way you’d handle similar activities if you worked at a conference planning firm or a published journal or magazine. Related procedures will even be vastly different among similar types of organization.

Therefore, you’ll want to choose a vendor that provides an abstract management solution that conforms to and enhances your existing procedures (even unique or multi-faceted ones), not forces you to completely re-vamp them to fit the way the system operates.

Minimized Technical Complexity
Like others involved in abstract management, you simply don’t have the time to devote to long implementations, extensive user training, or troubleshooting software or hardware issues. Therefore, you’ll need an abstract management solution that eliminates technical hassles, while ensuring the highest possible system performance and accessibility.

Proven Power, Performance, and Reliability
Whether you expect 50 submissions or 5,000, your abstract management solution should be able to efficiently and reliably handle any quantity, with absolutely no impact to performance or availability.

Without the power to handle peak submission volumes, submitters may find the system unavailable when they attempt to send in their abstracts, which can discourage them from trying again at a later time. And, system performance problems will cause delays in review cycles, as well as the acceptance and rejection process, which can further frustrate submitters.

Maximum Affordability
Like any other educational institution, professional association, conference planning organization, journal or publication, non-profit firm, or government agency, you must work within tight budgetary constraints. You need to find ways to increase productivity and reduce overhead – yet limited funds are available to acquire the technologies needed to do so. Therefore, you’ll need an abstract management solution that is economical, yet delivers rapid return on investment.

For more valuable advice on selecting the right abstract management solution for your needs, visit www.vsreview.com.