Higher Education & Clinical Research
Higher Education and Clinical Research Contract Management Software
The contract intelligence platform built for universities, academic medical centers, and research institutions to manage contracts, maximize recovered costs, and streamline compliance. Contract Logix turns the budgets, indirect rates, milestones, and federal obligations buried in your research agreements into operational data your teams can act on.
The problem we solve
Research institutions execute thousands of sponsored research agreements, clinical trial agreements, subawards, material transfers, and licenses each year, spread across decentralized departments, each carrying federal compliance obligations and the financial terms that drive cost recovery.
Decentralized contracting, no central visibility
Research, procurement, clinical, and technology-transfer offices each negotiate and store contracts their own way, so renewal and reporting dates go unseen and the institution cannot align negotiations with budget cycles or catch compliance deadlines.
Trial budgets and slow activation
Each clinical trial agreement pairs negotiated language with a per-patient budget and a Medicare Coverage Analysis, and site activation of 6 to 9 months is common, so the per-visit, per-procedure detail is hard to track and cycle time carries real cost.
Subaward flow-down obligations
Prime-award terms flow down to subrecipients, but the obligations live in dense documents, so tracking which flow-down terms, reporting duties, and indirect-rate treatments apply to each subaward is manual and error-prone.
F&A recovery leakage and IP deadlines
When negotiated indirect rates, modified-total-direct-cost bases, and the subaward cap are not tracked against actuals, institutions under-recover, and Bayh-Dole disclosure and election deadlines buried in award documents can forfeit title.
From contract pain to contract intelligence
Manage the contract lifecycle
A secure repository on Microsoft Azure with role-based access and a 6-year audit trail, plus Contract Binders that link a prime award to its subawards, a master clinical trial agreement to its site agreements, and a license to its amendments and sublicenses. Structured intake routes requests through the right approval chain while preserving departmental autonomy.
Maximize recovered costs and revenue
The Contract Intelligence Engine extracts the financial terms buried in research agreements, from per-patient trial budgets and visit schedules to indirect (F&A) rates, milestone payments, royalty tiers, and subaward amounts, so finance can recover full indirect costs, invoice milestones accurately, and protect licensing revenue.
Streamline compliance
Required terms, approvals, and certifications are enforced in the workflow, so obligations under the Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200), Bayh-Dole, FERPA, FDA human-subjects rules, and NIST SP 800-171 stay evidenced. Configurable dashboards and a 6-year audit trail assemble defensible records for federal audits.
Review contracts in minutes
Contract Logix Review delivers first-pass redlines in minutes, inside Microsoft Word and Google Docs, applying the institution’s own standards on publication rights, indemnity, IP ownership, F&A terms, and data-security and export clauses.
Built for every research and institutional agreement type
- Sponsored research agreements. Federal, industry, and foundation awards with funding schedules, deliverables, indirect (F&A) rates, and IP and publication terms.
- Clinical trial agreements. Industry-sponsored, cooperative-group, and investigator-initiated trials with per-patient budgets, visit and procedure schedules, indemnity, and a Medicare Coverage Analysis that classifies each item.
- Subawards and subcontracts. Prime-award flow-down obligations, reporting duties, indirect-rate treatment, and subaward amounts under federal awards.
- Technology transfer and license agreements. Royalty tiers, milestone payments, reach-through terms, and sublicensing, with the Bayh-Dole disclosure and election deadlines that travel with federally funded inventions.
- Material transfer and data use agreements. Permitted use, ownership of derivatives, publication windows, and the data-security addenda that govern controlled and student data.
Who it serves
Director / AVP of Sponsored Programs
Gains portfolio visibility and flow-down tracking across all awards, instead of decentralized contracting and audit exposure. An economic buyer.
Director of the Clinical Trials Office
Extracts per-patient budgets and tracks activation cycle time across sites and sponsors, addressing the slowest steps in study activation. A primary platform user.
Technology Transfer Director
Tracks Bayh-Dole deadlines, royalty terms, and sublicense consistency across licenses using parent-child binders.
General Counsel / University Counsel
Standardizes positions with playbook-based review and centralizes risk reporting, even on agreements negotiated outside legal’s view.
Research Compliance Officer
Keeps effort, export, and data-security obligations in audit-ready records, reducing False Claims exposure.
CFO / VP Finance
Closes indirect-cost recovery leakage and missed milestone invoicing with F&A and milestone-invoice dashboards. An economic buyer.
What sets Contract Logix apart
- Line-item extraction tuned to research data: per-patient budgets and visit schedules, F&A rates, milestones, royalty tiers, and subaward amounts.
- Contract Binders model prime-award-to-subaward, master-CTA-to-site, and license-to-sublicense relationships, so flow-down and consistency are verifiable.
- Configurable dashboards for trial activation cycle time, F&A recovery, milestone invoicing, subaward obligations, and licensing revenue.
- AI redlining inside Microsoft Word and Google Docs against institution-specific playbooks for publication, IP, indemnity, export, and data-security terms.
- Hosted on Microsoft Azure (SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, FISMA) with role-based access and a 6-year audit trail.
- Honest scope: Contract Logix is the contract intelligence layer, not a research-administration or grants system and not a clinical trial management system; it complements those systems and is configurable rather than pre-loaded with higher-education templates.
Proven at scale
More than 60,000 professionals across hundreds of organizations run their contract operations on Contract Logix, across higher education, healthcare, life sciences, and other regulated sectors. Contract Logix has built purpose-made contract software since 2013, out of Carnegie Mellon University.
Enterprise-grade security on Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure hosting, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and FISMA compliance, AES-256 encryption, role-based access, and a 6-year audit trail suited to federal award and human-subjects recordkeeping. See Security & trust for the full specification.
Higher education and clinical research contract management: a complete guide
Universities, academic medical centers, and research institutions run on contracts that move money in both directions and carry federal compliance obligations on nearly every page. This guide explains why research contract management matters and the practices that protect cost recovery and compliance across a decentralized institution.
What is research contract management?
Research contract management applies contract lifecycle management to the sponsored research agreements, clinical trial agreements, subawards, material transfers, and technology licenses that an institution executes each year. It covers negotiating and executing terms, then monitoring and enforcing the financial and regulatory obligations across the life of each award.
Because most institutions are nonprofit, the financial goal is full indirect-cost recovery, accurate milestone invoicing, and protected royalty and licensing revenue rather than margin. The operative data lives at line-item granularity, in per-patient budgets, F&A rates, milestone schedules, and subaward amounts.
Why it is critical
The Uniform Guidance, Bayh-Dole, FERPA, FDA human-subjects rules, and controlled-data security standards all impose explicit, auditable contractual obligations, and grant certifications and effort reports are actionable under the False Claims Act. At the same time, decentralized contracting makes top-down visibility hard.
When budgets, indirect rates, and deadlines live only in scattered PDFs, institutions under-recover indirect costs, miss Bayh-Dole windows, and discover flow-down gaps during an audit rather than before one.
Research CLM best practices
- Channel decentralized intake and approvals through structured paths while preserving departmental autonomy.
- Track per-patient budgets, milestone invoicing dates, and reporting deadlines in one system with alerts.
- Confirm subaward flow-down terms, reporting duties, and indirect-rate treatment against each prime award.
- Track Bayh-Dole disclosure, election, and filing deadlines tied to specific awards.
- Extract the line-item data inside agreements, from F&A rates and budgets to royalty tiers, so finance recovers full costs and protects licensing revenue.
- Flag publication, participation, and data-security clauses that affect export-control and controlled-data obligations.
What to look for in research CLM software
- Line-item extraction with fields the institution defines and reprocesses as requirements change.
- Parent-child modeling for prime-to-subaward, master-CTA-to-site, and license-to-sublicense relationships.
- Configurable dashboards for activation cycle time, F&A recovery, milestone invoicing, and subaward obligations.
- A no-code workflow designer and structured intake that fit shared governance.
- AI-assisted review against institution-specific playbooks for publication, IP, indemnity, and data-security terms.
- Enterprise security and a long audit trail, hosted on Microsoft Azure.
- The ability to work alongside research-administration and clinical trial management systems.
How Contract Logix helps
Contract Logix gives research institutions a configurable platform to author and negotiate agreements, extract their line-item terms, and apply playbook-driven first-pass review, on infrastructure certified to SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and FISMA. It complements research-administration and clinical trial management systems by turning the contracts those systems reference into structured data, and professional services support teams without deep internal CLM resources.
Frequently asked questions
- What makes research contract management different?
- Research agreements hold line-item financial data, per-patient budgets, F&A rates, milestones, royalty tiers, and subaward amounts, alongside explicit federal obligations under the Uniform Guidance, Bayh-Dole, FERPA, and FDA rules. Research contract management captures those terms as structured data and keeps prime-to-subaward and license-to-sublicense relationships explicit, across a decentralized institution.
- How does it help with clinical trial budgets and activation?
- Per-patient budgets and visit and procedure schedules are captured as structured data, and an activation cycle-time dashboard tracks progress across sites and sponsors, addressing the budget and agreement steps that most often delay study activation.
- Does it track subaward flow-down and Uniform Guidance obligations?
- Yes. Contract Binders link a prime award to its subawards, and flow-down terms, reporting duties, and indirect-rate treatment are captured as structured data so obligations are tracked rather than reconstructed. This is general information, not legal or compliance advice.
- Can it track Bayh-Dole and IP deadlines?
- Yes. Invention disclosure, election, and filing deadlines tied to specific awards are captured and surfaced, and license parent-child structures track royalty terms and sublicense consistency, so a missed window does not forfeit title.
- Does Contract Logix replace our eRA or clinical trial management system?
- No. Contract Logix is the contract intelligence layer, not a research-administration, grants, or clinical trial management system. It complements those systems by managing the contracts and extracting the contract data they reference.
- Is it secure and audit-ready?
- Contract Logix runs on Microsoft Azure and is SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and FISMA compliant, with role-based access and a 6-year audit trail suited to federal award and human-subjects recordkeeping.
