Streamlyne Research vs InfoEd
InfoEd has been in research administration longer than almost anyone. The question is whether depth accumulated over decades has become configurability you control, or configuration someone else maintains.
What InfoEd does well
InfoEd Global has been building research administration software for decades, and that longevity is not nothing — it means the product has met an enormous range of institutional requirements and has almost certainly seen your edge case before. It is a recognisable name across grants management, compliance and proposal development, with a deep feature set and an experienced services organisation behind it. Institutions with unusual requirements often find InfoEd can accommodate them.
Side by side
Feature for feature
| Feature / area | Streamlyne Research | InfoEd |
|---|---|---|
| Platform generation | Built as a modern unified platform | Long-established suite evolved over many years |
| Deployment | Cloud-native SaaS on AWS | On-premise and cloud options |
| Architecture | Single codebase across pre-award, compliance and post-award | Broad module set; consistency across modules varies |
| Redundant rekeying | Eliminated — one record carries through the lifecycle | Institutions report re-entry between areas |
| Reporting latency | Real-time replicated database; live dashboards and drill-down | Some institutions report data feeds taking up to a day |
| Report building | End users build reports drag-and-drop or in SQL | More commonly dependent on IT or static reports |
| AI in the workflow | Budget drafting, contract redlining with cited policy, natural-language Q&A | No directly equivalent capability we are aware of |
| Funding discovery | FundFit included in the suite | SPIN is a separate InfoEd product |
| Modernization | Continuous updates; new UI without re-implementation | Version transitions handled as projects |
| Security posture | SOC 2 Type II, HECVAT on request, WCAG 2.2 AA, AWS Partner | Publishes its own security documentation |
Based on our understanding of InfoEd as of March 21, 2026. We aim to be accurate: if a capability is misreported here, write to us with the correction and verification and we will change it. All company trademarks and names are the property of their respective owners.
Where they differ
The differences that show up in year three
Configurable, or configured
A system that can be made to do anything and a system your staff can change are different products. InfoEd's depth is real; the question for your evaluation is who performs the change when a sponsor adds a requirement in October, and what that costs each time.
Cloud-native, not cloud-hosted
On-premise and hosted deployments carry different upgrade, security and disaster-recovery stories. Streamlyne is SaaS on AWS with continuous updates, which is why a new interface arrives without a re-implementation project.
Rekeying is a design failure, not a workflow
When a proposal becomes an award and someone types the data again, that is architecture leaking into staff time. One record carrying proposal, award, negotiation and protocol history is the fix, and it only works if the modules were built together.
Funding discovery in the suite
InfoEd sells SPIN separately. FundFit is part of Streamlyne — AI matching with the reasoning written out, eligibility screened, matches pushed to Slack, Teams or a digest. If you pay for SPIN today, that line belongs in the comparison.
Depth, and what it costs to keep
InfoEd has been in research administration for decades. That means it has almost certainly met your edge case before, and for an institution with genuinely unusual requirements that history is worth something real.
The evaluation question is not whether InfoEd can do what you need. It is who does the work when what you need changes, and what that costs every time.
Configurable versus configured
There is a difference between a system that can be made to do anything and a system your staff can change.
Sponsored programs offices change things constantly — a sponsor adds a requirement, an internal approval moves, a routing step has to exist before Friday. If each of those is a services engagement, that is not an implementation cost. It is an annual cost that never ends, and it is usually the largest line nobody put in the business case.
Streamlyne’s institutional form builder and reporting tool are both designed for administrators rather than developers. That is a deliberate constraint on our side: it means we cannot sell you configuration services, and it means your customisation does not block your upgrades.
Deployment model
InfoEd offers on-premise and cloud options. Streamlyne is cloud-native SaaS on AWS, and the practical consequences show up in three places: upgrades arrive continuously rather than as projects, disaster recovery is the platform’s problem rather than yours, and the security review your procurement office runs covers one deployment model rather than a hybrid.
Our security position is exactly four claims — SOC 2 Type II, HECVAT documentation on request, WCAG 2.2 AA conformance, and AWS Partner — plus zero data retention with our AI providers. If you see us credited with anything else in a vendor comparison, it is wrong and we would like to know where it came from.
Rekeying
When a proposal becomes an award and someone types the data in again, that is not a workflow. It is architecture leaking into your staff’s time, every single award, forever.
One record carrying the proposal, the award, the negotiation and the linked protocols is the fix, and it only works if the modules were built together rather than integrated afterwards. This is the least glamorous item in any eRA comparison and one of the most expensive to get wrong.
Reporting
Institutions have described InfoEd data feeds taking up to a day. Reporting that arrives tomorrow is reporting you plan around.
Streamlyne Reporting reads from a database replicated in real time, so a heavy query never competes with someone submitting before a deadline. Over 130 reports ship ready to run; new ones are drag-and-drop or SQL, built by administrators, without knowing the schema. Dashboards drill down and get shared between users.
AI, and its honest boundary
Lyn does three things inside Streamlyne Research: drafts budgets from the justification and sponsor rules, redlines incoming agreements against your institution’s own policy language with the policy cited, and answers plain-language questions inside the module you are already in.
It does not file RPPRs and does not check disclosures. Those are not shipping capabilities and we will not claim them.
Funding discovery
InfoEd sells SPIN as a separate product. FundFit is part of the Streamlyne suite — AI matching across federal, foundation and corporate sponsors, the written reason behind every match, eligibility screened before anything reaches a researcher, and delivery into Slack, Teams or a per-researcher digest.
If you pay for SPIN today, put it in the total-cost column. It is the line most often left out of these comparisons.
Integrations
An eRA system that cannot talk to HR and Finance is not a system of record — it is another place to type things, and it fails in exactly the way the rekeying problem above describes.
We were a technology consultancy before we were a software company, so integration is the part of this work we have done longest. The systems on the other end are the ordinary ones: Workday, Oracle Financials, Oracle e-Business, PeopleSoft HR, Banner HR, Banner Financials, One Solution, and whatever your institution wrote itself in 2009 and still depends on. The transport is ETL flat files on a nightly batch or REST in real time, chosen by what the source system can actually support rather than by what demos better. The largest custom engagement to date is 132 integrations at USC.
The question worth putting to any vendor, including us, is not whether they integrate. It is which of your specific connections already exist as built work versus which are a scope line in the statement of work you are about to sign.
Switching, if you decide to
Migration is module by module, on your timeline, with both systems live while it happens. No big-bang cutover, and no year of parallel data entry waiting at the end of it.
Awards, proposals and protocols keep their history — nothing stays behind in the old system as a read-only archive somebody has to keep licensed. You can export everything in standard formats at any time, which is the part worth writing into the contract: data you can leave with is data that is never leverage at renewal.
Most institutions begin with whichever module is costing them the most time. For an office coming off InfoEd that is frequently reporting — a VP who cannot get a straight answer about the portfolio is a specific, dateable frustration — or pre-award, where the rekeying shows up every week. Run it beside the legacy system until it has clearly won, then take the next one.
What to ask in an InfoEd demo
Four questions, and all four are answerable inside an hour:
- “Change this form, now, with our requirement.” Watch who does it and what they open to do it.
- “Show us the award record for a proposal you just submitted.” How much of it was typed twice?
- “Give us a number that depends on this morning’s data.” Available now, or overnight?
- “What are we paying for SPIN, and is it in this quote?” Funding discovery is the line most often left out of an eRA comparison, because most eRA vendors do not have it in the box.
What we are not claiming
We are not claiming InfoEd is a bad system, or that decades of accumulated capability count for nothing. For some institutions that depth is exactly right.
We are claiming that cloud-native architecture, administrator-owned configuration, real-time reporting, and funding discovery in the same suite change what a research office pays over a decade — in money and in staff time. Bring your current quote and your open change requests, and we will go through both.
In short
If your requirements are genuinely unusual and you have the budget to keep a system configured for you, InfoEd's depth is a real answer. If you want a cloud-native platform where your own administrators change forms and build reports, and where the proposal, the award and the protocol share one record, that is the case for Streamlyne.
See what Streamlyne Research actually does →Questions
Evaluating InfoEd?
InfoEd has been doing this for decades. Is a newer platform a risk?
It is a fair question and worth asking directly. Streamlyne has been working on research administration since 2003, is SOC 2 Type II certified, runs on AWS as a partner, and serves institutions from small research programmes to R1 universities. Longevity matters, but so does whether the architecture you are buying was designed for how research administration works now.
We have very unusual requirements. Can Streamlyne handle them?
Often, and the mechanism is the institutional form builder rather than a custom build — which matters, because customisation you own does not block your upgrades. Bring your three hardest requirements to a demo and we will show you which are configuration, which are integration, and which we genuinely cannot do.
What about SPIN — we already use it for funding discovery?
Then compare it directly with FundFit rather than taking either vendor's word. The questions worth asking: does it explain why something matched, does it screen eligibility before a researcher spends a week on it, does it push matches into Slack or Teams, and does it build the team as well as find the grant.
Is migrating from a long-established system realistic?
Module by module, alongside what you run today, on your timeline. Awards, proposals and protocols keep their history. The institutions with the longest InfoEd tenure usually start with a single module and let it prove itself before the second.
Is Streamlyne cheaper?
Institutions consistently pay significantly less. We do not publish per-institution pricing because it depends on your size and starting modules, and the comparison that matters is not the licence alone — it is licence plus implementation plus the consultants you keep on retainer to change things.
Can Streamlyne run on-premise the way InfoEd can?
No, and we would rather be plain about it than leave you to find out. Streamlyne is cloud-native SaaS on AWS and there is no on-premise option. If your institution has a hard on-premise requirement, that is a genuine reason to stay where you are. If the requirement is really about data control, security review or uptime, those are answerable questions and we are happy to answer them with SOC 2 Type II, HECVAT documentation and our AWS architecture.
Comparing more than one?