Working with industry: matching demands to expertise

A company's question reaches the right researcher when three things are in place: a directory of expertise and facilities that is current, a simple way for companies to describe what they need, and a matching step that shows why a person or a lab is suggested, so the TTO can decide whom to call. Record the meetings and the resulting agreement on the same demand, and the office also learns which kinds of requests turn into collaborations. This article walks through that path and how EnaTTO supports it.

The directory is the foundationCopy Anchor Link

Matching is only as good as what you match against. An expertise directory goes stale quickly when it is maintained by the office alone: research topics shift, people move, new equipment arrives.

Practical rules that keep it alive:

• Let researchers maintain their own profile. They know their topics best; the office curates and fills gaps.
• Use publications as evidence, not as the profile. Recent publications show what someone actually works on and suggest keywords, but the researcher decides what goes on the profile.
• List facilities separately. Many industry questions are about testing, measurement or equipment, not about a person. A laboratory and infrastructure directory answers them directly.
• Use a shared sector classification. Free-text sectors do not match; a standard list such as the NACE sections does.

In EnaTTO, academics can update their own expertise profile, and the industry team manages company profiles and the laboratory directory. Publications can be imported from OpenAlex with a person's ORCID iD (up to the 100 most recent) or added one by one by DOI through Crossref. Before importing, the ORCID record is checked and the name on it is shown, so a wrong iD is easy to spot. Publication topics that are not yet on the profile appear as keyword suggestions; the profile does not change until someone selects them. Only the ORCID iD or the DOI is sent to these services, never e-mail addresses, names or notes. Sectors use the NACE sections.

Taking in demandsCopy Anchor Link

Companies rarely know whom to ask. Some call a professor they know, some write to a general address, some never ask. A single, low-threshold entry point helps:

• A short form: the problem, the expected kind of support (consultancy, contract research, testing, joint R&D, training), keywords and sector.
• No account to create. A company should not need a login to ask a question.
• An e-mail confirmation, so the office does not process spam or mistyped addresses.
• A clear statement of how the information will be used, with explicit consent.

EnaTTO has a public demand form that works exactly like this: no account, an e-mail confirmation link, rate limits and a hidden trap field instead of a CAPTCHA, and explicit consent. A demand enters the queue only after it is confirmed; unconfirmed demands are deleted after 48 hours. Once confirmed, the industry team is notified in the app and by e-mail. The confirmation e-mail itself does not contain the content of the demand.

Demands taken in by phone or at a meeting are entered by the team directly. Demands carry the company's business information, so only people with industry management rights see them.

Matching with reasonsCopy Anchor Link

The core question is "who could help with this?". A good answer comes with an explanation, because the TTO knows things a directory does not: who is overloaded, who has worked with this company before, who prefers not to do contract work.

EnaTTO's matching is rule-based: experts and laboratories are ranked by shared keywords, sector and the requested service, and each suggestion shows the reason. The TTO decides whom to contact; no message is sent automatically. Selected matches are recorded on the demand, and the time of the first match feeds the indicators.

Some practical habits help the rules work:

• Write demand keywords in the same vocabulary researchers use in their profiles.
• When a good match is missing from the suggestions, add the missing keyword to the profile or the lab, not only to this demand.
• Record why a suggested expert was not contacted. It improves the next match.

Optional AI re-rankingCopy Anchor Link

If your organisation switches on AI assistance (it is off by default), the rule-based candidates can be re-ranked with a one-line reason each. The candidates are sent with neutral labels such as "Expert 3" instead of names, and only the demand's title, description and keywords are used. The company name, contact person, e-mail address, phone number and internal notes are never sent. Suggestions are not written to the record; the user still adds the match. Each request is written to the audit log.

From first meeting to agreementCopy Anchor Link

A demand is a lead, not a project. Keep the conversation on the record:

• Meetings and contacts are recorded on the demand or on the company, so the history stays with the relationship, not with one staff member's inbox.
• Agreements cover the forms industry collaboration usually takes: consultancy, contract research, testing services, joint R&D and training. In EnaTTO, one agreement record holds the company, the optional originating demand, the type, the status (draft, negotiation, signed, in force, completed, terminated or cancelled), the value in one currency, the dates, the team of academics and laboratories, and documents from the document store.
• Payments received are recorded against signed agreements only. When an agreement is signed, the open demand it came from is marked as won.

Dates and statuses are what your team enters. EnaTTO draws no legal conclusions from them.

Measuring industry collaborationCopy Anchor Link

With demands, matches and agreements in one place, indicators come without extra counting. EnaTTO's reports include an industry collaboration group: demands received (split by internal entry and web form), demands matched, demands won and the win rate, agreements signed, active and completed, and related figures. Unconfirmed web demands and cancelled agreements are not counted. Report viewers see totals, not the company details behind them.

A short checklistCopy Anchor Link

1. Ask researchers to keep their own expertise profiles current, and help with publication imports.
2. List laboratories and equipment as their own entries.
3. Offer companies one public form with e-mail confirmation.
4. Match by keywords, sector and service, read the reasons, then decide whom to call.
5. Record meetings, the agreement and payments on the same demand and company.

To see the demand form, matching and agreements with fictional data, request a demo.