Triple Jump news - Monday, October 17, 2011

Social Performance Monitoring

OCTOBER 2011 - Triple Jump Advisory Services has successfully integrated social performance monitoring into the management information system of a microfinance institution (MFI) partner in Guatemala. 

The microfinance institution ASDIR (Association for the Development of Rural Communities) emerged in 1999 in Totonicapan, Guatemala, from a local community development initiative. ASDIR is a civil association, with a General Assembly that serves as its highest organ and elects the Junta Directiva (Board). It has strong local roots, all staff are bilingual and it is fully dedicated to rural areas. Triple Jump Advisory Services eagerly engaged with ASDIR at the end of 2009 due to its strong track record, social mission and its sustainable services to the rural indigenous poor.

In order to monitor its mission impact, ASDIR generated a series of social performance indicators (SPI) and adopted Grameen’s Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI). The challenge for ASDIR was determining how to monitor their SPIs in an efficient manner faced with the following :
• Like many organizations passionate about social performance management, ASDIR developed an information structure parallel to their management information system (MIS), sometimes even gathering information in Excel – but this proved to be error prone, time consuming and costly. 
• This was done because ASDIR has an IT system that was unable to store historical information, hence existing client information is overwritten by new client information. Obviously a problem for social performance monitoring since historical data is required to be able to evaluate the changes at beneficiary level over time.
• ASDIR’s IT department was capable of managing the MIS on a daily basis but required additional skills training and staff to make full use of the system and customize functionalities allowing for fully automated SPI/PPI monitoring.

ASDIR also discussed with Triple Jump Advisory Services  the need to strengthen its  IT department on a more permanent basis and hence recruit a new IT manager. Subsequently, Triple Jump Advisory Services supported the selection process and recruitment of the new IT manager.

As soon as the new IT manager was recruited, he was brought up to speed by an experienced consultant from Triple Jump Advisory Services. Together they developed a contingency plan and worked on integrating the SP/PPI indicators.

The results of their efforts was the development of the following tools:
1. A customised, user-friendly interface that allows the system to capture SP and PPI data according to the indicators pre-identified by ASDIR.
2. A tool that automatically stores historical data from the system into a separate database. This avoids overwriting relevant historic information once new data are entered.

Lastly, the IT manager was trained by Triple Jump Advisory Services in using MIS reporting tools to develop the operational and strategic reports needed by ASDIR management.

The tools are functioning well and ASDIR has uploaded all of its 2010 SPI/PPI information into the system. Now that ASDIR has the adequate tools to register, process and analyze its SP/PPI data, it has started to update the SPI/PPI information for 2011.