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October 18, 2018
Elaine Chang
An estimated “900 million rural dwellers worldwide do not have adequate access to the formal transport system,” according to The World Bank Group. As a result, they may be forced to cross makeshift bridges spanning canyons and rivers or ford fast-moving water on foot to travel to school, visit a medical clinic or walk to work.
Bridges to Prosperity (B2P) is seeking to solve this rural isolation and its economic consequences by building sturdy new footbridges and scaling operations with the help of offline construction management software and a powerful cloud database. To date, B2P has built over 280 footbridges that serve more than 1 million people in 21 countries.
Image: Crossing a makeshift bridge in Rwanda. Source: Bridges to Prosperity
Two years ago, during a strategic planning process, the B2P team asked themselves how they could scale their impact from hundreds to thousands of bridges. They wanted to improve operations in some of the most difficult areas of the world to work in – where tough terrain and spotty mobile phone connectivity prevent easy solutions.
Part of the answer was digitizing their legacy paper processes. But as Abbie Noriega, B2P’s Director of Evaluation, explained in a recent TaroWorks webinar, the Salesforce AppExchange provided a crucial second part of the solution: TaroWorks for a mobile offline CRM, Mogli Technologies for SMS functionality and TaskRay for project management.
For the first 15 years, B2P primarily used paper-based data collection processes with Excel for spreadsheet analysis and planning.
The old system “… actually worked pretty well for us for a really long period of time but we’re looking to scale as an organization,“ Noriega said during the webinar about B2P’s efforts.
However, Noriega said B2P realized that scaling footbridge construction would require B2P to improve its information sharing and communication. To do that, they needed to digitize their paper-based field data collection and footbridge construction process.
“Once we had a staff that was bigger than a few people at headquarters and a few people in a program country, that is when we really started to feel the burn of paper … When you start to grow and not everybody knows one another … it doesn’t work anymore to have really valuable and important data bouncing around in a binder in the back of somebody’s pickup truck,” Noriega added. (Watch the Webinar)
Image: Among the paper reports Bridges to Prosperity used to collect data. Source: Bridges to Prosperity
Noriega said that B2P first considered building a new mobile and cloud-based construction management software stack from scratch.
“There are very few organizations that do what we do and so it was really important to us to be able to build a system that allowed us to collect and manage and aggregate and understand the data that was coming in from the field at scale,“ Noriega said.
B2P had three functional requirements for their footbridge construction management software setup: It had to include an integrated database and project management system, allow for mobile data collection and provide real-time reporting and analysis.
The construction project database also had to seamlessly connect with B2P’s existing Salesforce database, which they were already using to track fundraising contributions to fund footbridge construction. They also wanted the capability to survey local communities who would use the footbridge. Finally, the system had to be user-friendly, “out-of-the-box” but customizable when necessary, applicable across multiple geographies, affordable and scalable.
When B2P looked into building their own system from the ground up, they got sticker shock.
“…the bids that we got to essentially have the same functionality we have now, perhaps less…(were) between $150,000 and $400,000, which was just not in the cards for our organization and I imagine not in the cards for most nonprofit organizations especially if you’re first getting started,” Noriega said during the webinar.
So instead of launching a major custom software development project, B2P worked with Mogli Technologies, which helped design and implement the new construction management software system, to leverage B2P’s existing Salesforce instance. They did this by adding three Salesforce apps:
“What was really exciting about this [current software development plan] is it allowed us to take off-the-shelf, really affordable applications and stitch them together into a system that essentially maintains itself…We have to make sure we are putting good data into our system, we have to make sure we’re providing training and good support to our staff but I’ve never actually had to update systems to keep up with technology and that was really really important to us,” said Noriega.
The central element of the new construction management software system is what B2P calls a “bridge project record.” This record displays all data inputs associated with each separate footbridge construction project in one place – such as information for the site assessment and selection process, project authorization status, the tally on funding donated to underwrite the cost of each footbridge constructed, project milestones and community opinion survey data.
Image: Components of the database. Source: Bridges to Prosperity.
Mogli recommended using TaroWorks and TaskRay as apps to collect and manage data flowing into the bridge project records and associated footbridge construction tasks.
Mogli’s Senior Project Manager Serena Schultz explained during the webinar that a variety of factors entered into the decision about which applications Mogli suggested B2P use to build a full construction management software infrastructure. Among them were that the applications be native to Salesforce, be built with nonprofits in mind, balance cost vs. functionality, be flexible and customizable, offer full documentation and user support and operate effectively in areas of low connectivity.
But for the development project to succeed, Schultz said there was another important, human consideration. The project needed an internal champion who understands data, can get feedback from the team and can work effectively with the people actually building the system.
“No matter what solutions you choose, whether they are apps or code or unicorns or whatever it happens to be, it is really vital to get organizational leadership on board for any of these new processes,” Schultz said during the webinar.
Looking back on the year-long development and rollout of the footbridge construction management software program, Noriega observed that the new system’s ability to aggregate and centralize data from so many different sources – especially from their remote field locations – has enabled B2P to track trends, spot problems and make business decisions faster.
For example, B2P now knows how many footbridges are under construction or completed at any given time and how that number compares to performance goals set for the work. With the minimum useful life of a footbridge at 30 to 40 years, Noriega said bridge inspection data can be analyzed across multiple locations to guide maintenance and repair routines.
The data collected and analyzed using TaroWorks and Salesforce also provides current status on the number of remote locations B2P field agents have assessed as possible future footbridge sites. B2P can also see which proposed projects are the strongest candidates to move forward and how productive the field survey team has been in collecting this data.
Image: Field data aggregated and visualized using Salesforce. Source: Bridges to Prosperity
About 60 people at B2P use the data collected and managed with Salesforce, TaroWorks, Mogli and TaskRay on a regular basis and with significant results, said Noriega:
“This has really been a game changer for our organization in terms of how we make decisions. And what’s really exciting about this is that this isn’t just something that I have access to…this is something that every person in the organization has access to…When you make data available in forms like this it really empowers staff all over the world and at all levels to make decisions and generate ideas about how we can work better and more efficiently.”
Image: Completed Rio Abajo suspension bridge in Nicaragua. Source: Bridges to Prosperity.
Many TaroWorks customers previously used paper and spreadsheets to collect data, analyze metrics and run field operations. Let us show you how TaroWorks’ offline mobile field service app can help scale your business by digitizing sales and supply chain management, increasing agent network productivity and analyzing data in real-time for business insights.
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Elaine’s background in marketing research and data analytics has shaped her goal of helping organizations use insights from better data to create positive change in communities. She has a BS in Marketing and Finance from New York University, and an MBA from the University of Michigan. Elaine is based in Washington, DC.
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