Women, Data & Wisdom: Involving Local Partners in Mobile Data

Involving Local Partners In Mobile Data.

We know it’s a challenge working with a variety of partners and it’s even more of a challenge when you’re using one system for all your mobile data and coordinating program activities. That’s why we had Miranda Clarke, Advisor for Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) for Oxfam America’s Women in Small Enterprise (WISE) program explain how they have been successful in providing different levels of data to different roles.

The WISE program, now in its third year of implementation in Guatemala, is supported by technical advisors based in Mexico from Oxfam GB and support staff in the USA with Oxfam America. Overall the WISE program includes three countries, three Oxfams, and two languages. Sounds easy doesn’t it? No, we didn’t think so…

Most of Oxfam’s MEL work so far has focused around their relationship with IDEA, a local Guatemalan organization who designs and runs all the training, peer-to-peer and coaching sessions for the WISE entrepreneurs. In order for the relationship with IDEA to be successful, it was essential that IDEA had access to key data to coordinate the activities of their coaches and to monitor progress.

Creating A Partner Community.

A Partner Community is a simplified version of Salesforce.  Users, depending on their role within the program, have limitations put on what they can see, edit and delete.  As with Salesforce, these limitations can be set at the object, field and record level. By leveraging a simplified version of Salesforce, the WISE program gives their partners’ users access to specific data most relevant to them. An added benefit is that Partner Community portals can be set to the user’s language – in this case, Spanish – while Oxfam managers can view that same information in English.

Impact of Partner Community.

By using one system and leveraging the Partner Community, it allows for partners to manage their work using the same data that Oxfam has. In addition, it cut down on paperwork and partner reporting time, and enabled Oxfam to generate reports of coaching sessions attended, meetings scheduled in the future, etc. Also, Oxfam America has leveraged dashboards to facilitate monthly meetings between partners to discuss specific case management issues, and make real-time decisions to help them better support women who might be struggling to repay loans.

What to Consider Before Using One System?

When working with beneficiaries and multiple stakeholders needing access to one system and sensitive data, you need to think about which roles need what access to what data. Another consideration is data privacy and protection of identities – make sure that no names, addresses, etc. are used in a Record ID for instance. Also, simple differentiation is needed. The WISE program uses different colors for the administrative Salesforce back-end (standard blue) and their Partner Community (Oxfam green). Finally, working across multiple languages can get complicated, so make sure to first create a master translation lists of picklists, field names, etc. to ensure compatibility.

For all the details and to learn what’s next for the WISE program, watch the webinar!