The Productive Partnerships in Agriculture Project (PPAP) is a World Bank funded, agriculture sector development project designed to improve the livelihoods of small-holder cocoa and coffee producers through the improvement of the performance and the sustainability of value chains. The project is managed through two Project Management Units (PMUs), one for each of Cocoa and Coffee sectors. The PMU selects several Lead Partners (LPs) through a Call for Proposals to set up a partnership. The LP partnerships are responsible for carrying out activities like baseline surveys, issuing of seedling and tools, training, record production on their project farmers. The PMU manages these partnerships by conducting, regular training and reviews. It also reports to the World Bank on the performance of these partnerships.
The PMU wanted to develop an MIS system to facilitate the operations of the PPAP project, improve data capturing, monitor the progress and report to their donors.
- The lead partners are located throughout the country and some partnerships are hard to reach by roads.
- The network communication facility in report areas are minimal or none.
- Exposure to Information technology and systems are very low in certain areas.
To overcome these challenges the MIS system should be very user-friendly and should work with or without the internet. Our initial study also showed the users are more familiar with the mobile devices than a computer.
To tackle these problems the Protocol IT developed a system that works on computers, tablets, and mobile phone. The lead partners are given tablets to collect regular field data. These data collection tablets can work without the internet at any remote location and the captured data is uploaded into the lead partner’s system periodically. This helped the PMU to run the MIS system in all their lead partner contracts.
The main MIS system was developed using the PHP and MySQL and hosted at the PMU and lead partner offices. A cloud portal was also setup for the lead partners with good internet and for the stakeholder access. The tablet version of the software is developed for Android
To tackle these problems the Protocol IT developed a system that works on computers, tablets, and mobile phone. The lead partners are given tablets to collect regular field data. These data collection tablets can work without the internet at any remote location and the captured data is uploaded into the lead partner’s system periodically. This helped the PMU to run the MIS system in all their lead partner contracts.
The main MIS system was developed using the PHP and MySQL and hosted at the PMU and lead partner offices. A cloud portal was also setup for the lead partners with good internet and for the stakeholder access. The tablet version of the software is developed for Android
- Developed and implemented the whole software system in 6 months.
- Managed to overcome all the technical, social and geographical challenges.
- Complemented the online system with the offline version by giving the data transfer option at various levels.
- Developed a Key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard for various players.
- Implemented graphical reports like, pie chart, bar chart and line graph for management decision making.