The Mifos Opportunity

1
The Mifos Opportunity

• Role of the Mifos Specialist

2
Agenda
The Mifos Specialist

• What is the opportunity?
• Why Mifos Specialists?
• Role of Mifos Specialists in the Mifos community
• QA

3
Microfinance in East Africa
What is the opportunity?

• Important things to consider when evaluating the
  market
• Market segmentation
• Operational Methodology
• Regulatory classification
• MFI size
• Technology adoption across different segments
• Funding sources for microfinance
• Sources of market intelligence
• Local Microfinance Associations
• Mix Market (www.mixmarket.org)
• Microcredit Summit (www.microcreditsummit.org)
• Microfinance Gateway (http//www.microfinancegatew
  ay.com)

4
Microfinance in East Africa
What is the opportunity?

• Kenya
• AMFI 38 members
• MESPT 50 members
• Mix market 17 MFIs
• Tanzania
• Approx 62 microfinance NGOs (Bank of Tanzania
  2005 survey)
• Mix market 9 MFIs
• Uganda
• AMFIU 74 members
• Mix market 21 MFIs

5
Computerization of MFIs
What is the opportunity?
6
Other considerations for future
What is the opportunity?

• Standard platform could open the door to more
  funding donors will know what to invest in
• Standard platform could increase pace with which
  MFIs adopt technology they will know what to
  adopt
• Standard platform will make innovation more
  easily adopted by critical mass

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Why Mifos Specialists
Local support a principle behind Mifos

• Local presence is key for any systems support
• understands local technology environment
• available and in the same time zone
• local, affordable rates
• Large majority of MFIs do not have technical
  project management capacity in-house

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Role of Mifos Specialists
Local support central to Mifos success

• Mifos is an enterprise class system it requires
  strong technical expertise
• Fundamental role in Mifos ecosystem
• Technical project management for deployment
• Roll-out planning
• Data entry/migration
• Infrastructure planning set-up (server set-up,
  other hardware, connectivity etc)
• Reports writing
• User training
• Ongoing support
• System and database administration support
• Systems planning new features, new
  infrastructure etc
• Interface between MFI client Mifos community
• Feature/requirements scoping
• Communicating progress lessons learned
• Extracting technical advice from community

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Roles in the Mifos Community
Role of Mifos Specialist
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Roles in the Mifos Community
Role of Mifos Specialist
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• Questions?