Overview
GUARDIAN is a micro finance institution based out of Trichy, Tamil Nadu, with 9 branches across the state. GUARDIAN is mainly engaged in rural and urban sanitation development activities in their focused geography in Tamil Nadu, covering 1500+ branches across 6 districts.
They provide loan facilities to rural and urban women beneficiaries for the following purposes on a joint liability model (Self Help Group - SHG / Joint Liability Group - JLG):
- New Water Connection
- New Toilet Construction
- Rain Water Harvesting
- Water/Toilet Renovation
- Water Purifier
- Bio Gas Plant
Guardian management is very tech-savvy and has adopted technology effectively for better productivity and efficiency. They have computerized their day-to-day business operations and financial accounting with a web-based software solution and networking across all their branches.
VSM’s Role in the Project
The process of onboarding new customers was handled manually in GUARDIAN. The field officers used to collect physical application forms duly filled by prospective borrowers or groups during their village visits. The same was manually entered into the system the next day at the respective branches. While branch activities were computerized, the field officers' activities were mostly manual.
This process led to delays in customer onboarding and loan distribution, in addition to low productivity and a lack of proper tracking and monitoring.
As part of Phase I of the project, GUARDIAN engaged the services of VSM to develop a mobile application solution to replace the physical application forms used by their field officers for the following:
- Customer Onboarding Form
- Eligibility Criteria Check
- Daily Worksheet to monitor field officers’ activity on a day-to-day basis
- Loan Utilization Capture
- Employee Tracking through GPS to track their location of work
Android-based tablets were provided to all field officers through which the mobile application was accessible. During village visits, customer details including signature and photo were captured offline in the mobile app. The application had the facility to store customer forms offline whenever internet connectivity was weak. This data could then be synced later on manually.
The filled-in application on the tablet was integrated with the base branch server. The base branch could validate the process and forward it to the required department.
The field officer daily worksheet provided detailed information on the activities done by field officers each day. This data was synced with the base branches at periodic intervals or at the end of the day. GPS tracking in the mobile app allowed the location of the field officer to be tracked. This was compared at the base branch to verify any deviations between the actual location captured through GPS and the reported place of visit in the daily worksheet.
This solution was developed within 6 weeks and successfully deployed at 3 of their main branches on a pilot basis.
Benefits of Our Services
- The application was designed to be user-friendly. Complicated forms were simplified with dropdowns, significantly reducing the time required to fill the forms by field officers.
- Daily worksheet and GPS features enabled better monitoring of field officers, which in turn increased their productivity and efficiency.
- The mobile application facilitated instantaneous capture and syncing of information, thereby reducing the overall time required to process customer loan applications.