Our information management system

The Director is fortunate to have a software-designing husband who spent many years perfecting an information management system (IMS)for the organisation. This system meets all our needs. It is said "knowledge is power" and we believe that this system disseminates knowledge to the staff throughout the organisation so that they are empowered to work more effectively.

Internal communications

We have around 20 computers on our network in the office. These are used by managers, data entry clerks, finance staff, human resources, social workers, other field staff and quality improvement staff. It is important to have all the information syncronised and kept up to date. The IMS has an internal messaging system, rather like email. We can send work requests to eachother and check when they are completed. We can share documents and have group discussions. We can send out information to just the staff we supervise, or everyone in the organisation. In the first month it was installed, there were 600 separate discussions!

Strategy system

This is what should be at the heart of every NGO, but often gets overlooked in the effort to meet donor demands and the scramble for funding. The system allows the organisation to enter our strategy with our key objectives and targets for the year. The data we get from the datasheets which our field staff all fill in is fed into the system by our data clerks and shows up to date information on who we are doing against our targets. We are still working on setting up this part of the system!

Document warehouse

We have over 130 policies in the organisation which need to be read and kept up to date. We have put all the policies on the IMS so all office staff have easy access to them. The IMS has a very handy feature in that it notes the date at which a policy needs review and who is responsible to review it. It then sends a reminder to that person a week before the policy expires. When a policy is updated, it appears on the front page of the IMS so everyone can see what is new when they open their IMS. It also records who has read a policy and when.
We also keep our stationery here e.g. letterheads, timesheets so that it is easy for all staff to access and print what they need from any computer.

Donor management

We have different manager responsible for different grants. In the past, each manager kept his/her information on their own computer and if they were out of the office when someone needed certain information about that grant, it was hard to find. Now we have all the information copied onto the IMS for all staff to access. Under each of our donors we have information such as their contact details, key staff, the original funding proposal, workplans, contracts, budgets, how much money they have given us and when, any copies of correspondence with the funder as well as free hand notes. We hope that this information will be read by more junior staff as well as managers so that they understand where our funding comes from and what obligations we are under.

This system is available for free at www.develate.com