Agenda
Before each meeting we'll post a proposed agenda. You can add any item you would like to cover to the agenda by emailing the user list or editing this wiki page.
Session | Description | Presenter | Time |
|---|
Introduction | We will also have an introduction of everyone on the call so the community can get more personally connected. | Ed Cable | 5 min |
Implementer Show & Tell | Miguel Joia Santos, Iniciativa Mifos Mozambique | Miguel | 15 min |
| Discussion | Samiha J update | Discussion on PPI/Social Performance Management | Ed | 10 min |
Demo/Tutorial | CloudFoundry Integration | Lukasz | 15 min |
| Open Office Hours | Support/feedback | | |
Notes
From: http://sync.in/zuYyeen9cO
Agenda:
- Presentation on Implementations in Namibia and Mozambique
- CloudFoundry Demonstration
- Mifos X and Samiha J update
- Social Performance Management discussion (PPI/Question Groups)
- Open Office Hours Discussion
On the Call
Lassaad (enda - Tunisia)
Lukasz Chudy (Poland - SolDevelo - QA)
Miguel Joia Santos (Mifos Initiative Mozambique)
Patrick Asare-Frimpong (Ghana)
Nayan Ambali (Conflux - India)
Ashok (Conflux - India)
Marco (Quipu - Peru)
Arun (GK - India)
Keith (Ireland)
Ed (USA)
Presentation from Miguel:
Started efforts in January 2010 when found Mifos on the internet.
Miguel represents SBS (service, business, and solutions)
2 other partners - ICC (Consulting) and Afrisis (Development)
- ICC - provide training to several MFIs throughout Mozambique
- Afrisis - team of 2 doing the implementation and maintenance of technology (Natu & Euclides)
First implementation started in April 2010
Support of Mifos community has been critical
Community Contributions:
- Associação Progresso (Cabo Delgado) - northern part of Mozambique
- 3500 members - basic group loans and compulsory savings - still using version 1.5 of Mifos
- Several custom reports developed.
- Pilot implementation - learned a great deal with them.
- Profamilia Moçambique (Inhambane) - 600km from Maputo
- 1000 - 1500 members projected - 250 members right now - started 3 months ago
- Group loans and compulsory savings
- Kongalend Financial Services
- Financing solar system loans
- More complex implementation - integration with electronic banking payments, insurance payments, custom reports, Pastel integration
- Starting to roll out group loans - will be upgrading to new versions soon.
- Ongoing projects (Now in half of the projects in Mozambique)
- Associação Ophentana Wathiana (Nampula)
- Will be doing group loans but using Mifos to provide loans to other associations as well.
- Currently training them right now
- Only individual loans right now
- TSECO Microfinanças (Zambézia)
- Will start in next 2 weeks
- Kongalend Financial Services (upgrade MIFOS)
- Upgrade and extend other features as required.
- Customized report platform - to integrate other data as well.
- Integration with Accounting
- Insurance management integration
- API based on the utilities services payments for loans repayment and deposits using channels:
- Over the counter in Banks
- Would like to deploy at larger banks to get payments to get directly made over the ATM and data flows in through API.
- Project management to do more efficient deployment
- Partners with both knowledge in MF and IS - Mifos and Reports development
- Business Development/Marketing
- Lots of word of mouth marketing, case studies needed to find business
- MFIs with little experienice in MF - start it because they have funds or its trendy
- Need to evolve with mifos and microfinance
- NGOs not oriented towards efficiency
- Can't fast track their knowledge and their knowledge on Mifos
- Little technology knowledge - difficult to get people using Mifos
- Dependence on funding for these programs - need to wait for these investments in MF
- Funds are lower than they were in the past.
Market Challenges
- About 150 MFIs in Mozamique including ASCAs which would be good opportunitie for ASCAs
- National programs financing implementation
- Loans management platform for agriculture cooperatives - advancing partnerships to do this
- Could yield 1 to 2M more clients being served.
- Professional management of local initiative funds
Questions
Had to do work that didn't go back into Mifos - like reporting.
- Reporting done on PHP to get data
- Questions/challenges is to now be much more in touch with community.
- Natu is very interested in Mifos X work
- Action: set up call with Natu. Had to choose language that was easiest for implementation from their end.
- For later implementations did
API for integration into other systems - how you approached that.
- E-banking integration was based on audi bank plugin and then did separate plug-in.
- Semba: working pretty well - in process of upgrading a few things here and there.
Lassaad: how is accounting integration functioning?
- Accounting is always a major challenge. Did integration through specific queries through Pastel.
- Still challenged but anticipating more integration.
CloudFoundry Integration Demo
- CloudFoundry - platform allows you to deploy applications in the cloud - then can be accessible in web browser
- Easy to deploy an application - don't have to modify anything in the code.
- Can deploy application from different machines
- Don't need a separate run-time environment or jetty - just upload war file and access in web browser.
- Sign up account on cloud foundry website
- Account is activated in about 2 days.
- Download mifos cloudfoundry war file - special version optimized for running on cloudfoundry or tomcat 6
- Can grab this from sourceforge -->
- Run several commands in windows console (tutorial on cloud foundry page)
- Target cloud foundry in the cloud.
- Log in to cloud foundry using the credentials
- Specify settings like memory and other options
- War will be uploaded and then can access in web browser.
- Miguel: What about properties files - how are these configured when doing this
- What about database settings?
- Configuration settings - would be hard to set up -
- Miguel: Currently using VPS for most applications - this would be more cost-effective - would like to organize a chat.
- Patrick: what about chart of accounts?
- Where do we upload this in? --> Lukasz: could be possible to reference these files.
- Miguel: for different clients - do we need one cloudfoundry or several?
- Keith: right now Mifos as its designed it's not suitable for multi-tenancy.
- Action: to document how this configuration and uploading of chart of accounts is done.
- Nayan to do a demo on AWS AMI and how to roll those out.