There are more than 10 000 Micro Finance Institutions (MFI) around the world. About 90% of them face serious issues with their Management Information System (MIS), thus impeding their efficiency: manual procedures, obsolete system, and lack of autonomy to change it.

 

The IT market tries to help them the same way IT was brought in western companies: packaged software, licence fees, fool’s bargains eluding risks and change, specialists, and technical complexity.

 

From 0% in the 60’, IT spending today has raised to more than 10% of western bank revenues. For 100% of them though, the MIS is a brake to innovation: it is extremely hard to change. In a fast moving world such as finance and micro-finance, this is a real big issue.

 

If we want MFIs benefit from IT, we should thus change the rules that brought it here so far:

-          Shifting our vision from a static MIS managed by executives or IT specialists to a dynamic, ever-evolving MIS led by its own users,

-          Replacing fool’s bargains, licence fees and closed source with collaboration, trust and Open Source.

 

Inside the OCTOPUS community, we are hence committed to:

-          Spread continuous improvement techniques in the Micro Finance industry: especially agile development, lean management, and alignment & coaching techniques;

-          Create 80% of our added value in developing countries by making independent experts, IT solution providers and MFIs autonomous and free to innovate;

-          Create trust relationships between MFIs and IT solution providers: endorse win-win & transparent contracts that welcome change;

-          Measure our impact in terms of value for the end-customers (like lower interest rates, outreach, risks diminution, or active practitioners in the community), more than in terms of revenues for Octopus;

-          Improve ourselves ever and ever, thanks to your best ideas.

 

Join us now and start today:

-          Spread the word around you

-          Share a micro finance or IT best practice, an idea worth spreading

-          Try Octopus, prototype it in MFIs, face limitations and problems, ask for help

-          Ask for a new feature, an improvement for Octopus

-          Stage an Octopus University in your country