Prizma’s MIS
Prizma's social performance information system consists of three core components:
- Poverty status monitoring
- Exit monitoring Using a short, semi-structured interview, field staff conduct exit monitoring twice a year, to find out: Who leaves and why? How many clients leave? What are the characteristics of clients who exit?
- Focus groups Provide information on how Prizma is reaching and serving its target clients, and how its services are changing clients’ lives. Questions discussed include: Which groups does Prizma reach? Which groups are excluded? What kind of products and services should it develop to better reach and serve its target clientele?
The MIS can generate a custom report that provides aggregate poverty scores for any segment of the client base, or by any of the 30 other variables in the system. This capacity helps Prizma to design the right products and services for its target clients. For example, the poverty status and exit monitoring data enable Prizma to segment its market to identify the characteristics of clients who are most likely to perform poorly and leave the programme. If these vulnerable clients are strategically important, more attention can be invested in retaining them.
The MIS also supports:
- staff incentive schemes
- delinquency management
- business plan projections
- branch performance comparisons
and strengthens:
- ongoing market research activities
- strategic positioning
- product promotion and branding.
Focus group discussions enable Prizma to investigate the reasons behind the trends in client status highlighted by the monitoring data.
Overall, the new system has:
- provided stronger, more timely and more accurate reporting
- tighter internal control
- the ability to manage multiple products and increased scale
- enabled staff to monitor branch and loan officer performance, portfolio quality, or other institutional or client data
Staff access to critical performance data has been central to Prizma’s effort to build:
- strong decentralised profit centres
- greater staff responsibility for individual and team results
- consensus for management decisions that strengthen both financial and social performance.