Following the excellent Fin4Ag conference last year (where Musoni presented at the Plug&Play day), Gerrishom Boiyo, the conference’s Social Reporter, wrote up this great blog post on Musoni, going into detail on both our social objectives, and the benefits of using the Musoni System itself. We hope you like it.
“Working with communities, especially those in rural Kenya, has always come with its fair share of challenges but I have to say from a personal point of view that none comes close to dealing with issues relating to smallholder farmers as that of finance both as an individual and organisation.
The list stretches from borrowing funds to running around the villages trying to recover the loans from defaulters. This is never an experience I would wish on anyone as it is time consuming and involves too much paperwork. Luckily for most of us, Musoni Systems has come conveniently into the picture to assist make this process both efficient and effective.
What is Musoni, you may ask? Well, first let me offer to teach you some Swahili (for those of you who are not familiar with the language) and refresh the memories of those who understand it. So, Musoni stands for “Mobile Usoni”, which when loosely translated means “Mobile Future”. A term I strongly agree with after sitting down at the Plug and Play session, organised by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and having a brief discussion with Cameron Goldie-Scot, the CEO Musoni Services BV.
Now here is how Musoni simplifies the process:
Loans and savings: It is rare to find an application that offers a full and flexible loan and savings modules that give you the freedom to customise the grace periods, charges, repayment frequency among others the way Musoni offers. I find that the company did their research and knows exactly what their clients’ needs are.
Integrated accounting: The system also comes with configurable chart of accounts and financial reports that enable organisations to fully maximise the different portfolios, as well as monitor the progress of their investments without bias.
Mobile money integration: By integrating with local mobile money providers like Mpesa, Airtel and Payway, disbursement and generation of statements to and from the recipients becomes especially simple, given the fact that it is done through the mobile phone. One other fact that caught my eye and I felt it would come in handy (when I or any other field workers out there) is how one can send automated SMS reminders to the clients regarding their loan status without the normal hustle of physically locating the office or client in addition to having less paperwork.
Client and group management: The company works with both individual and group client methodologies where it is very easy for one to move from the group to individual client, while still capturing the clients’ personal information, identifiers, business information and much more.
On trying the demo, I find the application to be user friendly in the sense that I could easily navigate through it with no supervision, well maybe I was assisted in understanding what “PAR branch” meant but other than that I still stand by my words that the user interface is simple and clear. Aside from the user interface, the fact that the application (app) can produce high quality reports as well as the ability to activate surveys totally sold me over!”
You can find the original blog on the CTA website or follow Gerrishom Boiyo on twitter here.