Context:
SEF, the Small Enterprise Foundation in South Africa is a non-profit MFI founded in 1991. It provides group loans using an adapted Grameen methodology. SEF has a holistic approach to poverty reduction and uses the Participatory Wealth Ranking (PWR) system to reach the poor. Without serious competition in the MF sector, SEF has a strong market position, shown by its deep social outreach, 160k customers (average 8% growth per year) and portfolio of EUR 27.8M GLP (PAR 0.4%)2. Since 2015 SEF is fully operationally and financially sustainable. SEF now requests TJAS support for the implementation of Digital Field Applications (DFA) for its field staff. 

Due to its focus on rural and poor segments, SEF works widely spread over the region in 5 SA provinces, with 79 branches. Efficient operations and improved communication within the organization are increasingly challenging. SEF’s Board has embarked on a strategy to leverage technology to support SEF operations optimally: tablets for the 500+ loan officers will be introduced.

Objectives:
To support SEF’s digitization objective by providing support for the pilot and the planning and preparation for the full rollout of DFA to the SEF field staff and to validate the chosen (IT) approach. Specific Objectives:  

• Digitise the loan application process.
• To validate the chosen DFA business model and selected services, also linked to the overall SEF strategy and to validate SEF’s IT/MIS readiness for the DFA channel and other digitization ambitions.
• To support the DFA pilot in the areas of IT support, change management & business process redesign, training.
• To develop the Implementation Plan for the full-roll out of DFA.