Supernova Award Category

The Problem

- Camfed has seen a rapid expansion of its community-led programs over the past 3 years, and in late 2014 pledged to support 1 million girls to go to secondary school by 2020. The rapid scaling of its program demanded a system that could support scale without massive administrative overheads.
- Camfed was using a Sun accounting based in its UK office, which became increasingly inadequate to its needs in supporting multiple country finance teams, all of which operated through remote access to the existing system. The UK finance team was continually dealing with a large volume of enquiries from international teams and systems, which required manual validation and cross-checking of figures for reconciliation. This reconciliation process was a multi-team effort taking in some cases two to three weeks to complete per country. Camfed’s finance teams spent hours troubleshooting issues relating to donation tracking.
- With little visibility into financials from other areas of the business, Camfed could not easily analyze its overall budget to indicate the health of the organization. Camfed lacked a 360-degree-view of its operations, and finance teams in different countries were disconnected, meaning some decisions were made solely on one department’s point of view. Camfed sought a solution to manage its growth efficiently with complete transactional transparency in order to ensure the best service to its clients - girls in rural Africa - their communities, and donor partners.

The Solution

- To manage this scaling, Camfed expanded the use of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform as a single, organization-wide system. This means that all information pertaining to each student is now held on one system, on a single record, providing accurate information. The system tracks a client’s circumstances, entitlements, financial transactions, school attendance, retention and progression, as well as her ‘give-back’ activities as she joins Camfed’s formidable CAMA alumnae network, now 55,358 strong across Zimbabwe, Ghana, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania.
-Camfed also switched its finance processes to run on FinancialForce Financial Management applications built natively on the Salesforce platform to gain a holistic program overview with the ability to report to existing and potential donors. This has made Salesforce the backbone of the organization, managing nearly all critical processes in a context where the number of records handled per year across all programs went from 30,000.

The results

- Since implementation, manual financial tasks have been replaced with automation, including data reconciliation, saving time and creating efficiency. There is now automatic synchronization of academic records against contacts. Camfed wasn’t previously using accounts payable software and has now standardized this to further improve efficiency and accuracy.
- Camfed now has visibility, including reconciliation on the number of students, which now happens in real-time, vs. a year-end project.
- Camfed is now more responsive to donor requests, eliminating needless communication. Systems echo their governance model so they can be responsive to a donor’s need for additional information.
- Students now receive a better, streamlined payment service. All active students receive their entitlements per academic year directly linked to the programmatic data and the financial system, which removes the need for reconciliation between systems and helps avoid errors.
- Camfed’s finance team is now using a modern way of working which helps attracts and retain finance staff. There is less ‘paper pushing’ and manual tasks enabling finance team jobs to be more attractive. In order to retain good financial staff, Camfed felt it had to be seen to be using technology effectively to offer more job satisfaction.
- Already, Camfed’s financial team has reported saving weeks of time, which has contributed to the repurposing of experienced staff for the benefit of its programs.

Metrics

While Camfed shared FinancialForce metrics above in the Results section, the following are Camfed program metrics. The very important point of these is that the Salesforce platform and FinancialForce helps to track many of these metrics and will continue to be expanded to help alumnae grow their businesses and their philanthropy

Girls supported to go to secondary school since Camfed made its ‘million girl’ pledge (late 2014 to end of 2015):
-139,094 Adolescent girls supported through bursaries
-107,516 Adolescent girls supported through alumnae in the CAMA network
-143,183 Adolescent girls supported through community initiatives

Primary and secondary students reached in 2015:
-2,548,225 School population benefiting from an improved learning environment
-538,782 Number of children supported to go to primary and secondary school
-376,328 Of those, students supported by CAMA and community activities

CAMA alumnae supported to become leaders and entrepreneurs in their communities in 2015
-5,187 Young women in CAMA trained as Learner Guides and health activists in 2015
-145,242 Children supported by Learner Guide activities or initiatives in 2015
-4,653 Young women in CAMA trained in business skills and financial literacy in 2015
-2,479 Young women in CAMA who have received micro-finance in 2015
-1,980 Young women in CAMA who have started a business in 2015
-236,534 Number of people reached by CAMA members through training or s

The Technology

Founded in 2009, FinancialForce is the leading Cloud ERP vendor with apps built entirely on the Salesforce Platform. The company’s Financial Management, Professional Services Automation (PSA), and Human Capital Management(HCM) offerings provide services-centric businesses with a platform that organizes sales, services, finance and HR entirely around their customers.

Disruptive Factor

Camfed’s unique community-led girls’ education model emphasizes child protection and partners closely with all those in authority over a girl’s life. Community activists - among them alumnae, teachers, social workers, district officials, traditional leaders and parents - work to deliver girls’ school entitlements and ensure their psycho-social needs are met. This creates community accountability, program sustainability, and an incredible multiplier effect, which Camfed is now tracking through its Salesforce system. CAMA alumnae and community initiatives are now supporting nearly twice as many adolescent girls at secondary school as are being funded through Camfed bursaries.

Shining Moment

- Improvements in the finance team go a long way to helping Camfed achieve its mission and by helping this generation of girls with a sense of absolute urgency, Camfed is not only hoping for a better future led by young African women – it is counting on it.
- Camfed will continue to look for ways to innovate with technology in finance and across the business, to scale its impact and improve the way it runs its programs as it continues its mission to eradicate poverty in Africa.