The brief
A well-known international NGO was running monitoring and evaluation across four Kenyan counties — with field officers using a mix of paper, Excel, and an ageing Kobo setup that didn't reconcile into the donor reports. They needed one tool that worked offline, synced when it could, and produced donor-ready dashboards on the other side.
What we shipped
- A mobile-first data capture app (PWA) that works offline and syncs when the signal is back.
- A supervisor review layer with approvals and change history, so donor audits have a clean trail.
- A donor-facing dashboard with the four indicators the programme officer presents every quarter.
- Training and an SOP for field team onboarding — so new officers can start capturing inside a day.
How we worked
Eight weeks, pilot-first. We started with one county, ten field officers, and a supervisor. We watched them capture for a week, changed four things, shipped, watched again. By week five we were in two counties. By week eight we were in all four.
Outcome
Data reaches the dashboard in days, not weeks. Donor reports are assembled in an afternoon instead of a fortnight. The programme officer's Monday is shorter.
What we'd do differently
We'd translate the interface into Swahili on day one, not day thirty. We did it eventually, but the first-week drop-off among field officers was real and avoidable.