Synergy is excited to announce the start of a new partnership with Education Above All (EAA), a not-for-profit founded in Qatar in 2012. Over the next months, Synergy will be designing, developing, and implementing a customized version of Synergy Indicata, the company’s flagship Monitoring and Evaluation Information System, to cater for EAA’s organization-level monitoring and evaluation needs.

As a centralized, automated strategy execution and monitoring and evaluation Information System, Synergy Indicata is favored by dozens of international non-profits from around the globe.

Customized to the specific needs of Education Above All, Synergy Indicata will help the organization to effectively capture, analyze and use program monitoring and evaluation information, as well as monitor EAA’s progress towards reaching the organizational goal and measure the impact of its programmes.

Moreover, the client-branded M&E Information System will support the organization’s commitment to ensure quality education for marginalized and vulnerable people. With its multi-dimensional features, Synergy Indicata will provide EAA a growing knowledge and understanding of both the impact of its programmes and successful models that inform them over time.

Within the frames of developing the Monitoring and Evaluation Information Management System (M&E MIS) for Lusaka Sanitation Project instigated by the Government of Zambia, Synergy International Systems recently organized a week-long training and knowledge transfer session for the representatives of administrative and IT staff members from project stakeholder entities – the Lusaka City Council, Zambia Ministry of Health, and Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSC).

The training demonstrated the administration, installation, and maintenance work of the M&E MIS software, as well as introduced the new modifications of the system.

“The training helped us better understand the software system in terms of software development and technology to help our teams back home. The M&E MIS will give us real time information which we can actually use to make better decisions on carrying out our day to day workflows,” said Ms. Nkweluka Kabwiri, from LWSC. “Having that background knowledge really helps us to make any further adjustments to the system,” she added.

The knowledge transfer will enable the Lusaka Sanitation Project staff get a deeper understanding on how the system works.

Synergy International Systems, Inc. was delighted to sponsor and participate in MERL Tech DC 2019, the annual conference dedicated to exploring the role of technology in Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning.  The conference brought together hundreds of MERL practitioners and technologists to discuss the state and future of this innovative field.

This year’s event marked the first time that one of Synergy’s clients has presented at MERL Tech. Orbis International, a New York-based global NGO dedicated to eye health, uses Synergy’s Indicata software product to manage its portfolio of projects and measure the impact of its work. Orbis and Synergy have been working together for the past two years.

Gartner has included Synergy’s Indicata Monitoring & Evaluation Software in its 2017 Market Guide for Strategy Execution Management (SEM) Software. Organizations around the world use Indicata to assess how well they are executing their corporate strategy based on the performance of their portfolio of programs and projects.

Gartner has been tracking the strategy execution market over the last three years and it is still in a maturing phase. In the previous market analysis, Gartner identified an emerging yet pivotal shift from project-focused software tools to strategy-centric enterprise-wide solutions. Throughout this period, organizations have also increasingly recognized that executing strategy effectively in the digital age requires a new set of tools and practices.

In the light of continuous market development, SEM market definition has also been transformed. If in the past, Gartner emphasized bidirectional communication and investment portfolio decision making and modeling, the 2017 Market Guide goes beyond these two descriptors as “organizations now strive to build strong linkage between strategies, metrics and resources, with the actual and anticipated results of plans, projects and assets to meet organizational strategies.” These evolving paradigms suggested by Gartner have progressed in line with the organizations’ readiness and capacity to juxtapose corporate strategy and day-to-day operation of the organization.

Now, when strategy is evolving in much shorter increments of time, SEM tools should be more agile to support continuous change. According to Gartner, “implementation of solid investment planning processes and clear communication channels supporting the continuous, nearly real-time decision-making process is required for successful SEM.”

According to Dr. Ashot Hovanesian, CEO of Synergy International Systems “The symbiosis of well-honed strategy, resource optimization and portfolio management has become a catalyst for successful operation of an organization. Synergy Indicata encompasses all these elements and can help organizations to drive transformation”.

This marks the third time in a row that Synergy Indicata has been listed in a Gartner Market Guide for Strategy Execution. The continuous inclusion of Synergy in Gartner’s Market Guides further indicates that Synergy keeps track of the Strategy Execution market development. The evolvement of Synergy Indicata goes hand in hand with the advancing breadth of its feature set.

The Office of Civil Defense (OCD) of the Philippines recently launched its online information system for reporting emergencies and monitoring government-funded projects for disaster prevention and recovery. The importance of this system, officially called the Project Monitoring and Evaluation System for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (PMESD), has grown dramatically since Typhoon Yolanda, which caused widespread and unprecedented devastation in the Philippines.

This information technology initiative was motivated by the Philippine Government’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) Act of 2010, which introduced a series of institutional reforms aimed at improving how the government manages and mitigates the risks of natural disasters.

The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)–Philippines will soon use the unifying Project Management and Monitoring and Evaluation System (PROMMES) as its primary tool for performance monitoring, analysis and reporting.

PROMMES will assist the MCA Philippines in effectively managing the five-year $434 million Compact approved by the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Government of Philippines in 2011. The compact includes programs supporting policy reforms, boosting infrastructure development, expanding community-driven development projects, and investing in capacity building and institutional strengthening.

More transparent and effective management of such development programs is a major priority in the Philippines. In the 2011-2016 Philippine Development Plan, President Benigno S. Aquino III states: “The Philippine record of socioeconomic development has been slow and below par in comparison with our Asian counterparts. Despite episodes of positive growth, the benefits have yet to be felt by the majority of Filipinos.” He describes “good governance and anticorruption as the overarching theme of each and every intervention.”

Synergy International Systems has been developing PROMMES to support MCA-Philippines in making evidence-based decisions with rapidly retrievable and insightful data, and ensuring the impact-driven use of MCC investments. The system will be used by all stakeholders including, MCA-Philippines management and Board of Directors, implementing partners, and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

Prior to the PROMMES initiative, MCA-Philippines relied on a basic Document Management Systems (DMS). But the evolving number of large, cross-cutting projects carried out by various agencies—and the ensuing proliferation of data—spawned a vital need to establish an all-encompassing system that would provide a comprehensive and real-time analytical picture of the Compact performance and results.

“MCA-Philippines is excited about PROMMES’ impact on making our work more effective,” said MCA-Philippines MIS Director, Ms. Claricel Yuvienco. “We are enthusiastic about working with Synergy International Systems on this information system given their expertise in delivering similar systems for other MCA Compacts in Lesotho, Mozambique, and Tanzania.”

According to Dr. David Kocharov, Synergy’s Director of Monitoring & Evaluation, “The MCA-Philippines staff is very diligent, detail-oriented, and constructive in their work attitude.”

In March 2012, Synergy was engaged by UNDP to develop a web-based Results Monitoring System (RMS) for the United Nations Development Assistance Plan (UNDAP) in Tanzania, which, is the common business plan for 20 UN agencies, funds and programs in the country. The UNDAP is the culmination of the “Delivering as One” trend within the UN, the purpose of which is to make UN assistance in countries more coordinated, results-driven, and aligned with country development objectives.

The software platform will help UN agencies in Tanzania to plan, monitor and report against the “One Plan.” In particular, it will facilitate the development of annual work plans and the reporting of planned results and targets.

Launched in July 2012, the UNDAP for Tanzania will be implemented until June 2015, with a total budget of $777 million dollars. In fact, Tanzania is the first country to apply the UNDAP methodology, which means that the Results Monitoring System will be a first-of-its-kind software across the UN system and could potentially be replicated in other UNDAP countries.

In January 2012, Synergy was contracted by the World Bank and Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Secretariat to design a flexible, web-based Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) information system for the Electronic Government for Regional Integration Project (EGRIP). EGRIP is a World Bank-funded project bringing together the national governments of Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent & The Grenadines to promote greater efficiency, quality, and transparency in public services through the delivery of regionally integrated e-government applications.

The purpose of the web-based M&E information system is to track the status of the variables outlined in the EGRIP M&E Framework (subcomponents, major activities, intermediate indicators, and outcome indicators), present the data collected in a manner that is easy to comprehend, make this information available to the REGU (Regional Electronic Government Unit) and other stakeholders, and enable user-friendly report generation for stakeholders with different user profiles.

The EGRIP M&E Information System was launched in August of 2012 for use by EGRIP M&E staff, beneficiary agencies in Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent & The Grenadines, and other OECS stakeholders.

In April 2011, the partnership of IBTCI and Synergy was awarded a contract for the USAID Somalia Monitoring and Evaluation Project (SMEP) under the USAID Evaluation IQC (Indefinite Quantity Contract). The primary objective of the SMEP is to provide on-the-ground performance monitoring, reporting and evaluation of USAID activities. Synergy will provide the Mission with a comprehensive, Web-based M&E Clearinghouse to track project achievements against overall stabilization goals through a variety of tools for online data collection, analysis, and reporting. This will allow USAID/Somalia to manage its project portfolio, analyze program level geographic and sectoral impacts, and make informed decisions about program management.

Synergy completed an initial needs assessment from 7-20 July 2011. With the information gathered from Mission staff and implementing partners (IPs), Synergy will design and develop the M&E system, which will enable all IPs to report data directly into the online system. The system will include a GIS module for tracking activity locations, funding commitments and disbursements, project status updates and geographic and sectoral outputs. It will also track progress toward Assistance Objectives and outcomes at the Intermediate Result (IR) level, and will help USAID consolidate data to produce quarterly and annual reports.

This five year program is valued at approximately $5-6 million.

In the spring of 2011, Synergy provided training to the Millennium Challenge Accounts in Lesotho, Mozambique, and Tanzania on the effective use of their recently established Management Information Systems (MIS). The MIS is a web-based database system that stores, analyzes, and reports mission-critical data to support results-based management.

The training served to reinforce the capacity of MCA staff on various aspects of the MIS, from data reporting and validation to analytics and reporting. As explained by MCA Lesotho’s MIS Manager, Mr. Litlhokoe Mohlomi, “MCA Lesotho has many sections with specific tasks; MIS helps bring information about those tasks together to show the bigger picture”. Using both theory and practical facilitation methods, various groups of MCA staff got to see the ins and outs of the MIS. Part of the training consisted of the interactive sessions that enabled participants to familiarize themselves with the MIS by performing analytical and reporting exercises.

It is important to note that each MIS is specifically tailored to the particular needs and requirements of the given MCA. Synergy staff continues to travel to Lesotho, Mozambique, and Tanzania to enhance the MIS capacities of these MCA, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that the MCAs will fully manage the MIS by themselves in the future.