AKAM’s mission is to affect demonstrable, measurable, and lasting improvement in the quality of life of its clients by delivering appropriate financial services to reduce poverty, diminish the vulnerability of the disadvantaged and enable economic and social inclusion. Social performance is defined as “the effective translation of an institution’s mission into practice in line with accepted social values .” In other words, social performance is about making an organization's social mission a reality.
To help AKAM deliver on its social mission, it has set up the Market Insights and Solutions /Research and Product Development (RPD) Unit whose main focus is to ensure its products and services are reaching the disadvantaged and are helping them map their way out of poverty.
AKAM’s Market Insights and Solutions/RPD Unit aims to deliver client-centric products, understood as products that are designed and delivered based on a deep understanding of clients’ needs, preferences, behaviours and aspirations. The Unit blends different research approaches to build client insights and inform product development.
It has systems and procedures in place which ensure products are client responsive while contributing to AKAM’s financial bottom-line. The Market Insights and Solutions/RPD Unit has a global team within AKAM as well as a country teams in every entity. While the research and product development/implementation processes are led by the country teams, the global team provides oversight as well as technical support. AKAM entities benefit from a culture of experience sharing built within AKAM and the AKDN. The key objectives for the Unit are to:
- Put innovation powered by data-analytics at the core of entities’ business model.
- Use data analytics and key performance indicators, including social performance indicators, to inform development of client-centric products, services and delivery channels
- Conduct research to understand client feedback and quality of life changes due to product uptake.
The objectives come to life through two broad work streams:
- Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Framework
- Product Research and Development
AKAM’s MEL framework uses a set of tools to link product performance, client profile data, client experience and aspects of a client’s quality of life that access to finance may arguably influence.
Through the combination of MEL tools, AKAM seeks to be able to answer the following three core questions:
- Who our clients are and should be
- What their needs are and how AKAM’s products help meet them
- How access to products contribute to changes in clients’ quality of life
MEL tools include:
Progress out of Poverty Index: AKAM measures its clients’ poverty level using the Progress out of Poverty Index® (PPI®), a poverty measurement tool developed by Grameen Foundation for organizations and businesses with a mission to serve the poor. AKAM has collaborated with Grameen Foundation USA to fund the PPI development for Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mali. AKAM entities capture PPI data for clients through intake application forms and other periodic assessments. This data is used to report on poverty outreach, assess changes over time and inform product analysis and development by allowing client segmentation.
Monitoring Evaluation and Learning Database: AKAM has worked with MFSYS, a software company, to develop the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Database (MELD). MELD is a web-based application that allows AKAM to collect client socio-demographic and poverty information, captured during client intake or through periodic assessments (e.g. client satisfaction surveys). MELD also extracts financial data from each entity’s core banking system. Combining different types of data allows AKAM to: segment clients into distinct groups; monitor product performance and uptake across different segments; understand the potential effect of different products on the clients' lives. This ultimately enables AKAM to tailor its products to meet the needs of identified segments.
Client Experience Assessments: A key component of the MEL framework is assessing client experience with AKAM products and services. Assessing customer experience means asking clients about their satisfaction with the institution and the products and services it provides. It also allows AKAM to investigate how clients perceive access to its products and services satisfies their needs and supports their livelihoods and, more broadly, changes in their quality of life. AKAM uses this information to shape products and processes to better respond to clients’ needs, potentially creating a greater positive effect on clients’ lives. AKAM entities carry out client experience assessments in the form of Customer Satisfaction and Customer Exit Surveys on a periodic basis. These assessments are often carried out by product or service, to ensure feedback can be translated into concrete actions aimed at improving the current offering.
Quality of Life Assessments: AKAM aims to improve the quality of life (QoL) of people by helping them to improve their incomes, become self-reliant and gain the skills needed to graduate into the mainstream financial markets. Thus, the assessment of changes in clients’ QoL is a key part of AKAM’s Social Performance Management practices. AKAM’s approach to assessing changes in QoL is informed by the AKDN’s QoL assessment methodology and aims to gauge AKAM’s contribution to changes in clients’ QoL, stemming from accessing AKAM’s products and services . AKAM has a three-pronged approach to measuring changes in clients’ QoL:
- Client experience plus – Periodic client satisfaction and exit surveys include questions that inquire about changes in QoL (both positive and negative) that clients perceive have taken place as a result of using AKAM’s products and services.
- QoL indicators captured in the MELD – analysis of changes in key socio-economic indicators captured from clients on an ongoing basis (e.g. PPI).
- In-depth QoL client interviews – qualitative interviews that explore not only what changes are taking place but also the processes leading to these changes.
While the assessment of changes in clients’ QoL is focused on understanding AKAM’s contribution, through component 3, AKAM also seeks to understand whether any QoL changes may be attributed to AKAM’s products and services. Attribution is based on the plausible association made by the client in their account of the changes that were made possible/facilitated by having access to AKAM’s products and services.
The Market Insights and Solutions/RPD Unit helps ensure AKAM products, services and delivery channels meet clients’ needs and preferences. At the centre of AKAM’s product development process is also the need to balance social and financial performance.
The Market Insights and Solutions/RPD Unit achieves this by:
- Conducting rigorous research to inform product development for various delivery channels (e.g. mobile) and different client segments.
- Building further insights from the analysis of MEL data that are used to improve the suite of products on offer and the delivery of these.
- Segmenting clients to better tailor and cross-sell products and services with the purpose of meeting a wide range of needs.
- Developing revenue streams for its products and services.
- Following a set of standard systems and procedures for the design, development and approval of products and solutions at AKAM entities.
- Involving and getting feedback from operations, finance and risk throughout the development and implementation process.
