Partner Spotlight – Intrasoft Technologies
In this month’s Partner Spotlight we are featuring Intrasoft Technologies. Intrasoft Technologies has been an active partner in the Mifos community since Generation 1 of our software. Zayyad and his team provide tireless support to more than a dozen organizations throughout Kenya. Zayyad was recently added as an Apache Fineract commmitter as he’s always sharing requirements with the community and helping us keep pace with the latest innovation in East Africa. He’s out there on the ground championing Mifos as well, helping us build our local chapter and host regional meetings.
This regular blog series will shine the light on some of our top Partners. Not only do we want to recognize them for their accomplishments, we want others to learn from the approach they’ve taken to promote and implement Mifos.
Mifos Partners are one of the most crucial links in our community – they are the driving force that is promoting and supporting Mifos worldwide. Aside from championing our product and bringing the Mifos technology to new markets, they act as the fundamental bridge feeding in MFI requirements to be developed by the community. Partners don’t stop there as many are also developing and localizing the product to fit their local market. For all these reasons, we focus our full energy on making Partners successful – they are the primary channel to market, the eyes and ears on the ground, and the entrepreneurial force that will help us sustainably scale. We’d love to recognize your partner organization in this monthly spotlight so please reach out if you’d like to be featured.
Let’s take some time to learn more about Intrasoft directly from their team.
Overview of the Partner Organization
Intrasoft Technologies Limited was established specifically to provide business entities across Africa innovative platforms to operate effectively while maximizing returns for their shareholders.
Established in 2010 as a partnership firm and later incorporated as a private limited liability company in January 2013, Intrasoft Technologies Limited has continued to strive towards becoming a complete software solutions provider on latest open technologies which are required by an ever-changing business environment. Intrasoft Technologies also provides a school and college management system as a cloud based service, a Bulk SMS gateway which can send SMS to any network around the world, and a healthcare management system.
Apart from its core activities of developing software solutions, we also do provide Web Design and Hosting services, ICT Projects Management, and ICT Systems Audit. We have also set up a training institute in Mombasa operating as Intrasoft Institute of Technology to train high school graduates and other individuals on computing skills, open source development, and other professional skills.
Intrasoft Technologies Limited has a team of 9 staff, 2 being part-time tutors at our training institute. The full-time staff have a combined experience of over 20 years in implementing and managing ICT Projects.
Our mission is to uniquely and efficiently provide innovative ICT solutions that will increase our customer’s business efficiency and maximize revenues in a more cost-effective manner.
We are driven by our motto “Uniquely delivering IT” and thus we deliver solutions that are completely unique and give our customers a competitive advantage over their competitors.
We have implemented Mifos to over 20 institutions in Africa, 50% of them required customization of modules and reports. We have developed a number of reports both stretchy and pentaho reports mostly for group lending which are not shipped with the default release, just to name a few: Arrears Aging Report, Center Collection Sheet, and CRB Data Export (as required in Kenya). We have also done USSD integration for couple of MFIs enabling their members apply for loans directly from their mobile phones.
We have helped other organizations within the community to set up Mifos to suit their operations and have resolved a number of issues as reported in the community lists. We have also submitted a number of feature requests to make Mifos X a more comprehensive technological solution for financial inclusion.
What Motivates Your Contributions?
Our passion for technology and financial inclusion motivates us to contribute and continue working with Apache Fineract. We place special emphasis in our operations to provide technological solutions for social impact and financial inclusion cannot be ignored when it comes to social and economic development.
Who are you working with right now?
We host over a dozen Micro Lenders on our Mifos X Cloud Hosting Service some of which includes Uni Capital, Watu Credit, Missions of Hope International, Hazina Microfinance, Vision Capital, Jirani Smart and many others.
We also deployed and customized Mifos X for QuickMoney Pty. Ltd, a licensed financial services provider in South Africa and we are currently integrating with their card payment gateway to enable their members use their Master Card for shopping and online payments.
We are also integrating Mifos X with USSD and MPESA Payments for Uni Capital and their members can comfortably apply for loans from their mobile phones and repay via MPESA anytime.
What is your focus now and heading into 2018?
Currently, we are working to bring on board high school and university graduates to the fintech space by training and mentoring them to work on the Apache Fineract project so as to make Mifos X an even better platform for financial institutions.
Our focus heading into 2018 is on building applications which will run on top of Mifos X with MPESA Integration (both C2B and B2C) being our top priority.
We are also working on a business intelligence platform integrated with the Apache Fineract to complement the community app with comprehensive business reporting.
What words of advice would you give to others in the community?
A robust system like Mifos X requires time to build and input from all users is inevitable in the process. We thus continue encouraging the community members more so users to continue giving their valuable contributions as to how we can make Mifos X a better system for financial inclusion and shouldn’t get tired.
As an organization, we are open to work with all partners therefore we welcome all in the community that wishes to collaborate with us. Come to us and let’s grow together.
Personal Introduction of the Team
As stated earlier we have a team of 7 staff working for Intrasoft Technologies Limited full time. Below team members are directly involved with the Mifos project. Others in the team include Peter O. Joakim (Corporate Business Support), Mariam Bakari (Finance & Administration), and Suham S. Nassir (Marketing):
Zayyad A. Said – C.E.O & Projects Manager
He is the founder of Intrasoft Technologies Limited and was introduced to the Mifos project in the year 2011 when he visited Bangalore, India in search for a suitable technology for a start-up MFI in Mombasa. On close scrutiny of the system then was Mifos 2.x, he fell in love with the workflow and simplicity and knew that his skills and experience implementing banking systems like Bankers Realm and Oracle Flexcube would be helpful in improving the system to serve his MFI client.
He wrote a number of functional specifications then, most of which were implemented and were improved with the evolution of Mifos X which was first released to be an individual lending platform. He continues working closely with the Mifos Community to bring on features needed by traditional micro financing institutions into the Mifos X platform.
Zayyad provides hands on approach on every Mifos implementation to ensure that the full potential of the system is realized by our customers. He is also a trainer and a mentor to both the team at Intrasoft Technologies Limited and to youths in Mombasa.
Joha Ahmed – Quality Assurance & Business Process Analyst
Mrs. Ahmed is a co-founder of Intrasoft Technologies Limited and works closely with the technical team in testing Mifos X and pointing out bugs in the system.
She has previously worked as a General Manager in a microfinance institution and her knowledge and experience in Microfinance operations plays a critical role when customizing Mifos X for our MFI clients. She is in charge of carrying out business process analysis and giving advice for MFIs on implementing best business practises.
Mercy N. Wafula – Front End Developer
Who says programming is only a man’s field? This ‘code blooded’ girl breaks that phenomenon, she writes codes more than what most men in her age do.
Mercy is well versed with front end technologies not limited to HTML, CSS, PHP, jQuery, AngularJS, and JavaScript. She has previously served in other IT companies as a Web & Graphics Designer. She also founded Rift Teknowgalz, an organization that seeks to empower young girls in high schools to learn more about technology and systems development.
Mercy is currently working on developing features on the community app most of which will be contributed to the community on completion.
Gift C. Mwangome – Implementation & Technical Support Engineer
Gift is that technical guy you run to when you face technical challenges and wants them addressed quickly. Within a short span in the company, Gift has managed to address a number of system issues our customers face and has developed stretchy reports as requested by our MFI customers.
Gift has has previously worked as a System Administrator at one of the deposit taking SACCOs here in Kenya and is instrumental in advising us on SACCO operations and how to customize Mifos X to work for SACCOs.
