Security Link Limited is one of the pioneer labor exporting companies in Uganda. With the increasing demand for it’s services came several challenges including and not limited to an increased less productive workforce, lots of paper work, delayed applicants processing time, absence of sufficient metrics to monitor performance and appraise staff. A management information system was needed to organize operations in the company.

As the Head of IT at Security Link, Norman Nathan was tasked with finding the best software vending company to design and implement the management information system.

“Operations at Security Link are so disjointed. The company is need of a coordinated, efficient and effective solution for its daily operations. This should be inform of a cloud based Management Information System.”

Security Link constituted of  23 full-time staff and 4 part-time staff. Each staff operated there own excel sheet in there day to day operations. It was common for applicants to be occasionally forgotten in the recruitment process in addition to delayed average processing time of an applicant. Staff performance was non-quantifiable.

The company has over 106 country wide agents. It was in the interest of the company that this agents are able to remotely register applicants without commuting to it’s head office. From the centralized database, staff are able to view and perform actions on applicants registered by agents.

Security Link is a company that wants to set the pace, not just keep up with it. Their operations involve several supplier, applicants collections and various daily expenses and income. A central accounts module was thus important. The company needed their various suppliers of medical tests and training to remotely access and update applicants relevant data with limited access rights.

“Is there a way we can know the applicants we have paid for passports and those we haven’t paid for?” wondered Abraham one of the company directors. One of the operational issues was the much dreaded paper work that led to various double payments of applicants documents processing. Various file cabinets were already filling. It was in the interest of the company to save on paper costs and space.

Othware was so committed to the implementation of the MIS with all data rights and privacy retained by Security Link Limited. The system uses a central scalable database solution.  The online web based system was deployed on the cloud with multiple security layers including SSL encryption, captcha, anti-brute force attack and other internal system dynamics. The system has various access rights tied to the roles of the various users.

The system has multiple notification mechanisms including emails and SMS. The company IT staff was thoroughly trained on management of the system and its user. A general staff training was as well conducted on the use the system.

The system allows for the importation and exportation of data via excel CSV formats. All previous company data was thus instantly imported in to the system

The company staff was overwhelmed by the various features in the system that greatly simplified their previous operations.

“I didn’t know that we could all be able to collaborate and work together on an applicants data” exclaimed Maureen one of the company’s Documents Management officers.

All staff operations were daily and monthly logged to ensure maximum output in their operations. Company operations, financial and marketing data was now easily accessible to the directors, managers and other company staff from anywhere online. The company was able to save more money from its original printing costs, double passports payments, staff field transportation, fraudulent agent payments among others.

Company staff operations were restructured and more coordination was achieved which led to an enormous increase in productivity.

Africa’s Pioneer P2P lender Afroteller made a promising sharp market entry into Uganda. As a the first Peer to Peer lending platform in Uganda, Afroteller’s shall thrive on their ability to innovate and adapt to their new market. To that end, Afroteller was seeking an easy to use, secure and efficient Peer to Peer lending system to kick start it’s operations in Uganda.

As Chief Technical Officer at Afroteller, Amulen’s task was to conceptualize and find a secure  and easy to use web and mobile application.

“Our aim at Afroteller was to develop a mobile, USSD and web application that’s easy to use, customer centered and secure. With a large amount of our clientele involving user’s with low technology literacy, a user friendly system was at the center of our interest. ”

But not only does Afroteller have a very large number users, it is also spread all over the country with it’s various agents. Martin Ariecho is an agents supervisor at Afroteller. For him, it was clear that the solution had to robust and scalable .

“Afroteller is a large global organization with enormous capacity to reach various countries and new markets. In order to reach all these markets, what better way to do it than having a scalable on demand cloud solution”

Afroteller intended to receive and disburse payments using the popular mobile money payment method. This included for loan repayments, investor deposits and payments to borrowers and investors.

Othware constitutes of a team of engineers with different expertise including cloud, software development and user interface design. We developed a Mobile application (IOS and Android), Web application, USSD platform and Management Console for Afroteller Limited.

The mobile money and SMS APIs were integrated into the Afroteller system to deliver payments and send SMS respectively.

The system was hosted on a scalable cloud platform. It was developed with the best user experience including speed and ease of use.

The system was much appreciated by Afroteller that continues to make immense strides in its operations. Othware continues to support Afroteller in all its technical technology aspects.

Global Taxation Services Limited offers a wide range of taxation services to a wide range of multinational and local clients across all industry sectors in Uganda. The company is comprised of a competent team of tax experts who posses a deep understanding of tax issues.

GTS required a highly dynamic and supportive IT company to offer Web Hosting, Cloud Solutions and Managed IT services.

GTS operates with an average of 13 full-time staff. All the company staff posses multiple electronic gadgets including laptops, desktops and mobile phones for their daily operations.

The company staff move to the field at anytime of the day. Each staff managed their own section of data. Connectivity and access to data in the field was often so challenging especially where collaboration was required. When a staff left, it was always a challenge recovering the data they had been working on theirs gadgets.

Breakdown, maintenance and updates of the company gadgets often posed another challenge as this required looking for an available freelance IT support to fix the issue which often took a couple of days. In an environment where connectivity and collaboration is important, such IT issues cause serious operational challenges and bottle necks. The company occasionally faced severe challenges of virus attacks on its devices.

The company previously had a website and email host. Due to the unreliability of the web host, work emails were usually on and off, forcing the staff to completely abandon the use of business mails.

The company further required an IT consultant to advice on its various related purchases and solutions.

When Othware was called with these multiple solutions, Tony an Othware Support Engineer quickly visited the client for a detailed audit.

To ensure access to data everywhere, a scalable PAAS storage cloud solution was implemented for the GTS. This allowed for the company to minimize costs of running highly expensive local file server.

The company hosting was moved to HostCyclop a reliable hosting Othware brand. This ensured the reliable use of the company business mail.

Othware further entered into a Managed IT agreement with GTS, where by it supports and provides all necessary IT solutions, support and consultancy to the company on instant response mechanism.

GTS currently enjoys an affordable great Managed IT service contract with Othware. Work collaboration, access to data everywhere and connectivity has further been eased for the tax agent due to the cloud services. The reliable website hosting has also ensured the full-time use of the company’s business mail.