| |January 20209THE DEFINITION AND UTILIZATION OF BUDGETS AND THE EXPENSE TRACKING ARE OF PARTICULAR INTEREST TO THE DONORSimprovement in skills, if it was a vocational skilling program being funded), information about the various partners used, employ-ment opportunities generated, job roles which succeeded and those that did not, etc. all of which help the donors and the social enter-prises to assess the efficiency of their programs and improve the focus, planning or execution of them for achieving greater impact in the future.In order to address the above list of needs and their varied re-quirements, the following techno-logical capabilities and platforms are now becoming necessary for social enterprises to invest in.1) ERP: The selection (or devel-opment) of and implementation of an appropriate ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) to ensure that the main activities of the social en-terprise are both well planned and their execution tracked is key to the success of the programs. Taking the example of a voca-tional skilling program, it would be the entire candidate lifecycle covering registration, enrolment in batches, attendance of the stu-dents and trainers, assessments, certifications, job placements and tracking of the candidates in their jobs post-placement. The ERP Systems allow for ef-ficient execution of the programs, save on significant operational costs and allow for efficient oper-ational reporting. Secondly, the necessary evidence of the opera-tions is logged and available for audit purposes.2) Learning Management Sys-tems: The LMS is required for two key activities ­ (a) tracking the learning curve of a learner and (b) ensuring the most current learn-ing content is delivered to her in small bite-sized chunks, on a plat-form they are most familiar with ­ perhaps their mobile phones. A capable LMS platform would help in assessing the impact as well as the performance of the trainers and the learners. 3) Financial Accounting Plat-form: A `medium enterprise' class, Financial Accounting Platform, which is fully integrated with the ERP System, ensures that the op-erations are converted into finan-cial numbers with full audit abili-ty and traceability is the key. The definition and utilization of bud-gets and the expense tracking is of particular interest to the donors.4) BIPlatforms: While a Busi-ness Intelligence Platform may not immediately come to mind, since a CSR Project ends up gath-ering huge amounts of data, ei-ther in manual forms or digital platforms, the analysis of the data to elicit meaningful infor-mation helps in the successful targeting of the right popula-tions, with the right programs, and assesses the results in a comprehensive manner. Even if no other system is in-vested in, then this one system can help demonstrate impact, im-prove efficiency, cut costs and help collect data that would help hone future programs. 5) Mobile Apps: With the large-scale adoption of smartphones, it has presented us with an opportu-nity to start collecting data using mobile apps, direct from the field. Therefore the adoption of Mobile Apps is critical in doing away with the latency of information, ensur-ing the authenticity of the data, and ease of data capture.The adoption of the above sys-tems would help any Social Enter-prise to meet the accounting, re-porting and operating needs of most CSR Programs.
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