The Information Technology Revolution has
changed the way a man sees the world. Now it is quite possible for
the management to sit in one part of the world and manage a company which
is situated at another part of world. This kind of operation is
possible because of the powerful computing technology, networking
technology and software technology present, which can compute the data
and send it to any part of the world within seconds.
Shree Kshethra Dharmasthala Rural
Development Project (SKDRDP) was formed by Dr. D.Veerendra Heggade in the
year 1982. Recording and processing of all the transactions since
inception was carried out manually. In course of time the project
started to expand (now the project covers three districts and has fifteen
project offices). Also the project started its MicroFinancing operations
in 1995 which involved issue of loans to the Groups and collection
of Loan Installments.
As the project grew there was difficulty
in combining all the data from the Project offices and present the
Information to the Management from time to time. Therefore there
was an urge to computerize the operations, so as to facilitate the
Management Information. In this regard the management decided to
computerize the project. The computerization started off in the
year 2001 with the following objectives.
The Software is divided into three parts
- Micro-Financing
- To keep track of the
loans given to groups
- To know the status of
recovery of loans given to the groups
- To keep track of the
loans taken from banks
- Accounting Software
- To maintain Account Books
through software
- To view reports of
Accounts from time to time
- To keep track of Expenses
incurred and Income.
- To provide the base data
for making of the Balance Sheet and Income & Expenditure account
- Human Resource
Development
- To maintain Employees
records (Name, Address, Designation, Salary etc.,)
- To maintain their
attendance, leave details etc.,
- To keep track of
deductions and allowances of each of the employee
- To calculate the salary
every month and print the pay slip.
With the above objectives, the First
phase of the software was developed. This Software was developed
using Delphi as front end and Microsoft
Access as the back end. This software was implemented in all the
project offices. The software was running successfully in all the
project offices, as the software was being implemented, there was a need
for more innovation in the software to ease the amount of paper work
needed to be done to carry out the operation. Some of them are
- A means
by which the Field Staff (Sevaniratha) can collect the Loan
Installments and the Margin Money and issue Loans directly to the
Members
- To
maintain member wise portfolio.
- To be
able to merge the data of all Project Offices and present a
cumulative report.
- The ability
to implement the software in Circle, Division and Federation level.
- Where
more than one computer operator can work on the same software at
the same time.
- To make
the Data more secure
- To
integrate Micro-Finance, Accounts and HRD Softwares
- To
provide Circle wise, Division wise, Federation wise MIS reports.
To implement the above changes, there
were certain architectural changes which was done as follows
- The software was written
in “VB 2005 Express Edition” as Front end and “SQL
Server 2005 Express edition” as the back end. This
enabled the data to be more secure, helps in merging the data from
various locations and multiple people could access and work on same
data at the same time.
- To make the loan
disbursements and collections easier, a Hand Held Computer with
printer was used, which carries the data of disbursements and
collections to be made by each group. Once the transaction is
made, the receipt as printout is immediately issued to the
respective people. The transacted data is then fed back to the
Software. This type of Hand Held Computers were purchased from
M/s Vyakul Technology Solutions and Analogic Technomatics Private
Limited.
- The provision to keep
member-wise data, and to give member wise statement of account
- Interfacing Software to
be built to Upload and Download data between Hand Held Computer and
the Software
- Automatically update the
accounts and other MIS records once the data is received from the
Hand Held Device
- Design the Structure of
the database wherein the software can be implemented in Circle,
Division or Federation level.
With above innovation the Second Phase of
the software was built, this software is successfully running in all the
project offices. Five project offices have already received the
Hand Held Devices, where the collections and disbursements are being done
by the field staff (Sevaniratha).
SKDRDP has its own software team which is
incharge of development, implementation and maintenance of the whole
software operations. The software is being updated from time to
time by implementing new technologies for additional requirements as
needed by the management.
