Solar Sister is a data-driven organization, and continual monitoring of our performance and impact is integral to the success of our day-to-day operations. We collect data throughout the life cycle of a Solar Sister entrepreneur, from the point of sign-up, where each entrepreneur participates in our baseline demographic and livelihoods survey, to an annual year-end impact assessment survey, where we collect information on entrepreneur growth and solicit important feedback from beneficiaries. Additionally, every day, our Business Development Associates (BDAs) support data collection on every clean energy purchase an entrepreneur makes, each training they participate in, and gather ongoing feedback about their experience and challenges. BDAs collect this data using software called Taroworks, which allows for real-time data collection in the field that feeds directly into the organization’s main CRM system, Salesforce. This allows the leadership team to continually monitor data inputs and use key metrics for decision-making across the organization.
To ensure the quality of the data collected in the field, this year, we designed a new compliance monitoring system to monitor and measure the accuracy and completeness of our data. Each month, our Customer Service teams conduct random spot-checks across a variety of data points through a series of questions asked directly to our beneficiaries. An internal scoring system based on how well the results of the spot-check match what has been collected in our systems allows us to quickly identify gaps in the data that has been collected. Follow-up with BDAs ensures their complete understanding of the data point and how to collect it accurately. Additionally, we have incorporated this “data checks” score into our regular monitoring indicators to ensure that all staff understand the urgency and importance of data quality across our operations.
As of August 2024, we have officially been implementing the data compliance monitoring system for six months and have successfully caught data errors and corrected them quickly, as well as provide the necessary support to staff to avoid similar mistakes in the future. For example, the Customer Service team in Nigeria noticed several instances where the purchase dates recalled by the entrepreneurs did not match the records on Salesforce. After digging into the specific cases, the team discovered that some BDAs did not understand the effects of delayed reporting and were entering information late into the system. In response, these BDAs have been coached on the importance of timely data collection with a short refresher training.
Overall, the score for data quality has averaged 95% accuracy and completeness, which is a clear indication of how seriously Solar Sister takes data quality; it is a core value at Solar Sister, and we strive to maintain the highest standards across all aspects of our operations.