eMIP

eMIP's mission is to offer social entrepreneurship (startups and SMEs), innovative IT solutions and services to support the development of digital skills, digital transformation and competitiveness.

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Inspiration

The direct experience from the position of Project Manager, in several social projects financed by European funds in which more than 40 experts and more than 1000 Members of the Target Group (MTG) were involved - made us dream with our eyes open of a unitary management method of projects carried out simultaneously, with experts occupying different positions and carrying out different activities involving hundreds of people (target group members) from poor communities belonging to vulnerable groups in rural areas of Romania. Under these conditions, we realized that it is more than necessary to create a tool to support the digitization of the processes carried out by experts, during the implementation of POSDRU / POCU projects. By digitizing the processes, we thought of developing several managerial tools that are not provided by the already established project management solutions: (i) simultaneous management of several interconnected projects through the partners and experts who implement them. (ii) system of constraints defined by the labor legislation in Romania and by the financier (iii) reporting and archiving system with many specific elements, defined by the system of program regulations (iv) complete regeneration of archives and reports, in case of changes. (v) system of verification and validation of the activities carried out by experts, of the "present proof of work" type, - with documents certifying the completion of the activities both by the experts and by the members of the target group (MGT) (vi) work force management, by managing several parameters / result indicators of the activities carried out by the project team and their beneficiaries. are you coming. monitoring / mentoring systems through which the designated experts provide entrepreneurial advisory services to GT members who implement Business Plans. (vii). other subprocesses - currently under development

The eMIP project - carried out around the core of MIP (Integrated Project Management), by a dedicated team, is developed as an online business of B2B / B2C type, to offer our clients the specialized services necessary for the implementation of projects financed through the "Human Capital" Operational Program (POCU in Romanian). Through eMIP, the management and implementation processes of POCU projects are digitized, which are implemented in partnership by 3-5 organizations, geographically distributed, with different project teams, which together manage common or different activities, in order to achieve the objectives assumed in the report with the 250 - 400 Target Group Members (MGT) - managed by the project. The activities carried out within the POCU projects are addressed to vulnerable people, in risk situations and consist of professional training, qualification or retraining programs, respectively information, counseling and mediation activities in order to facilitate access to the labor market.

The financing programs from European funds, like the one mentioned above (e.g. POCU), have strict rules for managing resources (e.g. human resources, budget, number of GT members participating in professional training programs, etc.), but also a mechanism strictly reporting the activities carried out by the members of the Partners' project teams. Consequently, for the efficiency of the reporting and management processes of the activities carried out in relation to the number of budgeted hours for the positions occupied by the project, respectively of the evidence attesting the accomplishment of the activities with the members of the GT - a high-performance and specialized management tool is necessary to automate the processes, to manage the flows of information and documents, so that the productivity of the project teams is really high. Identifying these needs, the eMIP team - which has over 15 years of experience in the management and implementation of projects from European funds, including POCU projects, decided to develop a software product that would cover as much as possible of the digitization needs of the processes carried out within this Program . We are aware that we will not be able to address them all, but according to the 80/20 theory, we want to be able to cover 80% of the expectations of the project teams from the 20 large digitized processes.

What it does

Our beneficiaries are both the organizations that implement these projects, as well as individual teams of experts (individuals), who have realized that project management can no longer be achieved through analog tools. Processes implemented so far through eMIP:

  1. Simultaneous management of POCU projects (using eMIP / from outside eMIP) respectively Other activities (basic norm in other organizations) - max. 4 Projects + 2 Other activities,
  2. Management of the partners in the project and the functions assigned by the Funding Request
  3. Project activities management (definition and development) - building the Gantt Chart;
  4. Management of the project teams, made up of experts employed by the Partners for the functions budgeted by the project.
  5. Management of hours used by experts, when they carry out project activities
  6. Management of individual employment contracts and their validity period,
  7. Management of the job description (attributions and responsibilities), for all experts who carry out tasks (actions) within the project activities.
  8. Management of the experts' calendars with the insertion of specific constraint systems: check of collisions at time intervals, real-time check of compliance with the requirement of a maximum of 12 hours worked / day; respectively a maximum of 60 hours worked in a week.
  9. Management of deliverables (supporting documents that prove the development of the activities financed by the project - including with GT members)
  10. Uploading deliverables and automatically building archives
  11. Management of project suspension periods
  12. Management of days off, vacations, medical leaves and unpaid leaves granted to members of the project team.
  13. Management of the actions that make up the activities and sub-activities of the project, distributed among experts and partners: individual and team actions
  14. Planning the activity of the project teams, by completing the experts' calendars with planning activities and actions at Manager level
  15. Generation of monthly activity reports of the experts, by functions, partners and projects - depending on the content uploaded in the Experts' Calendar.
  16. Automatic generation of stack files of deliverables, all described, structured by Experts, reporting period, Activities and association with the members of the Target Group (these stacks are built by automatically concatenating the *.pdf files, in the chronological order of loading in the Expert Calendar )
  17. Automatic generation of project Archives, in 3 different versions of the archiving structure.
  18. Management of the mentoring programs, carried out with the managers of the StartUps that won the competition that ensures the financing of Business Plans through the Intermediary of POCU Projects.
  19. Management of the deliverables imported from the Business Plan Mode, of the budget versions of the business plan, of the budget execution, of financial / non-financial operations (recording income, expenses, other operations),
  20. Monitoring by Experts Monitoring of Business Plans financed by the POCU Project, during the implementation period: verification and validation of all registrations operated by Startup managers (in the StartUp Establishment, Authorizations, Human Resources, Business Plan, Budget and Operations modules); validating and managing budget changes and the Business Plan; generating reports and archives

Through the eMIP Project, we want to support the digital transition, offering software tools to non-governmental organizations, which carry out projects with direct activity with people in risk situations, belonging to vulnerable groups.

By digitizing the processes related to the implementation of POCU projects and the reporting mechanisms, the project teams will have more time and resources to carry out activities with the target group members. Until now, over 130 projects are managed within the platform, in various stages of implementation, within which activities are managed with over 17k TG members.

How we built it

eMIP is a web app built with C# on .NET Framework following the MVC pattern. For the relational database we used MSSQL and stored procedures.

For automation and predictions we used Power Automate, Cognitive Services, OpenAI & ML.NET

The infrastructure runs on Azure and uses Azure DevOps for source control & CI/CD

Challenges we ran into

  • Constant changes to the rules by the Financier
  • The constant lack of resources and the necessary technical infrastructure
  • The risk of losing the code and the joy of recovering the code, in a difficult stage of development
  • the loss of one of the original team members
  • slow initial adoption

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • One of the achievements we are proud of is the eMIP Platform itself,
  • The team's perseverance even in the most difficult moments of product development.
  • Customers who come back with new projects for implementation and recommend the product to third parties

What we learned

  • perseverance is the most important weapon against failure
  • new technological knowledge,
  • the IT community is generous

What's next for eMIP

Through the eMIP Project, we want to support the digital transition, offering software tools to non-governmental organizations, which carry out projects with direct activity with people in risk situations, belonging to vulnerable groups. By digitizing the processes related to the implementation of POCU projects and the reporting mechanisms, the project teams will have more time and resources to carry out activities with the target group members. Until now, over 140 projects are managed within the platform, in various stages of implementation, within which activities are managed with over 17k GT members. Development directions of the project in the following period A. Development directions of the eMIP project

  • the refactoring of certain processes that still require the realization of certain configurations/interventions at the administrator level
  • raising the level of adoption of the use of the platform
  • Introduction of new tools / modules requested by the beneficiaries
  • The introduction of a decentralized decision-making system of the DAO type, aimed at establishing consensus within the eMIP user community, regarding the development areas of the platform
  • The introduction of a KPI generation and management mechanism, for the processes/activities carried out,
  • Development of a dashboard in one of the available technologies, in order to valorize the assumed results / KPI
  • Other customer identification facilities B. Valuing the product through promotion and increasing online visibility C. Introduction of the product in Google Play D. The establishment of the EMIP association - non-governmental organization, which will support the adoption by civil society of eMIP services, offered free of charge to vulnerable groups, social affairs, respectively to develop mentoring programs granted to young people belonging to vulnerable groups who wish to participate in development programs entrepreneurship using the Business Plan module

By participating in the eMIP Project, in the Microsoft for Startup Founders Hub program, we want to support the digitization and digital transformation of civil society organizations in Romania (SMEs and non-governmental organizations), which carry out social activity with vulnerable people, in risk situations, helping to overcome their condition by participating in qualification / retraining programs or even entrepreneurial development, within some social businesses.

Customers who have used the eMIP Platform (www.emip.ro) do not intend to ever return to the old (analog) mechanisms with which they operated before using the set of software tools.

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