To give examples of what I mean, before I stepped into my role there was little in the way of a data backup plan (this still needs work), contacts are stored in an old physical book that is following apart, and any time a mass email is sent out everyone scrambles to find all of the addresses to send to.
There are other issues that need dealing with as well — this is just a sampling — but it (hopefully) gives you an idea of why SaaS is a serious consideration.
In the search for tools to use I’ve gotten to experiment with a lot and so thought I’d start a series reviewing them from the perspective of a small non-profit working in Africa. This might give a bit of a different review than typically written as multiple factors will come into play:
- Ease of use for non-westerners and those for whom English is not their primary language.
- Price, which is very important for a non-profit with little operating budget.
- Access speed locally in Africa (and along with this, reliance on bandwidth heavy images).
- Does it solve an issue we have in a way that we would (does the tool fit our needs or are we trying to fit the tool to our needs?)?
These are a smattering of the questions that I have to ask before considering presenting a tool to our leadership. Hopefully you’ll find these reviews interesting and, if you are the developer(s) or owner(s), you won’t take offense if we don’t like your app due to our unique circumstances.