A practical guide to maximizing the value of every dollar you invest in digital, meeting the pressing demands of today while building a foundation for tomorrow.
Social impact organizations and governments worldwide are under immense pressure to do more with less. We are confronting an array of complex, constantly-evolving pressures ranging from economic uncertainty, humanitarian crises, inflation, pandemics, and climate change. All of this means we need to deliver more services to more people. And, we often need to do it with flat or decreasing levels of funding.
Digital solutions have the potential to help us do more with less, to create more value for every dollar invested. But most digital transformations either fail outright, or fail to create this sustained value.
Exhibit 1: Only 30% of digital transformations are successful. BCG analysis based on 895 transformations. Learn more.
At Dimagi, we are changing this, with an approach we call Impact Delivery. Over the last 20 years, Dimagi has partnered with leading organizations and governments to help shape their frontline programs for long-term and growing impact. Impact Delivery is an approach to deploying digital solutions that maximizes value for money by meeting the pressing demands of today while building a foundation for tomorrow, inspired by the best practices of the most impactful organizations.
The Shift
How is this different?
A move from the status quo, where value trails off after launch, to an approach where every investment compounds over time.
The old wayThe Impact Delivery way
Program approach
Digitizing programs: Moving programs as they are today (largely paper-based) to digital, focused on collecting administrative data.
Digital transformation of programs: For the same investment, transform a program with digital solutions that can unlock better jobs for frontline providers, enable high value-for-money services, and still get all the administrative data needed back to key decision makers.
Mindset
Project mindset / Closed loop system: Focus on launching new digital apps for specific uses but not growing beyond that. Investing in the set up and launch, and then seeing value trail off over time. Wasting valuable time getting it off the ground.
Growth mindset / Continuous improvement: Leverage an existing platform to launch a new use case. Focus on improving, adding more value and iterating over time with ongoing feedback loops.
Scope
Limited, single-use case apps.
Platform that can support many use cases.
Frontline jobs
Digital apps can add burden to already challenging Frontline Worker jobs.
Digital apps make Frontline Worker jobs better.
Timeframe
Short term: Thinking about how to pick and implement technology today to meet a short term need.
Short and Long-term: Thinking about meeting today's needs and incorporating huge amounts of new value into existing programs that have been running for years.
New needs
Slow and cumbersome: When we have a new need, build and launch an entirely new application.
Quick and agile: When we have a new need, use our existing foundation to quickly launch a new use case.
Measuring success
Digital tools to address programmatic needs with a focus on activity metrics (launch, forms, active users, cases) and lack of accountability for overall outcomes.
Digital strategy to accelerate global well-being outcomes with a focus on outcome measures.
Frontline workers
Monitoring Frontline Workers: How can we get real-time insights and reporting on frontline activities at the last mile?
Supporting Frontline Workers: Transforming frontline work to first class work - supported, paid, trained etc.
The Framework
The three pillars of Impact Delivery
Impact Delivery uses technology, people, and processes to create Better Impact, More Impact, and Sustained Impact. The three build on one another: the first deepens the value a program delivers today, the second lets that value expand to new programs and users, and the third keeps it compounding for years.
Better Impact means designing digital tools that make frontline jobs easier and outcomes stronger, not just capturing data for reports. More Impact means building on a single foundation you can extend to new services, user types, and integrations over time, often at little or no added cost. Sustained Impact means partnering for the long term on a flexible platform, so your solution keeps delivering through changing needs and funding cycles. Here is what each looks like in practice, and the questions to work through with your team.
Pillar 1 · Better Impact
Deliver better impact
by creating better jobs for users and therefore better outcomes
Digital programs too often focus only on capturing data for administrative reporting, creating a burden on providers and clients. But digital solutions can and must be designed to also improve and deepen the impact delivered by frontline providers. With Impact Delivery, we can improve the jobs of our users with robust job aids complete with decision support to ensure best practices are followed, seamless referrals for continuity of care, multimedia content for top notch training and automated bi-directional messaging for client communication. All of this enables teams to deliver better services, and still capture the data needed for reporting.
Questions to ask your team
Work through these across technology, people, and processes.
Technology
Where will I save money through this technical investment and can I quantify it to external stakeholders?
Can I articulate the tangible improvements in service delivery impact with this technology investment?
Will deployment of this technology make our workforces' jobs better? Are we creating extra administrative burden? If asked, will our users agree this technology is improving their jobs? Can we set explicit goals and measure this during the implementation?
Do we have the capabilities we need in our technology choice to both improve service delivery and collect all necessary administrative data within our ecosystem?
People
Can I set up a team or person responsible for owning both successful implementation for administration requirements as well as meeting defined success criteria for better impact?
Can I ensure that the voices of the users of our technology solutions are heard in our approach, and that this input is consistent and the feedback loop is closed?
Processes
Can I consistently measure the success of my Impact Delivery against clear and shared objectives across all key stakeholders?
Do we have sufficient buy-in on the definition of success to regularly review and prioritize against our shared objectives?
Do we have a roadmap that creates the right value for each stakeholder on a schedule that creates sufficient buy-in?
Pillar 2 · More Impact
Deliver more impact
by setting up digital to support multiple programs, user types, and integrations at scale
Digital solutions are generally created with a focus on one specific project or program. This is often necessary for budgeting reasons and is also appropriate to create buy-in and demonstration of value. But if more impact over time is not created, it can leave you with dozens of standalone applications, each fading in value over time, that create administration burden and waste. With Impact Delivery, we can deliver on the immediate project requirements we face today, but with a foundation and clear vision that will allow us to seamlessly rollout new services, add support for additional types of users, connect to other systems our organization or partners use, and rapidly release new improvements to meet evolving requirements. And, we intentionally plan to support more impact with no or limited additional cost.
“Deliver on the immediate project requirements you face today, but with a foundation that will allow you to seamlessly rollout new services, user types, integrations, and improvements.”The Impact Delivery Playbook
Questions to ask your team
Work through these across technology, people, and processes.
Technology
Given our vision for digital transformation at our organization and our technology platforms, what are the next three use cases, programs and users that we can create more impact with?
Do I already have tools that I've deployed for my teams that were supposed to lead to more impact? What are the pain points my users experience in using them? Can I get more value from my existing digital tools?
What integrations are needed between tools to realize my vision? Are integrations a high-enough priority that I think we will succeed in completing them? If not, am I making realistic assumptions?
Can I quantify the objective success metrics, and specific cost-savings from succeeding in supporting additional use cases?
Do we want to take advantage of new and emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Automation over time? If so, what technology foundation do we need in place to be in a position to take advantage of these advances?
People
What training and support does our workforce need to ensure they can best use the technology we have provided them? Are we confident in our approach and prioritization of this skill building?
Do I have a plan to scale-up and scale-down a pipeline and staffing of resources to expand AND contract the usage and value of our existing digital platforms?
Processes
Do I have clear success metrics and aligned expectations on how additional use cases should be enabled and come online?
Can I clearly measure the scale-up of existing and new programs and do we have a team assigned to driving these measures with an agreed priority?
How can funding from today's project grants support adding new use cases and user types over time?
Pillar 3 · Sustained Impact
Deliver sustained impact
by working with a long-term technology partner on a robust platform
When programs invest in digital solutions, they often utilize time-limited funding with specific demands. But without being able to support the unpredictable emerging needs of the future, the solution's fit for our programs may be short lived, becoming a burden as the program changes. Sustaining impact requires knowing that the future is unknown and being prepared to meet the emerging needs of tomorrow. Dimagi's long-term partnership approach and robust but flexible platforms allow organizations to meet today's requirements and be ready for tomorrow's next challenge. Delivering impactful services in complex ecosystems requires partners, not vendors.
“Sustaining impact requires knowing that the future is unknown and being prepared to meet the emerging needs of tomorrow.”The Impact Delivery Playbook
The old way · value trails off
With Impact Delivery · a foundation that grows
Despite boom-and-bust funding cycles, an Impact Delivery approach builds a foundation for long-term impact.
Questions to ask your team
Work through these across technology, people, and processes.
Technology
Do we have value metrics of impact vs. cost of our technology investments, and do we have a process to discontinue the technologies no longer providing enough value?
Are we selecting technology partners that have demonstrated an ability to last through boom and bust funding cycles as an organization and with their clients?
Do we have appropriate budget and skill to handle known recurring needs, such as privacy and security incidents or audits that will inevitably arise?
Do our technology tools include robust APIs to ensure seamless data exchange across tools using the standards we plan to adopt as well as custom approaches with new or legacy systems?
People
Is there a person or team within my organization who is accountable for ensuring that we are getting the most impact from our digital investments over time, beyond the initial funding?
Do I have the right pipeline of talent to be able to sustain our Impact Delivery efforts for the long term?
Processes
Do we have a clear long term vision of success for our digitization efforts and can that directly support prioritization.
What investment and ongoing expenses do we need to enable us to bring our long-term Impact Delivery approach to life? Is the decision making process to make these budget decisions clear and is there appropriate time allocated to make sure decision makers have the information they need?
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