This is a guest blog post by Will Lowrie and Giselle Lopez, who are Sr. Data & Knowledge Managers at Integrity.
Integrity delivers complex research and monitoring programmes in many of the world’s most challenging and fragile contexts and environments. Our teams need the best tools to do their work. We use Podio to capture information, manage it efficiently, and ultimately, learn from it. Since Integrity started using Podio in 2014, we’ve integrated the platform with our activities, communications, projects, and operations using 241 highly customized workspaces and apps containing more than 250,000 individual items. Podio brings our processes and workflows to life, helps us adapt to change, and lead in our projects, our business, and our sector.
“Podio revolutionised the way we capture and exploit information,” says Anthony Ellis, Integrity CEO. “It’s a valuable asset, and increasingly a service area for Integrity in its own right”
Integrity’s Podio environment is its “nervous system.” In addition to extensive project management functionality, we have used it to build and iterate market-leading knowledge and information management, duty of care, data management and visualisation, and customer relationship management:
Knowledge and Information Management: Podio is Integrity’s intranet of expertise, with areas dedicated to collecting, storing, and sharing critical information related to our work. For clients, we use Podio to meet the needs of governments, multilateral organizations, NGOs, and the private sector, including:
- Managing a natural disaster resilience building programme in Pakistan;
- Coordinating more than 600 verifications of UK-Government funded activities in Somalia;
- Facilitating our work to scrutinise UK Aid for the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact; and
- Enabling experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo to communicate with development policy-makers in donor organisations
Duty of Care: Keeping our people safe in conflict-affected areas is challenging. In the field, our teams use the Podio mobile app to check-in and plan their movements daily, with workflows to notify relevant personnel and to seek approvals from our Operations Team. Our team and partners also use Podio to track the latest security information affecting their work, including quality-assured security event monitoring data from vetted sources and RSS feeds.
Data Management and Visualisation: For our clients to quickly digest data we produce and store in Podio, we develop custom, integrated Podio applications. We configure and use Podio’s webforms and mobile application to collect data, including for stakeholder mapping and social network analysis (SNA) products. We produced our own Podio extension to visualise Podio data on maps, making it easy for our clients and partners to see where field research is taking place and where security incidents have been reported, such as in the image above showing reported security incidents in Mogadishu, Somalia
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Like most organisations using Podio, Integrity uses it as a powerful CRM system. As a consultancy, we need to be able to monitor and regularly access accurate and up-to-date information about our network of consultants and partners. Podio helps us build winning teams for proposals; build and cultivate strong relationships with clients, partners, and consultants; avoid duplications of effort; and allow for proactive account management.
About the Authors
Will Lowrie is a Senior Data & Knowledge Manager at Integrity based in London. He blends technology, process design and information management best practices to produce innovative solutions to knowledge management problems in the development sector, working with partners to deliver practical data and knowledge management approaches in fragile and conflict-affected environments.
Giselle Lopez is a Senior Data & Knowledge Manager at Integrity based in Washington, D.C. Giselle works to generate evidence as the basis for client programs and interventions. She delivers digital solutions and applications across our various technical services, particularly research and analysis, monitoring, evaluation and learning, project management and implementation, and risk management.
About Integrity
Integrity is an international consultancy and service provider working in challenging and complex environments around the globe. It sets the standard for ethically delivered, expert services and through its work it helps clients build stability, accountability and prosperity. Our in-house and expert Data & Knowledge Management team leads Integrity’s Podio development, and delivers integrated digital systems to optimise our projects.
