Programme 2
2022 – 2025 (3 years)USD 1 Million Digital Transformation Programme
End to end delivery leadership across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe
- Organisation
- VisionFund International
- Role
- Global Director of Digitization / Interim CIO, Programme Director
- Scope
- 15 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America & Europe (MEER)
- 15Countries
- USD 1MProgramme Value
- 3-5Core Team
- 28Institutions
Overview
VisionFund International is one of the world's largest microfinance networks, serving low income clients across 28 institutions. I directed a USD 1M digital transformation programme, the Transform Digital Initiative, to deliver a mobile banking application for three user groups: microfinance clients, field loan officers and branch managers.
The Problem
The 28 institutions were operating fragmented, paper based systems: clients had no remote access to accounts, loan officers recorded transactions manually, branch managers had no real time visibility, and delivery had to be coordinated across 15 countries with different regulators, languages and connectivity levels.
My Role & Delivery Leadership
Programme director and single accountable point of coordination. Held the integrated schedule, budget and RAID register, managed the implementing vendors, chaired delivery governance, ran the acceptance and cutover process, and reported to international executive leadership on a fixed cadence.
Delivery Approach
Structured programme delivery with stage gate governance across five countries
Programme charter, business case and sponsor alignment with international executive leadership
→ Charter, benefits map, governance structure
Integrated master schedule across 28 institutions, workstream dependencies, budget baseline and RAID register
→ Integrated plan, baselined budget, RAID log
Stage boundaries with steering committee approval to proceed, exception reporting against tolerance
→ Stage gate approvals, exception reports
Vendor management, weekly status against baseline, change control and earned value tracking
→ Status packs, change log, forecast to complete
Structured acceptance testing with institutional users, defect triage, cutover runbooks and go / no-go decision
→ Signed UAT acceptance, cutover plan
Formal handover to operations, benefits realisation review and lessons learned
→ Handover pack, closure report, lessons log
Key Challenges & Solutions
Coordinating 28 institutions on one plan
Established a single integrated schedule with named milestone owners per institution and a weekly dependency review to keep country workstreams aligned.
Multi country regulatory and language variation
Country specific requirements captured as scope items with tolerance limits, managed through formal change control rather than informal local variation.
Connectivity risk to the delivery timeline
Escalated the offline requirement early with a recommendation attached, revising vendor scope and schedule before the build baseline was set.
Adoption risk from field staff
Institutional users embedded in requirements and UAT from the start, with structured change management and training built into each rollout wave.
Outcomes & Impact
Cashless transactions scaled: Digital payment adoption increased across all 15 country deployments.
Improved loan repayment rates: Real time tracking and reminders drove measurable improvements.
Reduced transaction errors: Manual paper recording errors and reconciliation effort were eliminated.
Reduced operational costs: Paperless operations reduced printing, storage and administrative cost.
Improved client satisfaction: Post implementation review confirmed improved satisfaction scores.
USD 1M programme delivered: Full programme delivered across 15 countries within budget.