Supply Chain View

Paul Currion from humanitarian.info has written recently about Fritz Institute’s Helios Humanitarian Logistics software. This is a fascinating project: Fritz describes Helios as

“a comprehensive supply chain technology solution that brings order to disaster relief, helping humanitarian organizations provide aid to people quickly and more efficiently”

Paul notes that the first implementation of the system, at IFRC, proved quite difficult – this will not be news to anyone who has been involved in the implementation of an complex business system. Which NGOs, he asks, will have the resources to implement Helios?

This sounds like a great opportunity for some donations-in-kind from the private sector. Through my work on CILT’s Humanitarian & Emergencies Logistics Professionals (HELP) Forum, I know that there is a host of professionals out there who want to use their skills to make a difference. Often they have regular jobs, but would like to take a sabbatical to donate some of their time to a worthy organisation or cause. One or two skilled individuals for a few months might make the difference between implementing or not implementing Helios for a mid-sized NGO.

Implementing a system is not as exciting as delivering aid to refugee camps – in fact implementing a system is a thankless task that is likely to leave you prematurely grey – but it is an important part of building the logistics capacity of NGOs. I’m going to put it to HELP that we try to facilitate this kind of skills exchange, as we are doing with other forms of logistics know-how. And what’s required is not just IT knowledge – in fact where most implementations trip up is in good business analysis, process design, training and change management.

As in all such schemes, such a secondment would have benefits for the company loaning out the staff. The experience of a real implementation and the associated process and organisational change is invaluable – especially if there is an ERP implementation on the horizon. To date, we haven’t considered this type of capacity-building skill-share at HELP, but I feel sure it’s an area with a lot of potential.

Links

http://www.fritzinstitute.org/prgTech-HELIOS_Overview.htm – Fritz Institute’s Helios page