Mifos Partner Program

Opportunities Available

Deployment Partner Services

Partners can freely distribute and deploy the core Mifos X platform and the official community app which is bundled with the platform. You can build a viable business deploying Mifos and providing the services to support and extend it:

• Deploy Mifos (Implementation Services)
• Host and Support Mifos (Hosting and Support Services Host and Support Mifos
• Training, Education, and Process Consulting (Financial Inclusion Consulting Services )
• Localization & Custom Development on Mifos X (Development Services)

Reseller Services

Partners looking to offer a hosted version of Mifos but not wanting to invest in their own data center or run their own cloud infrastructure, can distribute Mifos in cloud infrastructure on AWS maintained by the Mifos Initiative. The Mifos Initiative will provide hosting and unlimited Level 2 support for a monthly per-client subscription fee of which half is shared with the partner. All on-site training, implementation and level 1 support revenue is for the partner. See MIfos Hosting Overview for more details on the pricing and services included.

Platform Solution Services

There are a wealth of opportunities to build and distribute new products and solutions on top of the Fineract platform. We adopted Apache License 2.0 to provide third parties the freedome to build their own solutions or integrate existing products with Fineract. We highly encourage partners to contribute modifications and enhancements back to the Fineract platform so the entire open source community can benefit and help maintain. The Fineract platform contains all the core functionality needed to deliver financial services to the poor - all these services are exposed as RESTful APIs so you can easily integrate with or extend Fineract

• Create your own enterprise solution/product built on top of the Fineract platform
• Integrate your own existing product or solution with the Fineract platform.
• Build an application or module that leverages the Fineract API.

Certified Partner Program

The Mifos Partner Program has three certification levels based on points which can be earned and renewed annually based on achievements and activities in the community. Partners can attain their certification status by actively participating in the community, contributing to the product, continuing their ongoing training and development, and growing their customer base while maintaining a high levels of customer satisfaction.

At minimum to achieve bronze certification, a partner must have one successful Mifos implementation. Our platinum level is a separate tier for partners that make a major financial contribution or bring a significant customer base onto Mifos X. Prior to becoming a Certified Partner, organizations and individuals can attain the status of contributor based on community participation.

Partners will self-report their activities for verification by the Mifos Initiative staff. Certification levels will be renewed annually to ensure Partners are maintaining and growing their level of services excellence to our customers.  

Partner Program Levels & Benefits

Product Roadmap: All certified Partners get to participate equally in the development of the product roadmap by submitting and voting upon feature requests in JIRA. Gold Partners get to participate in internal roadmap planning sessions with the Mifos Initiative staff to ensure the platform will continue to meet their needs and is aligned with their own roadmap. These meetings will be also used to plan out the expected product contributions the Partner can make back to the community.

*Advertising Support: As a 501(c)3, the Mifos Initiative receives  an allocation of free AdWords campaigns from Google. These campaigns can only point back to a url on mifos.org so for Gold and Silver Partners we will allow you to create regional campaigns that point back to your directory profile (or another page) on mifos.org. This benefit is available only according to the terms of our agreement with Google, the limits on the ads placed, and is subject to change.

Sales Support: All Partners will have access to logo and branding guidelines for Mifos and Mifos X as well as soft copies of templates for brochures and sales presentations. Gold and Silver Partners can receive up to 5 hours of sales support via Skype per quarter. This can be used for strategic planning, sales calls with customers, etc.

Lead Generation: All MFIs that download Mifos X and fill out the form on Mifos.org get tracked in our Insightly CRM. Within three days of each download the Gold and Silver Partners in that region will be notified of the download along with their contact information and each Partners will have equal opportunity to reach out to that MFI.  

Mifos Partner Council: All Gold Partners will also have membership on our Partner council which will meet monthly. Its mandate and focus will be on the product roadmap (ensuring its aligned with and supported by the partners), development of our long-term partner vision, branding for the Mifos platform and partner program, license and intellectual property, as well as partner and channel conflict management. In time, we will also convene a separate Community Council that will focus on more general community and governance issues.

Earning Points to Gain Certification

Each year a Partner earns points towards the three levels of certification based on achievements in four areas. The activities and points are:

* Partner must have one successful implementation to reach minimum bronze certification status.

* In the future we will also add an annual certification test to maintain each level.

Partner Training Services

The Mifos Initiative offers a range of fee-based training courses and modules to get your team proficient in deploying Mifos, building on top of the platform and knowledgeable about the financial inclusion domain. These training courses are delivered via online web meeting along with a recorded screencast and relevant training materials shared after the meeting. Courses will be charged based on length or duration of the course.

Training will be delivered in a group training format. One-on-one and on-site training can be arranged for an additional cost.

A customized training curriculum can be shaped for your organization based on the skills you need to strengthen your organization as a Certified Partner. Each of the specific topic areas or disciplines can be further explored.

(these sections are an iteration from our training program outline we delivered to Hakilisoft)

Non-Technical Training

Financial Inclusion Training: These modules which are primarily self-guided are introductory courses to those who are relatively new to the financial inclusion space. They include a brief overview of the main operational methodologies for financial inclusion, the core products that are typically offered, and overview of the front and back-end technology landscape for financial inclusion.

Project Management Training

Mifos Implementation End-to-End Training: The project management training is a 2-day session geared primarily towards the business analyst and functional members of your deployment team.  The training starts out with an overview of the entire Mifos X deployment process and each of the key phases.  Each phases is then explored in depth.

Mifos Deployment Process Overview: An overview of the six phases to a Mifos Deployment - each of these major phases will be explored at either a functional/business analyst/PM level or technical level:

1. Assessment & Planning
2. Configuration & Set-up
3. Report Design & Development
4. Data Migration
5. User Acceptance Testing & Training
6. Pilot & Rollout
7. Post-Operational Support

Assessment & Planning: This session extends off the overview of microfinance processes and methodologies in general to help you map an MFIs business requirements and informational needs against the functionalities in Mifos to identify any gaps. A more in-depth business process mapping training session could be arranged but we will only provide self-guided BPM tools for now.

Product Configuration: This session extends off the end-to-end walkthrough of Mifos functionality as a deeper dive into how each of these functionalities are setup and configured in Mifos (training will be conducted on both Mifos X and Mifos with the primary goal of functional knowledge transfer with the interface on which it’s done being secondary)

Accounting: Our accounting session covers the basics of setting up and configuring a chart of accounts, setting up the organization's financial mappings, additional configuration  of Mifos X for automated  portfolio posting not covered in basic configuration, set-up of any posting rules for  non-portfolio journal entries, basic financial  reporting, and integration with third-party accounting systems.

Report Design: Tutorial on how to design and spec out reports - understanding information found in Mifos and mapping these out to report templates -  actual design & development covered in technical training.

User Acceptance Testing & Training: Partners usually train end users of the software in a train the trainer fashion - this session will cover the core areas to train FI staff on along with the techniques and tools/ manuals to implement. User Acceptance Testing - This covers how to properly create and walk the through UAT scenarios that will ensure proper acceptance of the functional coverage of the system.

Rollout & Post-Operational Support: For the business analyst, this session focuses on project management best practices (technical aspects of rollout are covered in the sys admin sessions). Topics will include managing a smooth rollout: change management & managing expectations, deployment best practices in general based on lessons learned in the field. This is followed by planning for post-operational support: setting up a helpdesk to provide effective troubleshooting and support for a live Mifos X user as well as feature design and how to respond to ongoing customer needs by scoping out new features for either community development or development by your team.

Accounting: This course covers all of what we cover in the accounting session of our end-to-end implementation training plus a deeper exploration of both cash and accrual accounting and how these are supported in Mifos X, individualized exploration of how configuration of products for financial including, as well as integrations with third-party accounting systems. This session is targeted for Partners who are working with customers with sophisticated accounting needs, complex integrations, and other financial accounting procedures that aren't directly supported in Mifos X.

Technical Training

Systems Administration Training

Reports Development; Our basic reporting course prepares a Partner to deliver to its customer the suite of reports to meet all their informational needs, either through a configuration of standard reports or the development of custom reports. The course starts with a in-depth exploration of the data model and the Mifos X data schema, walk-through of the standard reports that are available, basic SQL training, and then hands-on practical training in developing new reports using both Stretchy Reports and Pentaho Report Designer.  In-depth SQL or Pentaho training, database schema, or configuration of a BI server is also available.

Data Migration: This course covers the basics of data migration and how to properly assess the situation and determine an appropriate data migration strategy. Execution of that strategy can then be driven by the usage of two community data immigration tools or external scripts. Training will cover how to use the Excel-based import tool, the Mifos 2.x to Mifos X migration tool, and how to develop your own custom scripts to clean up and import external data into Mifos X via the APIs.  

Installation & Setup: This course will cover the installation and setup of the Mifos X community app in a production environment in both Linux and Windows Servers.

Network Security and Configuration: This course expands upon the basic installation of Mifos X and setting up a secure network environment.

Cloud Hosting: This course covers setup and configuration of the Mifos X platform and Community App in a hosted environment along with the necessary backups for optimal performance and redundancy. The initial focus will be hosting in Linux Server in an Amazon Web Services environment but future courses will include support for Windows Azure, Cloud Foundry, Rackspace, OpenStack, or other cloud or hosted environments in general.

Development Training

An Introduction to API-Driven Development on the Mifos X Platform:: This is an introductory session for first-time Partners looking to develop on the Mifos X platform. It will cover how to set up your Mifos X Platform Development Environment, the community app, and all other dependencies.  

It will also cover the best practices for code development and documentation, writing proper test-cases, working with GitHub for source control.

By the end of this course, you should expect to be comfortable with developing in the Mifos X environment. and how you can develop code that will be accepted and maintained in the  core MIfos X platform.

Product Development Training: This course will focus on building out new functionalities and localization of the Community App which is built on AngularJS. This will center on working with the API and won't require modifying the underlying Mifos X platform.

Platform Development Training:

This course is geared towards Partners looking to build new products on top of the platform or seeking to modify the underlying Mifos X platform. Course modules will focus on building out entirely new products/user interfaces or integrations with the Mifos X platform.