Intro Meeting with Africa Resource Center

Date: Sept 11, 2020

OpenLMIS participants: Rebecca Alban (Unlicensed)

Africa Resource Center: Thobekile Nxumalo <thobekile@africaresourcecentre.org (South Africa based) , part of supply chain technical team, supporting ARC Nigeria

Background: we were introduced by Joseph Roussel from VillageReach; Rebecca had sent pdf resources via email prior to the call. She wasn't really aware of OpenLMIS as she had been working in the private sector. She saw something on LinkedIn about our EOI, and want to discuss OpenLMIS as a possible solution to some of Nigeria's issues

Their vision/interest in OpenLMIS:

Nigeria and their strategic objectives aroudn their LMIS. She has been supporting their Nigeria to develop 5 year supply chain strategy- she will leverage her private sector experience to support their strategy re: inventory mgmt, warehousing, and LMIS, and help them write that up. Look at their maturity, objectives, and documenting what their roadmap looks like.

Background on the Nigeria LMIS challenges:

Currently use Navision ERP for LMIS–this is for ordering, rationing, warehousing, at the CMS. Some of the basic features re: data triangulation, stock management, have not been satisfactory. It is only functioning at about 30% of what they had expected. They have had to design tools in Excel to fill in the gaps where Navision has not performed.

Their Integrated National Stock Status Report is generated quarterly- its a dashboard where they give an overview of stock status, KPIs, etc. is all done currently in Excel.

Yes it can integrate with ERPs, DHIS2

This is quite an urgent need to get their additional functionalities. They have excel tools for: waste prevention (adherence to min/max levels); early warning signs for potential expires,

They already have a very strong articulation of what they want/need. NPSCMP team in Nigeria is the national body who will handle this; they have standardized systems and policies that are consistent across the counties

There is a 5 tier distribution system- if we get it right in one state then its easy to replicate across the others. They supply chain maturity differs across each state. Would need to do landscape/readiness assessment for each county. Would need to take a phased approach to start with one state, then move on to others

Next steps:

Thobekile to get feedback with a larger group of stakeholders in Nigeria; if they want to, we will set up a meeting with national supply chain team to see what opportunities exist
Rebecca offered a Q&A session, demo, or presentation for their stakeholders (whatever they prefer at this stage).
Next conversation should loop in Wesley Brown, Product Manager to dig in more to their high level requirements (re: Navision, and rolling out in different counties).