Leveraging Data Insights to Scale Off-Grid Solar Businesses
Data insights can play a powerful role in the
off-grid solar distribution sector. At Angaza, we leverage data in two primary
ways to help businesses grow. First and foremost, we provide data analytics
that enable our customers to gain insight into their active loan portfolio,
client base, product offerings and overall operations, allowing them to make
informed decisions with confidence. More recently, we have begun to tap into
this same wealth of data to help investors in the sector more efficiently deploy
debt capital to scaling distributors through the SIMA Angaza Distributor
Financing Fund.
Unlocking
Valuable Insights on the Angaza Platform
When distributors use the Angaza platform and
mobile app to collect and manage valuable client, payment and product
information, they gain access to a number of features that extract intelligence
from the data. In order to turn this data into actionable insights, it is
imperative to make it easy to understand and relevant. That’s why Angaza’s
online platform, the Hub, features interactive, visual dashboards
that provide overview reports of a distributor’s sales, payments, and client
accounts.
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With the Sales Dashboard on the Angaza Hub, distributors can quickly analyze sales trends and patterns. |
By using the Sales Dashboard, distributors can
view the number of sales made over a certain time period and filter by
responsible sales agents. With this information, they can recognize sales
trends and discern how each sales agent is faring compared to others week by
week while providing support to improve performance where needed. Distributors
can also analyze which products their team has registered, or sold, to
understand how the different products in their portfolio perform within their
client base. This means that distributors can accurately measure the popularity
of specific products and back up anecdotal evidence from agents on the ground
with data, thereby informing product inventory and marketing decisions.
Finally, by quickly comparing sales across different loan offerings, managers
can gain insight into what financing options resonate with the market they
serve.
In the world of pay-as-you-go (PAYG)
distribution, making a sale is just the beginning of a business’s relationship
with a client. Whether selling on a rent-to-own or perpetual lease billing
model, efficient payment collection is essential for any PAYG business. Payment
data can shed light on what is working well and where distributors might employ
a different strategy to strengthen their portfolio performance. Distributors
using the Angaza Hub’s Collections Dashboard can view payment trends over time,
including the number of client accounts that are behind on payment and the
outstanding balance for such accounts. Because distributors can break down
these client accounts by sales agents, they can identify top performers and
those who may need support and guidance to improve payment collection.
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The Collections Dashboard on the Angaza Hub enables distributors to view the business impact of their payment collection efforts. |
Beyond the Sales and Collections Dashboards,
distributors can interact with their Angaza data on the Hub in many other
useful ways, such as by examining an individual client’s payment history or
analyzing product usage and health patterns. This type of information at a
distributor’s fingertips can help them improve product and client support, for
example. Clients with product errors are more likely to default on their loans,
and timely client support boosts repayment rates. By accessing detailed product
information to quickly identify issues with a product and provide targeted
troubleshooting assistance for a client, distributors can improve client
support and satisfaction. Furthermore, by identifying which clients have made
consistent payments over time and paid for their products in full, distributors
can offer additional life-changing products to these clients with lower risk.
Thus, they can turn a one-time sale into a satisfied, repeat customer.
A
Data-Driven Financing Fund for Distributors
With an abundance of impactful data on the
Hub, we recognized an additional way to benefit distributors: utilize these
insights to catalyze investment in the sector by de-risking working capital
loans. As many distributors have cited a lack of access to funding as the
number one barrier to growth, Angaza decided to join forces with SIMA to
launch the SIMA Angaza Distributor Financing Fund (DFF),
a data-driven investment fund for distributors.
With permission from interested Angaza
customers, DFF leverages centralized, real-time data analytics from the Hub to
support fund management. Using Angaza data, DFF assesses eligibility for
funding, reduces the duration and complexity of due diligence, and monitors and
reports on loans.
With the ability to access distributors’
business operations data via the Hub to evaluate prospective fund recipients’
business health and investment risks, the SIMA Angaza Distributor Financing
Fund provides opportunities to distributors that have been traditionally
overlooked for funding.
Whether empowering distributors to make
decisions for their business or enabling investors to provide much-needed
access to funding, the power of data is undeniable. We believe at Angaza that
data driven-insights will play a vital role in accelerating the growth of the
off-grid energy sector and, ultimately, in increasing access to life-changing
solar products in emerging markets.
Angaza is a GOGLA member and sponsor of the Off-Grid Forum & Expo 2020. Visit Angaza at booth #40 at the event in
Nairobi, Kenya.