Kiva Adopts Pentaho BI Software

Michael Garrity — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:30:00 GMT

Non-profit microfinance platform Kiva.org has officially adopted Pentaho BI Enterprise Edition to automate its reporting and analytical capabilites.

Kiva's goal as an organization is to leverage the Internet and global network of microfinance institutions to help alleviate poverty. Since being founded in 2005, Kiva has made possible over $225 million in microlans between individual lenders and entrepreneurs around the world. This growth eventually led to a great increase in demand for its service, which meant that it needed a flexible, scalabe and cost-effective data warehouse and reporting system that could efficiently unify a variety of data sources and satisfy a wide-array of customers using that data.

Now, with the help of Pentaho, Kiva has switched from a "spread-mart" environment, where each department had different views of disparate data sources, to one that is able to validate and publicize numbers across the company.

Pentaho is one of the world's leading providers of business intelligence (BI) software.

Kiva now has the ability to empower users and has converted their employees into a small army of true knowledge workers. This is a tremendous improvement for a group running an online microfinance organization that requires rapid decision-making. Pentaho aided in this transition by providing the Kiva team with an Agile BI and real-time data flow.

In a press release this morning, Kiva said that they have seen an almost immediate return on investment (ROI) in their adoption of Pentaho's software. In replacing Excel, Kiva claim to already be seeing recompense with people outside of their IT department analyzing their own data and creating their own reports, allowing the engineering team to focus on the "heavy lifting" required by their website and spend far less (if any) time building custom reports.

Does this glowing recommendation from Kiva pique your interest in adopting Pentaho's BI software for your own company?

Microlending with Kiva & Visa in Your Town

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:42:00 GMT

Microlending website Kiva and payments provider Visa announced a program that will provide microloans to small businesses in U.S. cities with the greatest need.

According to the official announcement, the Kiva City program “aims to spur job growth and economic recovery by connecting Kiva’s global network of 592,000 individual lenders with the owners of small businesses throughout the country”.

The Kiva City program will launch today in Detroit which ranked fifth in the study’s list of U.S. small business trouble reports. In addition to Detroit, several other regions including Cleveland, Miami, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Orlando, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Providence, and Milwaukee are also able to join the network.

“Since launching in the U.S. two years ago, we have worked with our partners to replicate our successful global model, empowering each and every American to help our economy by adding as little as $25 to a small business owner’s loan,” said Premal Shah, co-founder of Kiva.org. “But as our study shows, the needs in the U.S. are widespread and many regions simply don’t have microfinance institutions operating at scale. Now, spurred by Visa’s commitment to small business, we are able to expand our reach and, as a result, open new avenues of capital for small business owners across the country.”

According to a new study commissioned by Kiva and Visa, the Economist Intelligence Unit, 20 of the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas have lost at least one percent of their small businesses from 2006 to 2008 - representing approximately 15,000 businesses.

'Net Features : kiva

Kiva Adopts Pentaho BI Software

Microlending with Kiva & Visa in Your Town