One rule: draw the journey once
The programme takes a small business on a long journey: an application, screening, meetings, a written business plan and monthly actions, all the way to graduation and an ongoing relationship with a bank partner.
Our rule was to draw that journey once, end to end, and build it as a single platform, so everyone can see where a business is, and what comes next, at any moment.
Draw the journey once, and everyone can see where they are in it.
The front door
Applications come through a multi-step form that saves progress, so an applicant can stop halfway and resume later. Each application is scored by a rules engine, and the weights behind the score can be changed by the programme team, not buried in the code.
Four kinds of user, four workspaces
Business owners get a portal for their plan, monthly actions, documents and reports, and they accept the programme agreement on screen. Consultants get a workspace for their pipeline, inbox, clients, meeting notes and plan editor. Administrators run the programme day to day, with applications, clients, consultants and a full activity log of who changed what. A super administrator controls the settings that shape the whole programme.
Each kind of user sees only what they need, which keeps the platform simple for the people using it and safe for the data behind it.
Meetings that book themselves
Booking is built around real life. Consultants set their working hours and blackout dates, meetings run 45 minutes with a 15-minute buffer, and the platform checks the consultant's real calendar before offering a slot. It connects to Google and Microsoft 365, creates the video link and sends the invite.
Plans that become actions
A consultant uploads the business plan and the business owner approves it. The decision to let the client approve, not the consultant, keeps the owner in charge of their own plan. The plan is then captured as structured months, actions and targets, which drive the monthly tracking and reports.
Follow-through built in
Reminders run as their own system: recurring reminders for actions, overdue digests that stop after three sends so nobody is nagged forever, activation reminders for businesses that haven't started, and quick-send WhatsApp messages. Replies to emails are routed to the right consultant.
A health score the programme can tune
Every business gets a health score built from four parts: how engaged it is, whether it completes its actions, whether it reports on time and how its finances look. The default weights are 30, 30, 15 and 25. A super administrator can change them, and a test proves the change really takes effect.
Businesses that were already in the programme before the platform existed were brought in through a bulk import with secure set-password links, so nobody had to start again.
Deciding what to build
We built the core in about four weeks, then ran the product like a live service. Each week brought improvements from real use: calendar connections, a smoother application flow, better reminders. We held several rounds of product testing, and an architecture review, before the platform grew.
Wherever a decision belonged to the programme team, it became a setting, not a code change, so the people running the programme can adjust it themselves.
Built to last
The platform runs inside the client's own cloud account, in an African data centre region, so the programme's data stays where the client controls it. Emails never depend on a single provider: a backup route sits behind the same button. Every release follows a written runbook, in a fixed order, so each one goes out the same way.
An accessibility and mobile audit found no violations, and dozens of automated tests, both unit tests and full end-to-end journeys, run before every release. The platform has 58 screens, 120 behind-the-scenes functions and 44 kinds of records.