Neev simplified the task of conducting surveys for the client’s field survey agents who were located in different places. This was achieved through the Field Survey application. The application replaced paper-based surveys with surveys on Android devices like smartphones and tablets. The solution consists of a web application along with an Android client and features such as GPS-based location tracking of surveyors, offline data collection and real-time online updates. It not only increased productivity manifold but also improved accuracy.

The Client

Ashoka, one of the world’s largest networks of social entrepreneurs, has 3000 Ashoka fellows present across 70 countries. Ashoka was started in the year 1980 by Bill Drayton. It provides start-up financing, professional support services and also connects social entrepreneurs to a global pool across various businesses and social sectors. Ashoka provides a platform to enable people to change the world. It works in partnership with players in the private, philanthropic and citizen sectors to drive large-scale innovation.

Business Need

Ashoka employs many field survey agents who are geographically distributed across remote areas, to conduct surveys. These field survey agents used to carry numerous sheets of paper and filled them up manually. Even a small change in a survey form required the entire bunch of sheets to be reprinted. The same had to be distributed to all the field survey agents placed in remote areas. Also, the responses from the surveys contained many human errors sometimes requiring the survey to be conducted again. This manual process not only consumed time but also decreased productivity. The client, thus, required an on-the-go solution for its field survey agents to conduct surveys.

Neev Solution

Neev’s approach involved making an app that avoids human errors while increasing productivity manifold. The solution involved a Web application and an Android client app.

• The Web Application is an admin console for the authorized user to create, edit and publish surveys and to view the responses near real-time. The admin can selectively publish surveys.
• The client application is installed in Android devices of field survey agents’ Android devices.
• The agents can take surveys as per the questionnaire, click snaps of supporting documents like the ration card/voters card using the client application.
• To keep track of the location of the field agents, the Android application sends the GPS co-ordinates of the device to the web server every time the agent takes a survey.
• The task of sending the responses and processing the filled-in forms, which would normally take hours or even days, is now done on the click of a button with real-time syncing of responses with the webserver.

Technology footprint

• Tomcat
• Java
• CouchDB
• HTML/CSS
• JQuery
• Android SDK

Top features

• Web-based questionnaire builder
• Local storage of responses- continuous saving of responses even in areas without internet connectivity.
• Each response gets tagged with the latitude/longitude automatically and is displayed on a map on the web portal, along with location of data collectors and timestamp of responses.
• Useful for taking photographs of respondents or of locations or documents.
• Reports surveyor location as well as number of responses from each surveyor / auditor.
• Reports are updated online in near real-time as soon as new responses are synced.
• Provides responses in CSV files that can be viewed in Excel or used as input to other software.
• Admin can manage users and select surveys to be made visible to each user.
• Displays results in tabular and graphical formats.
• Ensures accuracy and minimizes errors vis-à-vis paper-based solutions.
• Saves paper and decreases Ashoka’s carbon footprint.

Top Challenges

• Keeping track of the location of its field agents scattered across many regions and verifying the authenticity of data filled in the forms proved a challenge.