SDW: Meeting the needs of vulnerable communities with more accurate data
Explore SDW’s journey with SAP Build Apps
Sustainable Development and Water for All (SDW) partners with investor organizations to provide water and sanitation for vulnerable communities. It wanted to capture feedback about its services while being able to count on secure and reliable data. SDW adapted an app for offline use and automated data integration with its central databases using the SAP Build Apps tool.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Utilities | Salvador, Brazil | 20 employees |
questionnaires created with SAP Build Apps.
data accuracy.
Chief Commercial Officer, Sustainable Development and Water for All
Understanding community needs better to transform lives
Sustainable Development and Water for All (SDW) specializes in socio-environmental impact projects in conjunction with partner organizations. Based in Northeast Brazil, it provides access to drinking water and sanitation to improve the health, education, and income of rural communities. The organization works to change the lives of millions of people who live without these basic resources.
SDW employees were going into the communities with questionnaires to ask people how they were using its water and sanitation services and to gather personal information. Sometimes, especially in the poorer areas, there was no access to Wi-Fi or the Internet. This meant that the third-party application used to house the forms was effectively offline. The employees had to download the data from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets in the app and manually update the data in the central database.
SDW believes that social innovation is the best tool to transform the lives of vulnerable families. As a small startup, it turned to technology innovation to help optimize data collection from the community to better understand and meet their needs.
Adapting an application for use in the community
SDW chose the SAP Build Apps tool as a cloud-based graphical development environment to enable its team to design and implement enterprise-grade applications. It can create visual cloud functions, allowing it to build app back ends that include data storage and business logic – without writing code.
The organization is using the tool to adapt its previous application, improving the user experience and integration with its central database. SDW is currently developing three questionnaires in the app for each service it supplies. For example, the implementation form aims to find out about the number of people living in a house and the age of the eldest inhabitants.
The first time an employee logs in to the app with Internet access, the data in their database is saved to their mobile-device storage. They can use the app with this local storage, without needing access to the Internet. And if, for example, they have incomplete forms, they can return to the house or community to get the outstanding answers. They can also add more people in the community, known as beneficiaries, to the app and review their feedback at any time. And they can update the data and integrate it with the central database through APIs.
Gaining greater trust and accuracy in data collection and collaboration
By integrating the new application with its databases, SDW will save many hours of manual work and will no longer be in danger of losing data. With the possibility of working offline, employees don’t need an Internet connection to use the app. Given that the organization handles a lot of personal data, including medical details, it was very important that this was done in the most secure and safest way possible. The high standard of data security was one of the reasons for choosing SAP software.
Large enterprises, such as banks and retailers, invest in SDW projects. The organization sends information to these customers to show how their investments are used and the impact they have. For example, how many families they help. This data about the social action benefits is included in the investors’ annual sustainability reports, which are shared with the market, shareholders, and communities. As well as safety and security, SAP Build Apps help ensure data accuracy for customers, which is crucial.
SDW has gained more trust in its data and how it shares data with its investors. Further, the organization offers native cloud integration of SAP Build Apps with the SAP ERP application and SAP Sustainability Control Tower solution used by its customers. This enables smooth collaboration between the parties.