Importance of M and E

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Importance of M and E

1. Greater transparency and accountability
   One of the greatest benefits of M&E is helping organisations to track, analyse and report on relevant information and data throughout the life cycle of a project. This allows the project team to provide robust evidence for all their actions and decisions to stakeholders, donors and community members from day one. On the other hand, stakeholders and donors acquire the information and understanding they need to collaborate, communicate, provide inputs and make informed decisions about strategy improvements and project operations. Additionally, M&E helps donors to weigh the efficacy of their funds in a project, which influences their current and future funding plans.

2. Improved project performance
   A well planned M&E helps the project team to get a better understanding of the target population’s needs. This helps to define the scope of the project and design objectives that are relevant, measurable and achievable. A well defined M&E plan also clarifies the process and interventions that will lead to the project’s outputs and deliverable. Moreover, M&E helps the team to plan an end-to-end indicator management system, identify effective tools and methodologies to measure, analyse and demonstrate every intervention and its impact on expected outcomes. This enables organisations to see their progress and identify gaps as they arise and make timely amendments to achieve the desired results.

3. Effective resource allocation
   All project operations are interwoven around project budgets. The amount of available cash dictates the duration and magnitude of interventions, choices of resources, number of employees etc. M&E is an effective tool for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of finances in project implementation. M&E facilitates with the estimation of the value, worth and impact of project components; and enables the team to verify what works and what doesn’t and where more money should be invested or where budget should be cut. M&E allows the team to make appropriate changes to the financial plan on a regular basis to avoid unfavorable contingencies.

4. Promotes learning & data-driven decision making
   M&E data provides quantifiable results to help the involved parties to learn from project successes and challenges and be more adaptive. Involved parties are better prepared to respond to the ever-evolving project situations, determine what worked and what did not and why it did not work and how it could be improved and make revisions based on data evidence, rather than assumptions. The team is able to establish links between the past, present and future actions to improve project implementation and to identify what could be replicated and scaled up for sustainability of the current project and for future endeavors.

5. Systematic management of organisation
   M&E also functions as a performance management tool as it facilitates organisations to gather, disseminate and utilise information and data to improve their internal operations and add value to their organisation. Organisations can thus focus on their objectives such as enhancing performance, encouraging innovation, sharing and integrating lessons learned for continuous improvement etc. M&E also streamlines organisational procedures to achieve constructive coordination among different stakeholders and organizational units.

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