Synergy International Systems
How Companies Can Drive Transformation with Monitoring and Evaluation

Ashot Hovanesian, an avid pianist, believes that for a business man, just as for a musician, persistence is the most critical element for success. “If you want to achieve successful business results you have to be persistent,” reveals Ashot. Carrying this zeal forward, Ashot is confident that in an increasingly integrated world, a successful organization’s project portfolio will necessarily become larger in scope, more complex, and more geographically dispersed.

According to Dr. Hovanesian, a globalized organization’s ability to manage its projects crucially depends on the tools that allow it to analyze actionable data and make informed decisions. While most pro¬ject management solution providers track projects and link them with resources, Synergy International Systems (“Synergy”) empowers organizations to take the next step: results-based monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of their project portfolios. By computerizing a results framework with goals, objectives, short-term key performance indicators (KPIs) and longer term outcome indicators, Synergy offers organizations the ability to truly measure the impact of their investments. “We have years of experience in developing state-of-the-art, web-based project portfolio management software solutions for organizations with global, regional, and country-specific portfolios, focused on measuring the economic and social outcomes and impacts of those portfolios,” says Ashot.

Headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, the company empowers public and private sector organizations to achieve their performance goals. “Our solutions have been implemented in over 55 countries, in collaboration with country governments, multilateral and bilateral development organizations, NGOs, and private sector partners. We support these organizations in achieving corporate results through flexible customized information systems, which enable insightful, data-driven decisions,” explains Ashot. Synergy’s project portfolio manage¬ment suite encompasses project budgeting, project tracking through dashboards, project workflows, resource management, project activity scheduling, and advanced analytics.

In response to the needs of the enterprise program portfolio management marketplace, Synergy offers innovative products that include Synergy Indicata™, a web-based software that streamlines results-based management and monitoring and evaluation of programs and projects.

We combine expertise in IT with specialized knowledge of monitoring and evaluation, derived from years of building and refining enterprise-level systems for project portfolio and results management

This solution helps customers easily capture, track, manage and report on program activities and results using sound performance indicator data. “Indicata’s specially designed toolkit enables you to improve the effectiveness, timeliness and accuracy of results management from start to finish,” says Ashot.

At the heart of Synergy’s solutions is its proprietary technology platform, the Intelligent Data Manager (IDM 7), a modular knowledge-based platform that helps customers build business applications quickly and easily. The core of IDM’s metadata-driven architecture stores the logical representation of application features and functionality. The resulting application data are animated by a complete, modular suite of capabilities for data management, visualization, reporting, and business process automation. “An understanding of business requirements is the only skill needed to tailor IDM’s knowledge-base. And when business requirements change, IDM-powered applications can be easily adapted or scaled to remain strategically aligned with an organization’s operations and decision-making processes,” says Ashot.

Synergy has implemented its project portfolio software in the US Government, for such agencies as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and the US Department of State. For example, the company developed the web-based monitoring and evaluation system that helps the U.S. Government manage a global, multi-billion dollar interagency initiative known as Feed the Future.

Going forward, Synergy is keen on expanding into new public and private sector markets. “While keeping our focus on the public sector, we are excited about emerging possibilities to offer our M&E expertise and proven technology to companies that are undertaking enterprise transformations,” concludes Ashot.