WORKING PAPER Phase 2 (India): ideas42’s next innovation on the Financial Heuristics training product focused on leveraging mobile technology to deliver heuristics-based training in a cost-effective way that allows for an increased likelihood for scale. Reducing content complexity and replacing classroom-based delivery with a lighter-touch method offers a fresh promise for improving financial and business decisions for millions of microentrepreneurs. As part of this innovation, our team worked on adapting the classroom-based training content to make it suitable to deliver via interactive voice response (IVR) through mobile phones. Furthermore, we introduced additional heuristics to address common financial management challenges experienced by microentrepreneurs in customer, supplier, and inventory management. We have rolled out the improved mobile phone-based heuristics training to a sample of 1,200 MFI clients in India in partnership with Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) and the MFI Janalakshmi, and are currently conducting the endline survey for the project evaluation. The results from the study will be available in summer 2016. For Phase 2, most aspects of managing and implementing the Financial Heurstics tool were done by IFMR, a third-party to the financial institution and its clients. ideas42 identified that the logical next step to achieve scale for the Financial Heuristics training is to develop a mobile phone-based training product that is easy and intuitive for MFIs to implement themselves, so they can effectively embed it in their nonfinancial service delivery systems. 1.3.2. Financial Heuristics Scale-Up Projects: Phase 3 The next step for the ideas42 team to the full development of a viable Financial Heuristics training product has been to develop a scale-up version of the mobile phone-based Financial Heuristics tool that is both customer-centric in terms of content, as well as easy to adapt and implement for MFIs across the globe. The key insights from our qualitative research conducted as part of Phase 3 of the Financial Heuristics project are summarized in Section 4. As part of the project, we also selected a new technology platform to deliver training, and improved on the training tool features (for more information, see Section 4.2.3). Currently, we are finalizing the content of the training by incorporating user feedback via a series of user testing sessions. We will launch the improved financial management training to loan clients of MFIs Janalakshmi in India and NWTF in the Philippines in June 2016, and in the following year conduct RCTs to evaluate the effectiveness of the improved scale-up training tool. The Phase 3 work conducted as part of the Financial Heuristics portfolio is jointly supported by CGAP’s Fund and by USAID’s Development Innovations Ventures (DIV) Program. CGAP funding has supported ideas42’s work in conducting qualitative customer-centric research. The research findings are contributing to an expanding body of knowledge about how microentrepreneurs manage their business finances around the world, but have also allowed the ideas42 team to refine the content for the Financial Heuristics training and customize the features of the training platform, based on clients’ needs. DIV funding is supporting the team to develop and refine the technology platform used for the Financial Heuristics training, launch the training with a set of microfinance clients in India and the Philippines, and evaluate the effectiveness of the latest iteration of the Financial Heuristics scale-up training product with RCTs. 4