Implement Backbone, and be paid for the work
A system is only as good as the person who sets it up. We train implementers through IT for Youth Ghana and pass them the work.
How the partnership works
Four weeks of training, a test, and then work routed to you in your own region. The whole of it is below, including what we expect back.
- Train
Four weeks, part time, on the system and on how these businesses actually run. Free, with a test at the end.
- Certify
A certified implementer is listed here and is given work in their region. We do not list people we have not watched work.
- Earn
Thirty per cent of the first year on anything you bring, and the implementation fee in full on anything you deliver.
Twenty places, starting in January
Places are limited because the training is run by the people who build the software, and there are only so many of them. A cohort that is full is told so on this page rather than left to apply.
You need to be comfortable with a spreadsheet and willing to stand in a factory.
Nothing. The training is free and there is a test at the end.
What an implementation actually consists of
Five pieces of work, in roughly the order they happen. Read it before applying: the training covers all five and the fourth is the one people underestimate.
Which is rarely how the owner describes it and almost never how the manual describes it. A fortnight of asking, watching and writing down, before a single setting is touched.
Duplicate customers, stock codes meaning two things, a chart of accounts nobody has pruned. This is the long pole on nearly every job and it is the part a customer has to be persuaded is worth doing.
Rates, roles, document numbering, the catalogue, approval thresholds. Everything in this software is a row somebody edits, which is what makes this work an implementer's rather than a developer's.
A month entered twice, closed twice and compared line by line, with their accountant. It is the step that gets a signature on the changeover and the step every inexperienced implementer tries to skip.
In the building, on the day. More of what you are paid for happens in that week than in the two months before it.
What applicants ask, and the answers
Six of them, including the two we are asked quietly and would rather were asked out loud.
Do I need to be a developer?
No, and the best implementers on these jobs generally are not. Bookkeepers, storekeepers, production managers and people who have run a small business themselves tend to do better, because the work is understanding a business rather than writing code.
Do I need clients already?
No. Certified implementers are listed on this site and given work in their own region, so somebody arriving with nobody can still be sent jobs. Arriving with your own clients means you earn on both halves rather than one.
What happens if I fail the test?
You can sit it again with the next cohort, and the training materials stay open to you in the meantime. Nothing is charged either way, so the only thing it costs is the four weeks.
Is a region exclusive to one implementer?
No. Work is routed by region because travel is real, but a region can hold several implementers and a customer who asks for somebody specific gets them.
What happens to my customer if I stop?
They stay a customer and we pick up the work. The arrangement exists so a business is never left stranded by a partner changing direction, and it is one of the things we ask you to agree to.
Can I resell it under my own name?
Not today. A certified implementer is listed under their own name and paid for their work, which is a different arrangement from white-labelling. Ask if that is what you need and you will get a straight answer about whether it is coming.
Four things we ask of a certified implementer
The offer above is one half. These are the four we ask back, and they are in the agreement rather than left as an understanding, because all four are about somebody else's business being at stake.
A customer badly implemented is worse off than a customer who stayed on their spreadsheet, and the bill lands on all of us. Saying so and handing the job back is the right answer and it will be received as one.
Early enough to be fixed. A partner who brings us a problem is doing the job; one who manages it quietly until the customer writes to us directly has made it twice as expensive.
Their data stays in their own organisation and is reached with an account they created and can remove. Keeping a copy of a client's figures on your own machine is the one thing that ends a certification immediately.
Including what it has yet to do. Every unbuilt module is named on the pricing page where a stranger can read it, so there is no advantage in describing one as finished and a great deal of damage once the customer finds out.
A certification can be withdrawn, and the ground for withdrawing it is one of these four rather than a disagreement about anything else. Nobody has been through that yet.
Ask about a place
Tell us where you are and what you have implemented before.