 The HELIOS software is a comprehensive supply chain technology solution that brings order to disaster relief, helping humanitarian organizations provide aid to people quickly and more efficiently. HELIOS provides real-time access to supply chain information to enhance decision-making at every level throughout the aid delivery process. The end result is an improved return on donation and faster assistance to beneficiaries.
The HELIOS project was started as the result of urgent requests from leading international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for a "next generation" supply chain management software to enable them to effectively track the myriad of goods and donations entering and being disbursed across the communities affected by the December 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia. Many of these organizations currently employ manual, time-consuming processes and lack the infrastructure to support full-scale software implementations.
The HELIOS project aims to meet the needs of as many humanitarian organizations as possible so the coordination of the pipelines of supplies, information and financing from donation to delivery can be improved, thus enabling more of the right aid to reach the right people at the right time.
HELIOS is currently being piloted by three organisations and development work on the software and surrounding support structures are continuing. This last year has seen many enhancements in the software and the formation of a strong user group. There is a HELIOS Support Website where documentation is being gathered, software releases are published and the user community can communicate via forums, wikis and shared document spaces.
The goal we are working towards is to make the engagement of organisations large and small as smooth and efficient as possible, and for the HELIOS software to continue to grow and improve with input from the whole user group.
For more information, contact Fritz Institute's HELIOS Product Manager Fraser Stephens at fraser.stephens@fritzinstitute.org.
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