The MSC is CRS’ light-touch and rapid rollout monitoring toolkit intended to identify general trends in markets, including impacts on households, vendors, and implications of local conditions on supply chains during emergencies. The MSC uses short, monthly phone or in-person surveys that track
(1) market access, availability, and affordability of market goods at the household level;
(2) prices and business challenges at the vendor level; and
(3) disruptions and challenges at the supply chain level.
The surveys take place over seven days once a month. Data is entered directly into CommCare to produce country-level PowerBI dashboards using established templates that show trends and ‘red flags’ requiring further monitoring and possible intervention. The main advantage of the MSC is its simplicity, low cost, and ease in setting up, making it a good fit for rapid-onset or short-term crisis scenarios. The MSC’s case study approach provides a snapshot of market behavior at a given time compared to other CRS market tools that use statistically significant sampling and longitudinal trends and are larger time and resource commitments (MIRA and MARKit).
Should I use the MSC?
The purpose of the MSC exercise is to provide CPs with a better understanding of the dynamics of local and national markets and supply chains for critical goods and services with impacts on households and vendors. This supports early action and preparedness, ultimately ensuring more efficient and timely response to emergencies. This exercise is meant to be a joint endeavor between CPs’ Program and Operations teams to support the CPs’ decision making and inform stakeholders. The MSC creates a bank of primary market data in a country/context which is crucial for supporting adaptations to current programming and securing new emergency grants.
MSC Overview: 2-page overview of the MSC tool that summarizes the tool, when it should be considered, and how programming can benefit from its use. [English]