Key Takeaways: Using Impact Data to Improve Sales & Value Chains Webinar

On October 12th, we kicked off the second half of the four-part impact measurement series with Integrative Solutions CEO and Senior Consultant Dr. Deepti Sastry with part three: "Using Impact Data To Improve Sales and Disrupt Value Chains."

In this session, Dr. Sastry returned to share tips on ways social enterprises can use their impact data to track their progress against the value chains they intend to disrupt or reinforce. 

You can access the full recording here, and we’ve summarized key insights from the session below to help you learn and derive insights from your impact data. 

Identify who you need to engage to get your business model from “Point A” to “Point B”

The fundamental logic of your business model is both the starting point (what the enterprise is doing) and the endpoint (income generated from customers or retailers.) However, there is an entire area in the middle of these two things that many social enterprises don’t explain in detail, but still need to unpack. That middle area explains the supply chains and market systems your social enterprise is attempting to either disrupt or reinforce to deliver impact. 

Cast a wide net to refine your business model

Your thinking about getting from “Point A” to “Point B” should be robust and involve mapping out to a broader market system. Consider all stakeholders and actors that influence your business within a broader market context, even if not all external stakeholders directly impact your business model. Note: The actors in the image below (like governments and local retailers) take the place of the black box in the image above.

Ensure your messaging aligns with each actor

Understand the baseline behavior of each actor you identify as part of the broader market context, and make sure your team has tailored messaging that aligns with it to influence the new behavior you’re trying to achieve. 

Measure progress against behavior change

Have a progress baseline so you can understand if your messaging and product are influencing the desired change. Use data collection methods like surveys, interviews, and assessments to quantify and gain insights into the behavior change your business model has promoted. 

Calibrate and pivot

Analyze the impact data you’ve collected with various methods to both measure the behavior change you’re driving, and draw lessons from it. This will help you determine the shifts you can make to your business model and operations at various points to influence your desired behavior change even more effectively. Get creative and remain open-minded as you continue to leverage progress data to refine your value chain, even when there is evidence that the positive change is already happening. 

Continually refine your business model

Think of this as an ongoing process rather than a one-time action. Continue to revisit how you get from “Point A” to “Point B” over time to ensure you aren’t missing any ecosystem actors that influence the change you’re working to inspire. This will widen the scope of your value chain and make it more connected to relevant actors. Remember to refine your key performance indicators (KPIs) as you add more actors to your operational plan so that you can keep measuring progress and uncovering new insights. 

As you continue to refine your business model, consider what you can do to make the journey from “Point A” to “Point B” more seamless and predictable (we recommend going through the exercises in the recording to get the most out of this learning content.)  Then, join us again November 9th for the fourth and final session of the series where Dr. Sastry will share ways to use impact data to win over funders.