Interactive Impact Scorecard

"Making it easy to understand the impact of your economic decisions"

1. Impact information at a glance
The interactive scorecard is a decimalised metric system to visualise and enumerate impact. It is a simple and universal language for communicating the complexities of impact according to the primary categories of non-financial value:

  • purpose - the intentionality, aims, and mission of an organisation
  • practice - how an organisation proactively transforms its operations towards being more sustainable
  • people - creation of social wellbeing
  • prosperity - equitable governance and distribution of wealth
  • planet - responsible environmental custodianship
Scorecard

You can create your own scorecard below.

2. Codify your worldview
The idea of what is positive or negative impact (sustainability) is often subjective. The interpretation of evidence is influenced by personal opinion or a particular institutional culture - impact is in the eye of the beholder. That is why we made the scorecard interactive, so that you can weight the underlying data to reflect your values and ethical priorities, or the institution that you work for, or to correct any perceived biases in the underlying data.

3. Make decisions relevant to your priorities
The scorecard amplifies the aspects of impact that you prioritise and suppresses those that you think are unimportant. As a result, the scorecard is a practical tool for organising and ranking impact data about realworld situations in a way that reflects your personal values and ethical perspective.

Why is this needed?

It is increasingly important to understand the broader impact of the products we buy, the businesses we run, and the investments we make - beyond only financial. However, non-financial evaluation does not have a long history and there is no standard methodology. Different assessors can assign widely different ratings. As a result, there is almost no correlation of headline impact data*. It is consequently very difficult for people to understand the impact of their economic activity without first becoming an expert in the complex methodologies of impact assessment, and therefore nearly impossible to make quick decisions in an informed way.

* See pg 11 of this report by the Japanese Government's pension fund

Design principles

iSumo would like to make it easy to understand the impact of economic decisions. For example, when choosing between similar products in a grocery store, when considering two alternative vendors for the supply chain of a factory, or selecting between comparable investments for your pension fund, and so on. It needs to be quick to understand impact information, and simple to summarise this information to the level you need for making decisions.

"We believe that it should be as easy to calculate the total impact of a grocery basket as it is to calculate its total price."

Ideally, we should also be able to assess different things in a similar and comparable way - like money allows us to compare the prices of an apple versus a car, and financial accounting enables us to compare the profitability of an apple farm with a car company. When it comes to impact, we should be able to compare the respective impact of buying an apple with buying a car, or making a train journey compared with drinking a bottle of beer, or making an investment compared with how a city council allocates its budget.

The iSumo interactive scorecard enables you to do this by incorporating the following design principles:

Create a scorecard

Step 1: Prepare your own dataset

Download a sample CSV file (here) and replace the contents with your own. You can have as many rows as you want, but you must use the same format. All impact scores need to be between 0 and 100, and the column headings need to remain unchanged. Load the CSV file into your browser using the button below, then click "Create scorecard" to populate the scorecard with your data.

All data processing is done by your web browser on your device - iSumo cannot see it, nor keep a copy of it, nor share it with anyone else.

Disclaimer: The iSumo Interactive Impact Scorecard is currently free to use and provided "as is" during the prototype stage. The judgement of the user should prevail at all times. Nothing herein should be considered a recommendation nor formal classification of any kind. iSumo offers no warrantee and accepts no liability over the results, nor any inferences or conclusions drawn therefrom. All data uploaded and the resulting data published by this scorecard always belongs to the original owner of the data. iSumo has no rights over the data whatsoever. This web app, its methodology, and visualisation (the widget) are protected by copyright and not yet intended for commercial use, please email contact@isumo.cloud if you are interested in using this service when is commercially available. iSumo is developed by EngagedX.

Step 2: Label the scorecard

What is this dataset about?
Where did the data come from?
What is your name?
(or who weighted the impact score?)

Step 3: Customise the scorecard according to your priorities

You can configure the dynamic scorecard to reflect your different priorities. The weighting for each impact category of purpose, practice, people, prosperity, and planet can be individually adjusted to reflect your world view.

Click More important above the score to increase the priority of that category, or click Less important to reduce the priority.

The visualisation, impact scores, and the ranking order of the scorecard will adjust automatically.

2019 © iSumo (developed by EngagedX).

iSumoScorecard for ,

More important
Purpose
Less important
More important
Practice
Less important
More important
People
Less important
More important
Prosperity
Less important
More important
Planet
Less important

Overall


Sort dataset by column (highest to lowest)
2019 © iSumo (developed by EngagedX).

How to interpret the results

An impact score for any impact category of around 50 is good, much less than 50 is poor, and much greater than 50 is excellent. The maximum for each impact category is 100, and the minimum is 0. Each category is summarised at the top of the scorecard, also with a score out of 100. The overall impact score for the whole dataset is displayed at the top right, again as a score out of 100. The overall score is an average of the summary scores for the five categories of purpose, practice, people, prosperity, and planet.

The overall impact score includes a label above it to record the source of data, and below it to record the party who did the weighting i.e. the two parties whose collective worldview is reflected in the overall impact score. This is done because the overall score is fundamentally a function of the assessment or judgement of these parties, and the ultimate interpretation of impact should be done in this context.

The scorecard can be sorted by each category of impact (using the radio buttons above each column), which re-orders (ranks) the scorecard by that criteria.

Weighting the scorecard

The scorecard is customised by assigning priorities to each of the five impact categories (using the arrow buttons in step 3 above). This reflects the values and ethical perspective of the party doing the weighting. This party could be an individual, an organisation, or the policy priorities of a government or local authority.

Notice how the order of the items in the scorecard is updated when the impact scores are weighted, and how the graphic on each line changes subtly accordingly. For example, prioritising planet causes the two companies "Green Energy Co" and "Best Barley Farm" to be elevated to the top of the ranking because of their strong environmental credentials. Therefore, for people who share this priority, it is easier to compare items according to their values. As a result, they are able to quickly make a more informed purchase or procurement decision.

The prioritisation also changes the size of the summary scores for each category, either larger to reflect a higher priority or smaller to reflect a lower priority.

Scorecard Unweighted Scorecard Weighted

Decreasing the importance of a category suppresses its score and brings it closer to the midpoint of 50, this moderates the influence that particular category has on the overall score. Increasing the importance of a category amplifies its score either up or down from the midpoint of 50, and thereby increases the influence it has on the overall score (either up or down respectively). In other words - the prioritisation influences the sensitivity of the overall score to the individual scores for each impact category. This is applied to each line item of the scorecard as well as the summary at the top.

Both scorecards above reflect exactly the same underlying dataset. However, notice how the scores and the graphic on each line are subtly different as a result of the weighting, as well as the order (ranking) of the list. The summary scores and overall score at the top are also different. All scores are adjusted to a curve to enable better comparative analysis that is more relevant to the worldview of each individual observer - because the notion of what is impactful (or not) is in the eye of the beholder.

Interpreting the circular graphic

The examples below isolate each impact category (keeping all others at a neutral setting of 50) to show how they individually affect the visualisation of the scorecard. At the bottom, examples are included that show the extreme effects possible if all the individual impact scores are either at the maximum of 100 or minimum of 0, either side of a neutral score of 50.

Maximum (0) Neutral (50) Minimum (100)
Purpose
This is represented by the outer grey ring of dots. Highly sustainable aims and mission result in fewer dots until the grey ring disapears, whereas aims and mission that are not sustainable result in more dots until the grey ring becomes solid. Think of it as either breaking down (or building up) barriers to the outside world.
Purpose_min Purpose_mid Purpose_max
Practice
This is represented by the inner grey ring of three line segments. Deployment of more internal resources towards positively transforming an organisation is represented by shorter lines until they disapear, whereas deployment of fewer internal resources is represented by longer lines until the ring is closed. Think of it as either breaking down (or building up) internal barriers within the organisation.
Practice_min Practice_mid Practice_max
People
This is represented by the dark inner circle. A strong focus on strengthening the foundations of social wellbeing results in a larger inner circle, whereas a less positive (or negative) focus result in a smaller inner circle.
People_min People_mid People_max
Prosperity
This is represented by the golden yellow ring. Equitable governance of an organisation and fair distribution of proceeds is represented with a thicker golden yellow ring, whereas less positive (or negative) activities result in a thinner golden yellow ring.
Prosperity_min Prosperity_mid Prosperity_max
Planet
This is represented by the outer rings of either green or red. An organisation that operates within the planetary boundaries (or creates net positive ecological impact) results in a thicker green ring, whereas exceeding planetary boundaries and causing negative ecological impact results in a thicker red ring.
Planet_min Planet_mid Planet_max
Overall impact scores
This row shows the extremes that are possible by either maximising or minimising all of the five impact categories.
Total_min Total_min Total_min

For more information email contact@isumo.cloud. iSumo is developed by EngagedX.