Context
Agrimetrics was created with public funding from Innovate UK in 2015, as one of four Agri-tech centres tasked with driving technological innovation and adoption in the UK’s agri-food sector. Its products and services, in particular the Agri-food Data Marketplace launched in 2019, enable more effective use of data by organisations working across food and agriculture.
Agrimetrics’s Executive team are ambitious about the social and environmental value their work can create, and in Spring 2020 they invited me to help develop a ‘Theory of Change’ (impact strategy) that would make it integral to their planning, delivery and reporting.
What we did
- I designed and facilitated a workshop, leading the team through a process to create a ‘Logic Model’. The end result was a framework setting out their vision for a sustainable and resilient agri-food sector powered by data, and the ways in which their work contributes towards building it.
- The Logic Model was embedded into Agrimetrics’s annual delivery plan and KPIs, and integrated into the organisation’s HR framework, encouraging Agrimetrics’s 30+ employees to consider their roles in enabling social impact.
Since this initial engagement four years ago, I’ve continued working closely with Agrimetrics’s Chief Operating Officer Benjamin Turner to deepen the team’s understanding of and strategy for achieving social impact, through:
- Interviewing clients about their data challenges, experiences of working with Agrimetrics, and the difference which this work has made to them and their stakeholders.
- Writing case studies to be published on Agrimetrics’s website and repurposed as press releases.
- Contributing impact-related recommendations to bids for contracts and funding.
- Supporting the delivery of projects with Agrimetrics’s clients and partners including Defra and the Open Data Institute. For example facilitating workshops on social impact and co-writing the Food Data Landscape Review.
- Regular coaching conversations to explore Agrimetrics’s role as a data institution in the agri-food sector.
Outcomes
- Agrimetrics’s focus on social impact during this period has contributed to their success in winning over £10 million worth of contracts and grants, including being selected as a data marketplace provider to multiple UK government bodies.
- An independent economist calculated Agrimetrics’s Gross Value Added (GVA) to the UK economy in 2023 as an estimated £37.4 of value created for every £1 invested.
- Social impact is now embedded in the thinking of key team members, integrated into the company’s strategy, and incorporated into the delivery of client projects and services.
Clients and partners
