Perspective: Beyond metrics: How impact mapping unlocks business value

Ask a company to describe its impact, and most will start with what it does. “We provide clean energy to rural households.” “We train smallholder farmers in sustainable practices.” “We employ waste pickers in our circular economy model.” These answers describe activities, not impact. They do not explain what difference this makes, for whom, or why it matters.

This distinction is especially important for inclusive businesses: companies that develop innovative ways to incorporate low-income populations into their business models at scale, whether as customers, suppliers, employees, or distributors, while maintaining profitability. Because these businesses pursue both social and commercial objectives, articulating how these objectives interconnect is essential to demonstrating their value. Yet many companies lack full visibility of the impact their activities create, particularly how their social and environmental work generates commercial advantages. Understanding these connections is not just about impact reporting; it is about identifying revenue opportunities, reducing costs, and differentiating in competitive markets.

When businesses engage in this mapping process, two types of insight come into focus. First, it helps companies systematically understand and measure the impacts of their existing work. Second, it reveals opportunities that may not yet be part of their strategic plans. This dual visibility—what is already there and what could be—enables sharper business decisions and a deeper understanding of their own operations.

The Innovations Against Poverty (IAP) programme provides funding and technical assistance to inclusive businesses in Africa and Asia. Recognising that companies need these frameworks but rarely develop them independently, IAP supports companies in its portfolio to create results chains. In Round 3 of the IAP programme, companies co-created their results chains with IAP’s monitoring and evaluation (M&E) expert. This collaborative process combined each company’s operational knowledge with an external perspective, together identifying patterns that companies had been too close to see.

The mapping process enabled companies to recognise existing value and uncover new competitive opportunities—often at the same time. By stepping back from day-to-day operations, businesses were able to see how routine practices were already generating impact, and how these could be strengthened or repositioned strategically.

In Zambia, a sanitation company had been employing female sanitation workers, treating this primarily as good human resources practice and tracking it through job creation metrics. Mapping helped the company see this decision through a different lens. By placing women in roles traditionally viewed as “men’s work”, the company was actively challenging gender norms in ways that were visible to both employees and customers. This reframing shifted how the company understood its own value: what had seemed like a standard HR decision was, in fact, delivering social impact alongside tangible business benefits, including improved service delivery and stronger market positioning in a competitive sector.

A similar pattern emerged in Ethiopia. An agricultural enterprise had introduced gender-sensitive practices—such as supporting women’s return to work after maternity leave—but had never formalised them. Through the mapping discussions, the company identified an opportunity to codify these practices and extend them into its supply chain. This resulted in a commitment that 70% of out-grower farmers would be women, with a particular focus on female-headed households. Practices that had previously been informal became strategic commitments, strengthening social impact, improving supply chain resilience, and opening access to premium markets.

In Uganda, mapping revealed opportunity in what had previously been routine procurement. An agricultural company had been sourcing from farmers without systematic selection criteria. Through the process, the company recognised that inclusion could be designed intentionally by introducing transparent selection criteria that prioritised women, youth, and female-headed households. While the activity itself did not change, the strategic intent behind it did. The company realised that transparent inclusion criteria could unlock access to premium markets that value supply chain accountability, enabling higher prices while building a more stable and diversified supplier base. What had once appeared to be standard procurement was reframed as a source of competitive advantage through intentional inclusion.

When companies map their impact, they move beyond describing what they do to understanding what they create. This visibility enables better commercial decisions: designing inclusion strategies that generate competitive advantage, identifying which practices deliver both social and revenue benefits, and allocating resources more strategically.

Companies can then articulate differentiated value propositions that attract impact investment. Such strategic clarity makes them more attractive to impact investors, who seek evidence that social, environmental, and commercial outcomes reinforce rather than compete with one another.

For example, the Zambian sanitation company can now demonstrate how gender inclusion improves operational performance; the Ethiopian enterprise can show enhanced supply chain resilience through formalised inclusion practices; and the Ugandan company can present transparent selection criteria as a source of competitive advantage.

The opportunity for businesses is clear: making impact visible reveals strategic value that operational metrics alone cannot capture. Impact mapping shows where social and commercial objectives reinforce one another—turning what might appear to be costs into sources of competitive advantage, market access, and investor appeal.