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An impact assessment enables organizations to assess the wider impact of their activities on stakeholders, beyond the financial impacts. By assessing all impacts, managers can make better decisions, leading to a more positive impact; reduce their organizations’ negative impacts; and identify creative ways to capture the social and environmental value their organizations create. Organizations can undertake an impact assessment on themselves or on organizations in which they invest or plan to invest. This note explains the fundamentals of impact assessment, including what an impact assessment is, how to assess impact, and the main frameworks used to assess impact.

Igraj Uči Rasti (IUR), which meant “play, learn, grow” in English, was the name of a company in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) that produced educational materials to teach basic literacy skills to children aged 3 to 10. The company’s founder and chief executive officer had envisioned IUR products being present in all homes and schools across BiH. However, in May 2019, IUR was at a crossroads, and the founder faced challenges regarding his distribution strategy, operations, product offerings, target markets, and staffing. He was considering several possible options to increase profits and scale his business, but he wanted to analyze potential outcomes and assess how they would affect his personal goals and overall business feasibility. As he considered several possible options to drive additional profits and scale his business, he wanted to use both quantitative and qualitative analyses to determine potential outcomes in relation to his goals and to the business’s long-term viability.

Following the successful launch of Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company (Beau’s) in all 10 Canadian provinces, the craft brewer had its sights set on the next step forward: international markets. The brewery wanted to distribute Beau’s internationally, and agents from numerous distribution agencies had contacted the export manager about the United States and Europe. The export manager was also considering Asian markets as an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of that emerging market. In his view, this market was less congested than the competitive European and American craft beer markets. While market selection was an important consideration, the export manager wondered about how to pursue international growth as a viable strategic option for a craft brewer. Did exporting craft beer make sense? With Beau’s being Canada’s largest producer of organic craft beer, the export manager knew that he had to determine the strategic fit for Beau’s growth aspirations in advance of meetings with prospective agents.

In September 2019, the founder of Carmién Tea, based in South Africa’s Western Cape province, faced a dilemma. Her company, founded in 1998, was a producer and supplier rooibos tea, which was unique to the mountainous area north of Cape Town. After a new South African government was elected in 1994, the deregulation of the agricultural industry enabled the founder to start a rooibos export company. This political environment and the founder's entrepreneurial orientation shaped both the firm’s origins and its early internationalization. As 98 per cent of the company’s sales were being exported and 84 per cent were still sold as bulk, the founder needed to determine whether the company had the resources and capabilities to ensure that the Carmién Tea brand and its value-added sales would grow in an increasingly competitive international environment. Where should she begin?

In September 2019, the founder of Carmien Tea, based in South Africa's Western Cape province, faced a dilemma. Her company, founded in 1998, was a producer and supplier rooibos tea, which was unique to the mountainous area north of Cape Town. After a new South African government was elected in 1994, the deregulation of the agricultural industry enabled the founder to start a rooibos export company. This political environment and the founder's entrepreneurial orientation shaped both the firm's origins and its early internationalization. As 98 per cent of the company's sales were being exported and 84 per cent were still sold as bulk, the founder needed to determine whether the company had the resources and capabilities to ensure that the Carmien Tea brand and its value-added sales would grow in an increasingly competitive international environment. Where should she begin?

Frustrated with the available means of working out while travelling, the three founders of PikoGym, a start-up out of Erlangen, Germany, had the idea to build a workout device that allowed users to train anywhere and everywhere. The lightweight and compact solution would be combined with a progressive web application to facilitate customers meeting up for workouts, provide motivation, and build community. PikoGym would be entering a growing but highly competitive and relatively fragmented market. Although competitors’ solutions were similar to PikoGym’s, they lacked the versatility and comfort offered by the latter. The three entrepreneurs wanted to ensure that their intellectual property (IP) management strategy aligned with their business goals and long-term plans for the company’s success.

Diana Uribe was a successful cultural personality in her native Colombia, best known for her national radio show about world history. Since 2000, the show had aired every Sunday on Caracol Radio, Colombia’s most popular news radio station. On October 9, 2018, Caracol Radio announced to Uribe the unilateral termination of her contract, effective in one week. Uribe felt pressured to act. She knew that her future work opportunities would depend on her ability to remain visible and popular with a diverse audience. The unexpected termination prompted Uribe to think of alternative options to continue to communicate with her audience and ensure continuity for her team. Was the time ripe to move to podcasts?

In late 2018, a female entrepreneur, the founder and chief executive officer of Candi&Co, South Africa’s first ethnic hair salon franchise faced a dilemma. After launching in 2014, Candi&Co had quickly expanded to five locations. The founder’s priority was to continue to grow the business; however, she had been approached about selling her business to South Africa’s Long4Life investment group, which was acquiring the Sorbet Group’s companies, including Candi&Co. The entrepreneur had set out to change the way consumers felt about their hair, to offer a service they did not believe they deserved, to professionalize an industry, to empower stylists, and to grow the industry in a sustainable manner. Would selling to Long4Life allow her vision to materialize faster than she could do it on her own? Or would she need to break away from the Sorbet Group and continue building her vision alone?

In its annual report for the financial year (FY) 2018/19, Reliance Industries Limited reported an unprecedented ₹596.74 billion as other comprehensive income (OCI). The OCI affected the statement of profit and loss (P&L), the balance sheet, and the statement of changes in equity. India converged its accounting standards with the International Financial Reporting Standards, effective FY 2017 onward. The converged accounting standards required an entity to present the statement of P&L and OCI in two sections, with the sum of the two reported as the total comprehensive income. The requirement to present a separate statement of changes in equity was also introduced in India. Though the concept of OCI was new to India, it had been used globally since 1997. The classification of income and expenses to either P&L or OCI as well as the subsequent reclassification of OCI to P&L have remained subjects of debate. The exercise discusses the nature, reporting, and reclassification of OCI, as well as its impact on key financial ratios.

In December 2018, the procurement director at Bombardier Aerostructures (Bombardier) was tasked with deciding whether to support the manufacturing department’s proposal to expand capacity in order to produce the front substructure for the A220 aircraft in house or to instead propose that Bombardier outsource the production of this critical assembly. Demand had been growing steadily for the A220. Engineers had determined that expanding the current production capacity at Bombardier’s headquarters in Montreal, Canada, was the least capital-intensive solution. However, the front substructure was a prime candidate for outsourcing, and the procurement director wanted to be sure she had considered all options before she made a final recommendation to the senior management team in two weeks.

Spencer’s Retail, a fast-moving consumer goods retail chain in India, had been perceived as an expensive retailer exclusively for high-end consumers. A new sector head took over in 2013 and shifted the store from a positioning statement of “Taste the World” to “Make Fine Living Affordable.” Within five years, Spencer’s was making a profit. However, traditional grocery stores continued to dominate the Indian retail scene and were more heavily frequented by Indian shoppers. To maintain a sustainable profit, Spencer’s had to expand the business by opening more retail outlets and increasing same-store sales growth by increasing footfalls and basket size. What store format and combination of private label and national label products would help Spencer’s reach this goal?

Ola Auto India (Ola) was the pioneer in cab aggregation services in India. In 2019, Ola needed to ensure that it remained the customer’s first choice for autorickshaw (auto) booking. Ola had so far faced moderate competition from small players, but competition was increasing from Uber Technologies Inc. With a service that was traditionally chosen for its low cost and easy availability, customer loyalty remained a challenge for all players in the market. How could Ola ensure customer loyalty and maintain its leadership position when Uber was garnering a higher net promoter score than Ola?

In January 2020, the proprietor of Basmati House Supermart (BHS), a large grocery retail outlet in India, terminated a partner retailer contract with Springers, an online retail platform. The proprietor had an ancestral property, located in a high-footfall area of the wholesale market, that could be developed into a retail outlet. In the new outlet, the broad options were to replicate the current retail business, focus selectively on staples and do more wholesale, or only focus on rice and develop it as a brand for larger distribution. Alternatively, the proprietor could rent the new property, wind down the grocery business, and invest the money in a fitness centre. Each option required its own particular investments, competence, and marketing strategy, and all options entailed considerable uncertainty and risk. BHS was steadily losing money; therefore, the decision had to be made quickly.

In August 2019, Fair Trade Jewellery Co., a mid-size jewellery retailer based in Toronto, Canada, was wondering how to ensure that its customers received responsibly sourced gold and diamond jewellery. The company had already devoted considerable amounts of time, energy, and expense to develop a responsible supply chain. Its activities toward that goal had included various initiatives beyond jewellery retail, such as providing inventory financing for artisanal miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After discovering that a key US partner along the supply chain may have not been following a clear chain-of-custody system in its refinery, the company was unsure how to proceed. Responsibly sourced gold was potentially being contaminated by other gold at the refinery, which led Fair Trade Jewellery Co. to consider opening its own local small-scale refinery. However, that initiative could mean considerable strategic risk and financial burden for the company. It could also have potential effects on its employees, who relied on the company for their livelihood. Did the company’s ethical mission require vertically integrating to such a considerable extent?

By the second quarter of 2018, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the online video technology company Bitmovin Inc. (Bitmovin) had propelled the start-up along an aggressive growth path. After founding the company in Austria, he had relocated Bitmovin’s headquarters to California’s Silicon Valley, raised more than US$40 million in investments in two funding rounds, and was now in the process of building a global sales organization for the company’s innovative online video infrastructure solutions. Within the next few years, the CEO wanted Bitmovin to achieve $100 million in revenues and initiate an initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange in New York. However, Bitmovin’s rapid international growth had resulted in a globally dispersed organization in which effective communication and alignment were difficult to achieve. The sales team was able to close deals with big-name customers in the media industry, but marketing and demand generation had been neglected and there were not enough potential customers in the sales pipeline. The company had recently failed to reach its growth goals for the first time, and the CEO wondered whether the company still had the right sales strategy and the right person as its sales leader.

In September 2018, Marisol Labrecque, president of Technologies Ecofixe Inc. (Technologies Ecofixe), was heading to Ain Taoujdate, Morocco, in order to supervise the installation of the company’s second ECOFIXE system in Africa. Technologies Ecofixe was a small, socially responsible Québécois company that had developed and commercialized a cost-effective system for the treatment of wastewaters in aerated ponds. With her eye on Africa’s ever-expanding market, Labrecque considered entering the French-speaking countries of Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso. However, given her limited resources, Labrecque knew that she would have to choose. Which country should Technologies Ecofixe enter next?

In late August 2018, the chief operating officer of Success HR Solutions, a Vietnamese software start-up, was contemplating the strategy for relaunching her product, a cloud-based human resources software product that handled various payroll and human resources functions. She needed to decide how to sell and price her product for the target market in the Vietnamese economy. As she evaluated her options, she had to consider the overall Vietnamese business landscape, the future of the industry, her company’s current capabilities, and her organization’s overall vision.

In August 2018, many regions in the state of Kerala, India, were experiencing rising flood waters, and people were being evacuated from flood-prone areas to relief camps. Various relief camp supplies in the state were being distributed through the distribution centre at Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Kochi. XSEED, a student community-driven organization of the Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship, was being coordinated by faculty member Dr. Mercia Justin. Justin, entrusted with the responsibility of managing the operations at the distribution centre, was carefully considering how to manage the throughput of the relief camp supplies and streamline operations at the distribution centre as the volume of shipments rapidly expanded and the rain and flooding situation worsened.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20A041

On October 25, 2018, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dr. Jonathan Broomberg (CEO Discovery Health) and Dr. Craig Nossel (Head of Vitality Wellness) consider their dilemma of how to make Vitality Move more attractive to the lower-income market and increase the programme’s uptake. Vitality Move is a wellness programme for the lower-income market, launched in 2017. It has a low membership uptake by the KeyCare benefit scheme members. The two leaders are faced with a challenge to devise ways to strategically target the lower-income group to improve employee productivity, decrease the burden of non-communicable diseases and influence positive lifestyle decisions. The case features the initiatives undertaken towards creating shared value.