By Benjamin Fellowes
With scrutiny rising, technology is proving essential for elevating social value measurement beyond a reporting exercise and into a defensible driver of commercial growth.
If you had to trace your social value metrics back to the underlying evidence tomorrow morning, could your team do it? If you answered yes – congratulations – you are in a rare minority. According to our research, less than one in ten firms feel very confident in their organisation’s data and evidence.
Naturally, with social value commitments – the additional social, economic and environmental value organisations create through their activities, projects, and contracts – now a core part of doing business, data governance must improve. Back when social value was just a voluntary nice-to-have in some markets, loose estimates and rough surveys were rarely questioned.
Today, tenders, regulators, and commercial partners increasingly demand strict proof before signing off on contracts. Reports that present strong headlines are often built on soft figures that are difficult to verify independently. In turn, these numbers can create unnecessary operational and reputational exposure if challenged.
The rules are not standing still, either. In August 2026 the Cabinet Office in the UK published PPN 026, a new Social Value Model that raises tender weights on social value to 20% on larger contracts. Nor is this a UK-only shift. The EU’s forthcoming Public Procurement Act is set to mainstream social and sustainability criteria across European tenders, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive – even after the Omnibus package narrowed its scope – still subjects large companies’ sustainability disclosures to mandatory independent assurance. Wherever an organisation operates in Europe, social claims are converging on the same test: can you prove it?
Why is social impact measurement a technology challenge?
As expectations around social value rise, legacy reporting methods can no longer keep pace. According to Global Impact Investing Network research cited by the World Economic Forum, more than 90% of impact investing practitioners report struggling to capture meaningful impact data. Despite our own research finding that the majority (70%) of businesses support mandatory social value key performance indicators and 57% back weighted award criteria, far too few feel confident in their organisation’s data and evidence.
While unverified figures introduce compliance and reputational risks, the bigger challenge sits in how poor data limits commercial growth and obscures true social impact. More often than not companies drift into ‘social washing’ because they make ambitious claims about their contributions in the false belief that they have enough evidence to back them up. But with buyers and stakeholders looking much closer at these claims, missing proof can cause genuine, positive community outcomes to be discounted.
At the same time, social value is no longer a reporting exercise, but tied to winning and retaining major contracts. When companies deliver verified social value, they build trust with procurement teams and secure a clear competitive edge in future bids. Conversely, lacking proof to back up proposed commitments limits an organisation’s ability to demonstrate real commercial return on investment (ROI) of social value and secure new business.
In the face of these challenges, social value measurement has moved from a manual compliance task to a core technology enabler.
What does a defensible number look like, and how can technology help achieve it?
A defensible social value number is simply one that can be traced directly back to its source, explained with complete transparency, and reproduced if challenged by an auditor or client.
In practice, a defensible number accounts for the reality of how social impact – the positive change experienced by individuals and communities as a result of that work – actually happens. Take a headline claim like putting 100 local people into work. A soft figure claims the full 100 at face value. A defensible figure applies real-world adjustments. It factors in additionality by asking what would have happened anyway. It adjusts for attribution when local colleges or government schemes shared the effort. It removes displacement so businesses are not counting jobs that simply moved from one local employer to another, and it measures durability so a three-month role isn’t counted the same as long-term employment.
Applying those tests turns a headline claim into a smaller figure, but it gives businesses numbers they can stand behind without flinching. More importantly, it provides leaders with the strategic clarity needed to make better social value investments, ensuring capital and resources are directed toward interventions that generate the highest social impact for communities and the best ROI for the business.
This is where technology becomes an essential enabler. Social value data routinely passes through suppliers, partners, and delivery teams before it reaches a final report. Every manual handover is a point where the link to original evidence gets broken. Relying on a handful of static spreadsheets and partner returns makes it challenging to maintain a clear paper trail, leaving figures open to scrutiny.
As scrutiny hardens into demands for formal assurance, technology allows every data point to be validated, verified and audited. Validation provides the foundation, confirming at the point of entry that a claim aligns with the framework rules, includes the required declarations, has evidence attached, looks plausible, and isn’t contradicted by issues like over-claiming or double counting.
Verification builds on this further, moving from “does this data appear robust” to “how confidently can we rely on it as true”, looking critically at whether evidence actually supports claims. This stage matters most for organisations disclosing social value externally.
Finally, the audit stage is the highest level of scrutiny, examining governance, controls, systems and processes holistically. This is particularly important for organisations in highly regulated environments.
When numbers are checked as they are submitted, data stays report-ready year-round. Top-level KPIs remain credible, baselines stay consistent enough to benchmark against past performance, and forward forecasts stop turning into contractual over-commitments.
The practice of relying on soft estimates and unchecked headcount numbers is no longer sustainable. With procurement teams demanding stronger evidence and unverified data now a real commercial liability, defensible, tech-backed social value data is not just a source of better decisions and improved commercial performance. It’s an urgent operational requirement for doing business across the UK and Europe today.
Benjamin Fellowes
