Over the past decade, impact investing has made significant progress in the field of impact measurement. Today, it is difficult to find a fund or impact-oriented organisation that does not refer to recognised frameworks such as IRIS+, IMP, OPIM, or SDGs. These standards have contributed to professionalising the sector, creating a common language, and increasing the credibility of reported information.
However, the growing adoption of shared frameworks has not eliminated one of the most persistent challenges identified by both practitioners and academics: comparability (Taticchi & Andreoli, 2022; Hockerts et al., 2022).
A recent sector-wide assessment conducted by SpainNAB and Management Solutions on the impact measurement and management practices of Spanish impact funds reveals a particularly insightful reality. While there is clear convergence around the frameworks being used, significant differences remain in how indicators are selected, results are interpreted, information is verified, impact considerations are integrated into decision-making processes.
For many years, one of the sector’s main challenges was the absence of common references. Each organisation developed its own approaches, indicators, and methodologies, making meaningful comparisons across funds, companies, and projects extremely difficult.
Today, the situation is different. Most actors rely on internationally recognised frameworks and use catalogues such as IRIS+ to guide the selection of impact metrics. Yet the study shows that these standards often function primarily as reference points or shared languages rather than as rigid systems applied consistently across organisations.
As a result, two funds may claim to measure the same phenomenon while, in practice, measuring fundamentally different things.
One particularly illustrative example concerns the classification of indicators. The same KPI may be considered an output by one organisation, an outcome by another, and even an impact indicator by a third. Similar discrepancies emerge around metrics such as avoided emissions, beneficiaries reached, or inclusive employment.
In other words, sharing a label does not necessarily mean sharing a definition. Comparability depends not only on the existence of common indicators, but also on the existence of shared definitions, assumptions, and methodologies.
Technology as an Enabler, Not the Core Constraint
When discussing the challenges of impact measurement, a common response is to point to better technological solutions: more platforms, greater automation, more sophisticated dashboards, and increasingly advanced analytical tools.
Yet one of the most interesting findings of the study is that investors do not perceive technology as the main bottleneck. The funds analysed use a wide range of tools, from spreadsheets and manual processes to Power BI, Python, HubSpot, specialised platforms, and even integrated systems capable of connecting directly to investees’ data sources.
This does not mean that technology is unimportant. On the contrary, it can make data collection, analysis, and reporting more efficient and more scalable. But the study suggests something important: technology alone is not enough.
The most significant challenges are methodological in nature: how to define relevant indicators, distinguish outputs from outcomes, assess additionality, and aggregate information without losing meaning.
In other words, the sector does not seem to suffer from a lack of tools as much as from a lack of shared methodological foundations. Technology can speed up the process, but it cannot by itself resolve the lack of consensus regarding how data should be interpreted.
This conclusion is particularly relevant at a time when much of the innovation in the sector appears to focus on building new platforms. The evidence suggests that the real challenge is not simply the digitalisation of measurement, but the development of methodologies capable of making sense of the data already available.
Comparing Without Sacrificing Materiality
Another important debate emerging from the study concerns the tension between comparability and materiality, understood as the identification and measurement of the most relevant and significant impacts generated by an organisation or investment.
Investors need to compare opportunities, assess portfolios, and communicate results consistently. At the same time, they need to measure what truly matters in each specific context.
A regenerative agriculture company, a digital health platform, and a sustainable mobility provider generate different types of impact, affect different stakeholders, and operate through different pathways of change. Requiring all of them to use exactly the same indicators may create an illusion of comparability, but at the cost of losing relevant information.
For this reason, several funds question the usefulness of universal KPIs and advocate for sectoral or thematic approaches that better capture the realities of specific activities. The report itself warns that seemingly straightforward aggregations (such as the number of people impacted) may conceal substantial differences in the depth, duration, and intensity of the change generated.
This is precisely where ADALTIM becomes particularly relevant. Rather than relying on a single universal score, the project is exploring a layered rating architecture that combines cross-cutting, sector-specific, and business-model-specific indicators, supported by baseline and target-setting rules adapted to each level.
The objective is not to replace existing measurement systems, but rather to translate heterogeneous information into a comparable framework without imposing artificial uniformity.
In this sense, the value of an impact rating system lies not in reducing complexity to a single number, but in making complexity understandable.
Much like credit ratings do not replace financial statements but help investors interpret them, impact ratings can contribute to transforming dispersed data into information that is more comparable, contextualised, and useful for decision-making.
From Data to Meaning: An Opportunity for the Ecosystem
If there is one lesson emerging from the current state of the market, it is that impact investing has largely moved beyond the initial phase of deciding what to measure.
The next stage appears to revolve around a different challenge: how to transform heterogeneous data into comparable and decision-useful information.
Addressing this challenge requires new capabilities; not necessarily more data or more tools; but better mechanisms to harmonise indicators, document definitions, assess the quality of evidence, and preserve materiality without sacrificing comparability.
In this context, the challenge is no longer simply to measure more, but to interpret better.
The next generation of impact measurement tools is unlikely to differentiate itself by generating new data. Instead, its value will increase in its ability to structure, contextualise, and compare the information that already exists.
Initiatives such as ADALTIM are built on precisely this premise: that the future of impact measurement will depend less on technology alone and more on the combination of data, methodology, and evaluation systems capable of transforming heterogeneous information into actionable knowledge for decision-makers.