Broadband Economic Impact Assessment

Measuring Economic Outcomes from your Broadband Initiatives

Whether it is building digital infrastructure or programs that put your digital infrastructure to work, you make these efforts and investments to achieve goals and outcomes for your community. Knowing how well you are achieving these outcomes provides essential feedback to validate actions to date and to adjust them going forward. This starts with defining meaningful and useful metrics from the outset and measuring them as you go forward.

SNG has been measuring the uses and benefits from broadband and digital infrastructure for over 20 years using metrics unique in the industry. From day one our focus has been to help clients understand the economic and social impact potential from investing in this essential infrastructure. Over the years SNG has amassed a one-of-a-kind Digital Economy Database using our industry-leading eSolutions Benchmarking service.

It is a short step from eSolutions Benchmarking to the Economic Impact Assessment. Common to both approaches is to establish the right metrics that properly inform progress toward your intended outcomes and goals.

The Economic Impact Assessment

Like SNG’s eSolutions Benchmarking, the Economic Impact Assessment gathers data directly from those impacted by your projects and programs, typically residents, businesses, and other organizations. Using a core set of metrics your data can be compared to historical data previously gathered by SNG. In addition, new question sets can be tailored to uncover impacts and progress relative to your specific efforts and goals. We work closely with our clients and their stakeholders to define the right metrics so that you have information and intelligence that matter to you.

To measure progress, you need to measure more than once. After defining the right metrics, it is important to establish a baseline, or benchmark, early on so that changes and progress can be measured over time. Therefore, the need for impact tracking should be built into project plans from the outset.

SNG’s Economic Impact Assessment not only gathers data, but also provides insightful analysis that includes translating that data and intelligence into economic impacts using SNG’s Broadband Economic Impact Model. Clients will not only know how their efforts are tracking toward desired outcomes but will have insight on how investments are paying back in meaningful economic terms. Documented outcomes and community impacts from the digital initiatives reinforce the value of investments, solidify community buy-in, and increase the ability to optimize ongoing plans and target evolving outcomes based on empirical data.

What you get

The Economic Impact Assessment includes:

• Proven data collection tools and methods that gather information on the current uses, benefits, drivers, and barriers for digital infrastructure.
• In-depth analysis to reveal:
  • Current state utilization by market segments (market analytics)
  • Economic impacts already achieved from investing in broadband
  • Potential economic benefits to be realized from increasing adoption and utilization
  • Gaps and opportunities by sectors and locations
  • Future user needs
  • Interest in and progress toward program outcomes
• Comprehensive reports on key metrics and progress whenever new data is collected
• Economic impact analysis in relation to your investments, which may include impacts on
  • Job creation
  • Local GDP
  • Household income
  • Workforce development

The Economic Impact Assessment answers the question of are you achieving what you started out to achieve, and how much? We all know that innovation requires a certain level of risk and moving into the unknown. The more facts you know as you go along the better you can adjust and the better you can reduce risks as you move forward.

Contact us to find out how Economic Impact Assessment can work with your initiatives.