What our customers think | Managing our Impact

Hear from our Head of Impact Management Karen Lee and find out about her role at the Hartree Centre and her highlights from our recent commercial outcomes survey.

Karen Lee, Head of Impact Management

Anyone working in the research and innovation eco-system will be very familiar with the concept of ‘impact’ and generating benefits to the UK economy and its people.

As an applied research centre focused on supporting industry in their adoption of transformational digital technologies such as AI and data analytics, this one word, impact, summarises what the Hartree Centre is all about. My role is to help us show it.

The recent AI Activity in UK Businesses report estimates that companies’ annual expenditure on AI technologies was over £62 billion in 2020. With the right conditions in place (for example by reducing the barriers to adoption… which is what we do), they predict that total AI expenditure could grow 11-17% annually over the next five years. Whilst the Impact of AI on Jobs report estimates that such technologies could boost our economy by as much as 10% of GDP by 2030. So we are talking pretty significant numbers here!

It’s exciting that the Hartree Centre (and therefore my talented colleagues) is one of the delivery mechanisms to achieve this. As their Head of Impact Management, my focus is on demonstrating the benefits from our portfolio of projects and programmes by helping us to measure and understand the value we contribute to the organisations we collaborate with, as well as to the wider economy and society.

One way this is done is by capturing information – via surveys and interviews – on customers’ experiences of working with us and tracking this over time. We’ve just published an independent report which has provided useful insight into our portfolio of commercial projects.


The key findings from the report are based on 31% of past user organisations engaging in commercial projects completed up to the end of January 2021.

The Commercial Beneficiary Outcomes report is interesting to me on a number of levels. First off, I want to put a shout out to all of the people that make the Hartree Centre ‘work’ and I am proud that 94% of respondents stated they already had, or would, recommend us to others. The work my colleagues do is remarkable – it is right on the cutting-edge and more often than not beyond my realm of understanding.

Back to the organisations… even if you just look at the sectors they operate in, it really does show that digital technologies pretty much touch every part of the economy.

And these businesses are not all at the same stage of their digital transformation journey either. Some are just starting out, with an idea in mind but unsure of whether it would work or where it might take their business, whilst others are optimising processes or product development. I think this is demonstrated in the range of outcomes reported, which indicate important improvements in productivity, performance, skills and R&D investment. For example:

  • 76% reported that the strategic importance of adopting and applying digital technologies had increased
  • 65% have seen an increased investment in R&D within their organisation
  • 84% have improved the extent to which their organisation uses or exploits data.
  • 89% have increased their in-house technical expertise and capabilities

Other benefits reported included:

  • Enhanced confi­dence in products and services
  • Improved effectiveness of product development
  • Optimised processes
  • Reduced product development costs
  • Reduced time to market
  • Increased sales or profi­tability
  • Enhanced reputation

Although after a project you’ll get a picture of the early outcomes and future potential, the nature of innovation is such that full benefits often take time to be realised. Our survey reflects this in that 79% of participants said that they expect to see further commercial benefits over the next 1-3 years.

Following this research, as part of the Hartree Centre’s continuous improvement work, we’ve enhanced our evidence collection so that we capture information before, after and 2-3 years after our projects to track how benefits accrue to achieve impact over time.

If you’d like to find out more, take a look at the public summary of the report or our infographic. We also have some fantastic case studies which tell a powerful story of some of our individual client projects.