Digitalizing how the world reports its progress

The United Nations Global Compact guides companies all over the world toward lasting social impact, tracking their annual progress against the UN's Sustainable Development Goals through the Communication on Progress (CoP). The initiative was aiming at 2030 — but the CoP itself ran on paperwork: laborious, time-consuming, and heavy for everyone involved. UNGC brought in Graffino to digitalize and optimize the entire process, with complete freedom on how to get there.

Globalscale
Companies worldwide report through the CoP
Paper → App
The entire CoP system migrated to digital
UN-gradesecurity
Data control fit for a United Nations initiative

The client

A UN initiative with a 2030 deadline

The UN Global Compact is a United Nations initiative that guides companies all over the world to make a lasting social impact by implementing the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Its accountability instrument is the Communication on Progress — the annual report through which every participating company shows where it stands.

Which made the irony hard to miss: a global initiative built for a better future was tracking that future on paper. Filling out a CoP was laborious for companies; revising thousands of them was worse for UNGC. The process needed to become easy on both sides of the table — and it needed to produce data, not documents.

UN Global Compact Communication on Progress banner — a mountain path at sunrise
From UNGC's own Communication on Progress communications — the long road to 2030, one annual report at a time.

The friction

A process stuck in the past

The brief was challenging but obvious: migrate the entire CoP paperwork system into a simple, efficient digital application. The constraints were real —

  • Easy on both sides. Simple for companies to fill out, simple for UNGC to revise — at the scale of a worldwide initiative.
  • Data-driven by design. Collection, analysis, manipulation and reporting had to come out of the system natively, not be reassembled from forms.
  • Secure and maintainable. The level of data security an organization like the UN requires, on technology that stays low-maintenance behind the scenes.

UNGC offered complete freedom on the approach. That trust set the working mode: side by side with UNGC employees and other specialists, exploring design philosophies and technical possibilities together, iterating until each step of the process found its most suitable digital form.

"A global initiative aiming for a better future — tracked on paper."

The contradiction the project resolved

What we built

One application, both sides of the process

01

Digital CoP submission

The paperwork flow recast as a clean digital form experience — easy for participating companies to complete, wherever they are.

02

Revision-side tooling

The same application serves UNGC's reviewers, making revision of submissions across a global participant base manageable.

03

Data collection & reporting

Submissions land as structured data — effortless collecting, sorting, analysis and presentation instead of document archaeology.

04

Clean, intuitive interface

A visual language that makes a compliance task feel simple — several iterations were explored with UNGC to land on it.

05

UN-grade security

Data protection at the level an organization like the United Nations requires of its systems.

06

Low-maintenance foundation

Technology chosen to stay quiet behind the scenes — desktop-first, fully functional across a myriad of mobile devices.

Before / after

The same process, without the paper

The paperwork era
  • CoPs compiled and submitted as documents
  • Laborious for companies to complete
  • Time-consuming for UNGC to revise
  • Data locked inside files
  • Reporting reassembled by hand
→
The digital CoP
  • One application for submission and revision
  • Intuitive interface, drastically reduced workload
  • Structured, analyzable data from day one
  • Sorting, manipulation and presentation built in
  • Secure and low-maintenance behind the scenes
AreaBeforeAfter
SubmissionPaper-based, laborious for companiesSimple digital flow, easy to fill out
RevisionManual, document by documentEasy to revise inside the application
DataTrapped in paperworkCollected, sorted, analyzed and reported natively
WorkloadHeavy on all involvedDrastically reduced on both sides
AccessTied to documentsDesktop and a myriad of mobile devices

The result

Simplicity and usability, at UN scale

The outcome is an easy-to-use application with a clean, intuitive interface — and a global reporting process that finally matches the ambition of the initiative it serves.

Workload

Drastically reduced

For the companies filling out CoPs and the UNGC teams revising them alike.

Data control

Exceptional

Collecting, sorting and presenting progress data made effortless.

Security

UN-grade

The level of data protection an organization like the United Nations requires.

Maintenance

Low, by design

Technology that stays out of the way behind the scenes.

Reach

Every device

Mainly used on desktop, fully functional across mobile devices.

The partnership

Complete freedom

UNGC trusted Graffino with the approach end to end — collaboration and creative problem solving carried the project.

Why it matters

When the process is global, simplicity is the feature

Digitalizing a UN reporting instrument isn't a normal app build. The users span every industry and continent; the reviewers handle volume no manual process survives; and the data carries the weight of a global accountability mechanism. The solution had to be radically simple precisely because everything around it is complex.

The pattern travels. Any institution running a high-volume, document-based reporting or compliance process — certifications, audits, grant reporting, regulatory filings — has a version of the same problem the CoP had. The same approach solves it.

Still collecting progress on paper?

Let's digitalize your reporting process, by Graffino.

We turn document-heavy institutional processes into simple, secure, data-driven applications. Tell us what your teams are still pushing through by hand.

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