Client File: World Economic Forum

Released annually, the Global Gender Gap Report assesses the quality of life for women in over 150 countries. “Country profiles”—essentially, “score cards” that justify a numerical ranking—constitute the majority of the lengthy report. Prior to 2016, data scientists generated content manually. The time–consuming process was made all the more precarious by the fact that countries are asked to self–report information. Bottlenecks—and cascading delays—were all but certain, given the likelihood of data to arrive at the eleventh hour. And to boot, information was only available online as a PDF file.

In 2016, WEF's Frontier Insight team was pursuing solutions to streamline the production of their Global Gender Gap Report. Under deadline, team lead and report author Vesselina Ratcheva contacted Accurat for help in automating a cumbersome process.

We developed software to instantaneously generate full profiles using variables that could be easily updated, effectively automating the creation of nearly 300 pages of the report. When the time came for it to be updated in 2017, Ratcheva’s team returned to Accurat for a refresh, and asked for help with another issue: adapting the document to a web–optimized experience. Integrating with WEF’s site, we built an intuitive, map–based data explorer that made it easy for users to find and export country–specific data. These innovations lowered a threshold for accessibility and made the Global Gender Gap Report available to its biggest audience yet.

The Global Human Capital Index ranks 130 countries on how well they are cultivating human resources across four key areas. Similar to the Global Gender Gap report, it's a broad assessment that aims to show growth potential and areas for improvement.

The same year that we first helped streamline production of the Global Gender Gap report, we also handled end–to–end production of the Global Human Capital Index. Replicating the tried–and–true workflow, we swiftly developed an automated solution to generate index entries and the majority of the print report. In the meantime, we also developed a web–optimized explorer.

In 2020 alone, we partnered with WEF on ten separate projects, beginning with print materials distributed at the January conference in Davos, Switzerland. The 10-12 page reports—reference guides for key topics of conversation—flipped the script on prior collaborations. For the first time, we took a leading role as information designers, organizing text, numbers, charts and tables into insight–driven narratives.

After a hiatus due to the pandemic, we resumed our collaboration in 2022.

When COVID–19 sent world markets into a tailspin, we responded quickly with WEF as a coordinated team. In October, 2020, the Future of Jobs Report was released with a brand new section that dealt with changes wrought by the pandemic. Subsequent projects followed suit, shifting in tone and presentation to address the unprecedented situation.

Recently, Ratcheva expressed gratitude for the team’s nimbleness, referring to the handling of “a few very time-constrained demands and rapidly shifting circumstances in an unpredictable year.”

While the relationship continues expand, we remain agile partners thanks to the lean processes we've refined over the course of years.