Product Reports allow you to share, validate and communicate your products with partner companies in the food system. This is useful for upstream food companies (such as ingredient suppliers and CPG brands) to share their products with downstream buyers (such as CPG brands and retailers), to be used in their product formulas. It also allows you to save a time-stamped snapshot of your product, which can then be validated by the HowGood Research Team and used in public marketing claims.

Product Reports support your sustainable innovation initiatives by allowing you to continue innovating on a product, while maintaining a version that can be used as a baseline, shared with B2B customers, or communicated publicly.

Using Product Reports

A Product Report is a snapshot of your product at a specific time, unaffected by research updates or changes to your product. Product Reports have two main use cases:

1. Making Public Claims

Product Reports allow you to validate product sustainability claims that you would like to communicate with consumers, ensuring that they are scientifically sound and suitable for public-facing communications. HowGood-powered sustainability claims include:

Sustainability Attributes - Display the attributes that your products achieve, such as Climate Friendly or the Product Sustainability Rating.
Impact Labels - Quantify your product’s Carbon Footprint or Blue Water Usage.
Comparative Claims - Compare your product’s Carbon Footprint or Blue Water Usage to a conventional or representative alternative.

Once you identify products that achieve sustainability claims that you would like to communicate publicly, you can create a Product Report and submit a validation request. Upon validation, you will receive HowGood’s Sustainability Claims toolkit, which includes the relevant assets and guidance on how to use your claims externally.

Note: If you’re interested in communicating the sustainability of your products with B2B customers, you can use the Sustainability Scorecard. Validation of Sustainability Claims for B2C communications is a paid feature. Contact your Customer Success Manager for more information.

2. Sharing Across the HowGood Network

Product Reports allow you to communicate the sustainability of your product with other companies in HowGood’s network. You have the option to make your product report discoverable by all Latis users or users at specific companies.

When you share your product report, Latis users will be able to see your product’s sustainability metrics and achievements, without seeing the ingredient details. They can use the product in their own product formulas, but will not be able to edit the product. There are two ways of sharing products in Latis:

HowGood Material Directory — List your product in the HowGood Material Directory, which is visible to all Latis users. Users will be able to discover your product when searching for alternative ingredients, use it in their product formulas and contact you for more information about purchasing.
Direct share — Share your product directly to another company’s workspace in workspace, for use in their product formulas. Your product’s sustainability metrics will only be shared with the company you specify, and you can always update the product by creating a new Product Report.

Note: Currently, a given formula can only have one active Product Report at a time! You can export that report to save it, but creating a new report will overwrite the previous report. Product Reports should always represent the best and most complete understanding of a product’s impact at the time of generation. The ability to save multiple Product Reports directly in Latis will be coming soon!

How Does It Work?

On the Formula Profile page, you can toggle between the following three options:

Live Formula - In a live formula, scores and metrics can change at any time based on edits to the formula and updates to the underlying research data.
Last Saved Formula - In a saved formula, edits made to the formula will be preserved, while scores and metrics can change due to updates to the underlying research data.
Report View - A Product Report saves the product formula and its underlying research data at a given time. It enables you to switch between the Product Report and its live formula to make changes.

Edit a Saved Formula and Create a Product Report

To edit a saved formula that has not had a Product Report created:

Select Live formula
Select Edit details
When you are satisfied with your edits, select Save changes to save the latest version of your formula.
When you are ready to create a Product Report, select Create report.
From the Product Report Toolkit, select Create product report.

Edit a Product Report and Create a New Report

To edit an existing Product Report:

Select Live Formula
Select Edit details
When you are satisfied with your edits, select Save changes to save the latest version of your formula.
Select Live formula > Open report toolkit
Toggle the Create product report section and click Create another report.

Notes:

A given formula can only have one active Product Report at a time. You can export that report to preserve it, but generating a new report will overwrite the previous report.
A Product Report can only be created from the Live formula view.

Share a Product Report with Third Parties

Once you have created a Product Report, you have the option to share it with other Latis users.

From the Product Report Toolkit, toggle the Share with third parties section.
Select whether you would like to share your product in the HowGood Material Directory, or directly with another organization that uses Latis. If sharing directly with a Latis user, indicate which company you would like to share it with in the Description window.
Select Submit for sharing.

Validate a Product for Public Claims

To submit a product to the HowGood Research Team for validation of public claims:

Open the Product Report Toolkit and toggle the Validate for public claims section.
In the Make a request window, describe the type of claim you wish to make, including any helpful context or details.
Select Submit for validation.