The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations General Assembly. Its goal is to maximize the trade, development, and investment opportunities of developing countries by helping them face the challenges of globalization. UNCTAD acts as a guardian of the world's development conscience by helping developing nations integrate their economies into the world economy on an equitable basis.

The Challenge

Historically, UNCTAD has helped developing countries manage their economies better by supplying trade, investment, and finance data on an as-needed basis. To make a real impact, however, UNCTAD felt it needed to tabulate, manipulate, publish, and disseminate trade data on a much broader scale. This would enable all developing countries to take advantage of this valuable information. To achieve this goal, UNCTAD required an easy-to-use solution that could be implemented quickly and economically.

The Solution - Beyond 20/20

UNCTAD, working in conjunction with Beyond 20/20 Inc., developed a CD-ROM, "The UNCTAD Handbook on Statistics." The CD provides a comprehensive collection of statistical data relevant to the analysis of world trade, investment and development. It has been highly appreciated by national institutions in developing countries who otherwise could not afford to gather and disseminate such data. Importantly, the Handbook is an entirely self-contained product. The data is stored in Beyond 20/20 format and a Beyond 20/20 Browser is included on the CD. The Browser allows the Handbook's users to access, view, chart, and manipulate the data without having to purchase additional software.

"The Handbook on Statistics CD was introduced at the Tenth Annual Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, and was highly successful. Being able to include trade data on a CD using Beyond 20/20 enabled us to provide a valuable service to our member countries in the most cost-effective and timely manner for UNCTAD to disseminate data. The delegates have provided UNCTAD with incentive to continue presenting data on CD-ROM." — Arunas Butkevicius, UNCTAD

The Benefits Achieved

UNCTAD chose Beyond 20/20 over other alternatives because it offers a number of key benefits:

• Using Beyond 20/20, UNCTAD can quickly and easily create sets of statistical tables that are useful and easy to understand – a critical benefit to UNCTAD's clients.
• Beyond 20/20 allows UNCTAD to add new data to existing tables, which saves considerable time and expense during routine updates.
• UNCTAD can easily move from CD-ROM-based dissemination to Web-based publishing because all Beyond 20/20 applications use exactly the same data tables. Tables do not need to be restructured or regenerated.

Beyond 20/20 permits UNCTAD to spend its time focusing on its primary goal – helping its constituents participate in the global economy on an equal footing with more industrialized nations.