Benchmarks

Every completed check adds one firm's honest self-placement to the dataset, on consent and on one promise: it is only ever shown anonymised, aggregated and with the number of firms in view. No release exists yet. This page says what one will contain when it does.

What a release contains

One page per check per quarter, written for an owner who has taken the check, a journalist who has not, and an assistant that will quote one paragraph of it.

• What this is: how many firms took the check and when, what the check is, and which cuts are published and which are not yet.
• The finding: the practice where the largest share of firms placed themselves at Lagging or Basic, with the two cells quoted so a reader can place themselves.
• By dimension: the most common stage in each, and the share at the low end, with the n.
• Where firms placed themselves lowest, and highest: up to three practices each.
• What firms could not place: the practice most often answered "I can't tell", and who in a business usually holds the answer.
• By cut: sector, size, geography and context, each with its own n, and where a cut differs from all firms by a margin worth reporting.
• Since the last release: what moved, and which practices were re-worded and start a new pool.
• How to read this: the same short block every time, with the digits filled in.

The floor

A cut is a sector, a revenue band, a country or state, or an answer to one of a check's context questions. A cut is published once it has enough comparable firms, 30 by default, and the number is shown beside every figure. Below the floor, nothing is written down, hinted at or described in words.

Releases

Released quarterly, from the first quarter in which a cut reaches the floor. The first releases will cover the pricing and strategy checks. Inside a respondent's own report, the benchmark block says where the firm sits against firms like it as soon as its cut is published, and says "benchmarks unlock as the dataset grows" until then.

How to read this

Each release shows, for one check and one quarter, where the firms that took it placed themselves, by dimension and by practice, with the number of firms beside every figure. Self-placed, anonymised, consented. A share is of the firms in that cut, not of all businesses.