Solutions / Custom Services / Competitive Benchmarking
Competitive Benchmarking
Feature comparison tables are easy to build and rarely explain why you lose. The useful benchmark measures what buyers actually choose on.
Criteria from buyersBenchmark dimensions drawn from what decides deals, not from a feature list.
Realised terms, not publishedPricing, contract terms and support compared on what is actually agreed.
Gaps ranked by impactDifferences ordered by deal effect and cost to close, which rarely matches expectations.
In simple terms
You tell us who you compete with. We compare you on the criteria buyers actually use, including real commercial terms, and rank the gaps by what they cost you.
What Competitive Benchmarking is. Competitive benchmarking compares your product, pricing, service and commercial terms against a defined competitor set on the criteria buyers actually apply, evidenced rather than assumed.
What makes this different. Fieldwork quality is decided long before anyone answers a question: in the screener, the instrument design and the quality control. That is where most of our effort goes, and it is why the findings hold up.
What the service covers
These are the areas we work across, such as the ones below. We combine them in the proportion your question needs, and we tell you which ones your question does not need.
Criteria definition
Benchmark dimensions drawn from buyer evidence, so comparison happens on what decides deals.
Product and service
Capability compared through documentation, testing and user evidence rather than vendor marketing claims.
Commercial terms
Pricing, contract terms, support and SLA compared on realised terms, not published ones.
Gap prioritisation
Differences ranked by deal impact and by cost to close, which rarely produces the list people expect.
Questions this answers
If something like this is on your agenda, the engagement is already half scoped.
- How do we genuinely compare with the competitor we lose to most?
- Which of our disadvantages actually costs us deals?
- How do our commercial terms compare once discounting is included?
- Where are we ahead without getting credit for it?
- Which gap should we close first?
How you can use this
A few of the situations where this service does real work.
Losing to one competitor
You come second to the same rival repeatedly.
Comparing commercial terms
You suspect rivals are more flexible than their published terms.
Prioritising product investment
Several gaps are known and you can close one.
Positioning a new entrant
You are entering and need an honest comparison.
What changes for your business
The practical difference between running on this and running on what you have now, such as the following.
You get evidence where none was published
Primary research reaches the questions no dataset answers, which is most of the questions that actually matter.
The data is clean enough to rely on
Screening, quality control and documented exclusion rules mean findings survive scrutiny rather than collapsing under it.
You get topline fast
Headline findings arrive within days of fieldwork closing, so decisions do not wait on the full report.
Respondents tell you the truth
Independent fieldwork changes what people are willing to say, particularly about what is going wrong.
You can run it again
Instrument, screener and methodology are handed over, so tracking the same question over time costs a fraction of the first wave.
You test before you commit
Concepts, prices and propositions get checked with real respondents while changing them is still cheap.
Who this is for
Roles that commission this work most often include those below. Each asks a different question and gets a different cut of the same evidence.
Research and insight teams
We need fieldwork we cannot run in-house.
Specialist capacity to your standards, with instrument, dataset and methodology handed over for reuse.
Product and marketing leadership
What do our customers actually think, rather than what we assume?
Evidence from real respondents, with verbatims, so findings can be acted on rather than debated.
Strategy and commercial leadership
Is there enough here to justify the investment?
Primary evidence on demand, pricing and competitive position where no published data exists.
Operations and quality leadership
Is what we designed actually happening in practice?
Independent observation and measurement, reported by location and behaviour so it supports coaching.
Investors and diligence teams
Can we verify this independently before we commit?
Primary market and customer evidence gathered to a defined protocol, with full quality control.
Typical clients
How we work
The third step is the one that makes the output usable, and it is the one most work of this kind skips.
Understand the decision
We start from what the findings have to support, because that decides sample, method and the precision you actually need to buy.
Design and field properly
Screener, instrument and protocol built and piloted before full fieldwork, with quality control running throughout rather than checked at the end.
Read it for your position
Findings are interpreted against your market position and the decision in front of you, not reported as a neutral data dump.
Deliver so it can be reused
Dataset, verbatims, instrument and methodology handed over, so the next wave costs a fraction of the first.
What you receive
Full dataset with respondent metadata and quality flags
Topline findings within days of fieldwork close
Analytical report with verbatimscross-tabs and implications
Instrumentscreener and methodology note for reuse
Access to Phi, our AI research platformincluded
Every engagement comes with access to Phi. Ask questions of your own findings in plain language, pull the evidence behind any number, and keep querying long after the work is delivered. Your team gets the working intelligence, not just the document.
Open PhiWays to start
Tell us the decision and the date it has to be made by. We will recommend the smallest engagement that gets you there.
Pilot wave
A small first wave to validate approach, screener and instrument.
Full fieldwork
Complete fieldwork to target quota, with analysis and reporting.
Tracking programme
The same instrument repeated on a set cycle, reported as change over time.
Common questions
How do you get competitor commercial terms?
Through buyer interviews, won-lost analysis and publicly available contract evidence, all legitimately obtained.
How often should this refresh?
Annually in stable categories, quarterly where competitors are shipping and repricing quickly.
Who owns the work?
You do. It is exclusive to you, it is not resold, and working files are handed over unlocked.
Will you sign an NDA?
Yes, before the first conversation if you prefer.
Tell us the decision you are facing
Send us the question, the context and your timeline. You get back a recommended first step, what evidence it needs, and what it costs. Not a capability deck.