Peer Group Performance Benchmarking

My approach to developer productivity metrics has changed a lot in the last few years. I used to recommend that leaders go deep in the research — SPACE, DORA, DevEx — to come up with their own list of metrics that fits their leadership and business needs. But now we have more information about what’s actually working in the field, and my guidance has changed. I have a very clear answer about what to measure, and it's the DX Core 4 framework. DX Core 4 unifies SPACE, DORA, and DevEx, and gives you a prescriptive list of key metrics to track. 🔹 Robust: Four dimensions that hold each other in tension for a comprehensive view into performance. 🔹 Easy to deploy: Get a baseline in weeks, not months. 🔹 Balanced: Qualitative and quantitative data to tell you not just what’s going on, but why, so that you can improve. 🔹 Peer benchmarks: See industry 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile values, including segmentation for size, sector, and even mobile engineers. This framework is based on years of research and field experience from real companies using metrics in their day-to-day operations. This framework was developed by Abi Noda and me, with collaboration from the creators of DORA, SPACE, and DevEx, and feedback from experts and our incredible DX customers. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dSbr8aAD

I built something for every finance leader trying to benchmark their tech stacks. And it uses real data from peers. Seriously. There was no good way to answer a simple question: What are companies like mine actually using? Like $25M to $50M companies with 200 people…. What are they using? So I built a solution. I basically turned the CFO group chat into a live benchmarking tool, but with 1,000+ members who've shared their relevant revenue and employee ranges + current tools they use across every finance category. Here's how it works: ➡️ Input: Fill in your current set up… takes 3 minutes, 100% multiple choice ➡️ Output: Get instant benchmarks… see what CFOs at your revenue stage actually use (first party data from readers) Then you can go deeper. ➡️ Research individual vendors: adoption graphs, honest pricing estimates, implementation timelines, and where each tool starts to break down ➡️ Browse by category: dive into FP&A, expense management, AP, billing, close management, and more to see adoption patterns and how usage spreads across company sizes ➡️ See the next stage: toggle to the next stage and see what you'll probably be buying in 18 months No more "yea I mean it depends on your situation" answers. We’ve got you real data from real finance leaders, organized in a way that you can make decisions. Take the survey and get the live data immediately! https://cfotechguide.com/

FDIC data shows insured deposits grew just 0.5% in 2024. But some banks still managed 5× that growth. Same economy. Same rate environment. Vastly different outcomes. So what separates the winners from the underperformers? After analyzing hundreds of institutions through our Infusion Norm benchmarking, three patterns stand out: 1. Winners track dollars, not impressions. They can tell you - down to the account - what last quarter’s marketing delivered in deposits. They measure cost per funded dollar, not just cost per lead. Every dollar spent ties back to balance-sheet impact. Underperformers? They celebrate impressions and clicks or just ignore marketing entirely. Campaigns “look good” on slides, but deposits quietly flow to competitors who offer measurable value. 2. Winners concentrate spend on proven channels. They double down on what works. They use first-party data and actual behavior insights to reach the right households without repricing the entire book. Underperformers? They spread budget like peanut butter - billboards, chasing shiny objects, broad digital - without attribution or optimization. 3. Winners obsess over retention. In our Infusion Norms dataset, top-quartile programs show double-digit year-1 and high single-digit year-2 retention lifts. They know acquisition is just the start - profitable growth comes from nurturing relationships. Underperformers? They count front-door wins. New accounts look great until 40%+ vanish within 12 months. Here’s the quick test for your bank: Can you calculate cost per deposit dollar in under 5 minutes? Do you know your marketing-attributed growth last quarter? Can you benchmark campaign-specific performance against peers? If not, you’re already behind. And the pressure is mounting: ~46% of banks expect flat or declining marketing budgets, and small to mid-sized banks typically allocate only around 2.7%–2.9% of non-interest expense to marketing. With less spend and more scrutiny, ROI is non-negotiable. Benchmarking shows you where you stand. But knowing you’re behind doesn’t close the gap. At Infusion Marketing, we’ve helped move banks from bottom-quartile to top-quartile performance by applying these differentiators. One regional bank uncovered a $264M gap in money market share versus peers. With a precise plan, they closed it in 18 months - without repricing their book. That’s the power of benchmarking paired with disciplined execution. Our pay-for-performance model ensures accountability: no balance-sheet growth, no fee. Curious where your bank really stands? Reach out to me - we’ll review your position and map a path to top-quartile growth.

12 PortCos. 8 different PEOs. Zero visibility. One $48.9M problem. That’s what we walked into. On paper, everything looked fine. But once we ran portfolio-wide benchmarking, the real picture emerged: → One PortCo was paying almost $400 per employee, per month in admin fees → Several were priced as if they were in higher-risk industries → Renewal logic was inconsistent across companies → Class codes didn’t match the actual work performed → SUTA was anchored to outdated assumptions → A few PortCos weren’t offering competitive benefits or contribution rates → No shared framework. No shared data. No shared discipline. Using our industry dataset, we corrected benefit and contribution strategies and aligned each PortCo to its peer group. In just 18 weeks, we uncovered → 9 outright PEO mismatches → 3 correct fits priced incorrectly → Material issues in 100% of the companies → Zero evidence of benchmarking across the portfolio The outcome? $48.9M in total cost takeaway. Not modeled. Not speculative. Actual value creation unlocked because someone finally looked across the entire portfolio. Portfolio performance is never a sum of individual PEO decisions. It’s dictated by the system that governs all of them. Once that system becomes standardized, the value creation isn’t incremental, it’s structural. Message me for the case study.

The Fab Whisperer: Benchmarking — With Our Competitors This week at the SEMI FOA Q1 Collaborative Forum, fabs will compare numbers. Benchmarking is healthy. But let’s address a somewhat uncomfortable truth: The most powerful benchmarking happens when you’re willing to compare yourself — honestly — with your competitors. Yes. Competitors. Semiconductor manufacturing is not a zero-sum efficiency game. When one fab improves: Suppliers improve. Standards mature. Tool performance baselines rise. Reliability practices evolve. The entire ecosystem benefits. The automotive and aerospace industries did this. Even oil & gas learned this lesson decades ago. We still hesitate in semiconductors. Fabs worry about IP leakage, cost exposure, revealing weaknesses and competitive positioning. All those are valid concerns but structured benchmarking forums exist specifically to allow for normalized data sharing, aggregated comparisons and anonymous performance quartiles that altogether drive standardized definitions. No one is sharing recipes or customer lists. We are sharing operational truth. I’ve seen fabs enter benchmarking forums reluctantly. Then something interesting happens, they discover their “world-class” OEE is actually median. Their PM compliance is high — but PM effectiveness is bottom quartile. Their cycle time is competitive — but variability is extreme. Their staffing looks lean — but engineering load per tool group is unsustainable. Those realizations sharpen a fab. The Best Way to Benchmark — Collaboratively If you’re going to benchmark with peers (and competitors), do it right. 1️⃣ Align Definitions with SEMI standards First. No “creative math.” 2️⃣ Normalize Structurally - Mask layers, tool intensity, technology node, automation level and mix complexity. Without normalization, comparisons are noise. 3️⃣ Share Loss Mechanisms — Not just surface metrics. The real learning happens when fabs discuss issues like PM-induced failures, scheduling logic, variability drivers, staffing & capacity models. That’s where breakthroughs happen. 4️⃣ Compete on Improvement Speed — It’s not about who is best today, it’s about who closes gaps fastest. The fabs that refuse to benchmark collaboratively often overestimate their maturity and underestimate structural weaknesses, missing industry shifts and ultimately improve slower. The fabs that engage openly (within proper boundaries) will build sharper diagnostics, improve faster, gain credibility with suppliers and attract stronger engineering talent. in the big picture, benchmarking is strategic intelligence. as we enter a period of massive CapEx expansions, regionalization, talent shortages, and tool cost inflation, no single fab can afford to operate in isolation anymore. Structured collaboration is essential for industry maturity. We can do it. #TheFabWhisperer #SEMI #Semiconductor #FabOperations #Benchmarking #ManufacturingExcellence #OperationalExcellence

A quick thought from validating CECL and ALM models at community banks: Your peer group is doing more heavy lifting than you think. And most banks get it wrong. Whether you're using WARM, SCALE, or a vendor model, peer data flows into your reserve at multiple touchpoints, including proxy loss rates, Q-factor benchmarks, reserve adequacy, and max loss ceilings. In ALM, peers inform your deposit betas and prepayment assumptions. Your peer group is a load-bearing infrastructure and not just a background context. But when I ask a CFO how they selected their peers, the answer is usually: "𝗪𝗲 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗕𝗣𝗥 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽" or "𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺." The UBPR groups banks by asset size. A $600M ag bank in rural Nebraska and a $600M CRE-heavy bank in Missouri may end up as "peers." Their loss histories and deposit behaviors have almost nothing in common. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱: • 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗻 𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, not asset size. A $400M bank with 45% CRE has more in common with a $900M bank at 42% CRE than a $400M bank that's 60% ag. • 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲𝘀. Run benchmarks against a composition-based group, a geographic group, AND the UBPR group. Where all three agree, you have confidence. Where they diverge, you have a finding. • 𝗙𝗶𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗱. I still see peer groups with banks that were acquired years ago. Stale peers distort everything they touch. Refresh annually. Check peers at the segment-level by going beyond just the aggregates. Your total loss rate might align with peers. But if CRE is at the 90th percentile while C&I is at the 10th, the aggregate is masking a real problem. Document the "why." Examiners don't just want your peer list. They want to know why those banks were excluded, what the criteria were, and why alternatives were excluded. One paragraph of rationale saves hours of exam discussion. Peer selection isn't glamorous. But I've seen it drive swings in material reserves, create weeks of examiner friction, and mask risks that should have been caught earlier. 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂. #CECL #CommunityBanking #ALM #ModelValidation #RiskManagement #BankCFO

🚀 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗟 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 This week, #ITIL and #PeopleCert have released something many of us in service management have been waiting for… 👉 A standardised performance benchmarking model for digital technology and service management. And it is a big step forward. For years, organisations have asked the same question: “How do we know if we are performing well… not just internally, but compared to others?” The new ITIL Performance Benchmarking Model (PBM) finally gives us a consistent way to answer that. At its core, the model provides a structured approach to measure how effectively digital technology supports business outcomes, using a focused set of benchmark-ready metrics that can be compared across organisations and industries. 🔍 What does it measure? The model focuses on four strategic areas of performance: • Business alignment & integration • Organisational agility • Organisational resilience • Operational excellence Across these areas, it introduces 12 standardised metrics, including: • Digital value realisation • SLA compliance • On-time and on-budget delivery • Incident rate and resolution performance • Digital cost per user and cost transparency • Digital workplace satisfaction This creates a balanced view of performance across value, experience, cost, and operational outcomes 💡 Why this matters What I like most about this model is that it moves us beyond: • Is the process followed? • Did we hit the SLA? and towards: • Did we deliver value? • Did the business feel the benefit? • How do we compare with our peers? It also aligns closely with the direction of ITIL (Version 5), where the focus is on products, services, and experience, not just processes. 🧭 How this will be used In practice, this model will help organisations: • Create a baseline of digital service performance • Benchmark against industry peers • Identify priority improvement areas • Strengthen the link between digital investment and business value 🌍 Get involved in the first international study PeopleCert are now running the first international ITIL Performance Benchmarking study. If you take part, you will: • Receive a full benchmarking report • Understand how your organisation compares with industry peers • Gain insight across key strategic focus areas 👉 You can take part here: https://lnkd.in/eWMVJj8D 📎 I’ve also attached the official ITIL PBM guide if you want to explore it in more detail. You can also sign up for the upcoming webinar on it - https://lnkd.in/egPwpBnV 𝙁𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬 𝙢𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙄𝙏𝙄𝙇, #ITIL #ITSM #SerrviceManagement #DigitalStrategy #Benchmarking #ExperienceManagement #PeopleCert

“Anchal, we thought we’re doing fine… but I’m not sure anymore.” This came from the CFO of a ₹250 Cr services company during a review call. “Every quarter, we review performance. Revenue is growing. Margins look stable. Yet closing a deal feels harder than before.” Individually, teams had answers. Sales blamed aggressive competitors. Finance blamed rising costs. Leadership blamed market slowdown. But no one could answer one simple question: Are we actually underperforming or is the market changing? They were benchmarking. Just not in a way that helped decisions. • One competitor deck from a consultant • Some MCA downloads • Different metrics, periods & interpretations So we changed the approach. Not with more data but with better benchmarks. Here’s what actually worked: 1️⃣ Benchmark against companies that matter • Not industry giants you’ll never resemble • Not tiny players who don’t set the bar • Only true peers similar scale, model, market Because comparison only works when it’s fair. 2️⃣ Focus on metrics that move decisions • Revenue growth where competition is real • Margin trends that show pressure early • Cost and working capital where money actually leaks 3️⃣ Act on what the gap is telling you • If peers are pulling ahead → fix fast • If you’re ahead → defend hard • If trends diverge → change course Strategy stopped being reactive. It became deliberate. What changed over the next few months? • Leadership finally aligned on performance • Pricing debates became shorter • Cost pressure was visible early • Decisions were made with confidence The uncomfortable truth? If you don’t know where your company stands, you don’t have a performance problem. You have a benchmarking problem. 👉 Are you comparing yourself to companies that matter…or just to feel better?

Power Plants differ. Compare like with like. I clustered 12,613 U.S. power plants to find natural peer groups. K-Means, GMM, and HDBSCAN did the work. The result makes benchmarking clean. Policy design gets sharper. Market intelligence gets clearer. Coal vs gas vs renewables vs nuclear. Baseload vs peakers. Each group shows its own median carbon intensity, capacity factor, and size. Outliers pop out for audit and ops review. Operators can use clusters to rank peers, set targets, and spot risk. Plus, it is fun. https://lnkd.in/g89RguBb

🤔 Have you explored the new GA4 benchmarking feature yet? It offers a host of valuable benefits, including: 💡 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽𝘀: Choose peer groups based on industry, size, and other factors for relevant comparisons. 💡 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀: Compare your performance trendline with industry benchmarks to spot growth opportunities. 💡 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗰𝘆: Benchmarking data is encrypted, aggregated, and fully protected.  💡 𝗪𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀: Get insights on acquisition, engagement, retention, and monetization metrics. However, it's not without limitations: 💡 𝗕𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮: Aggregated and anonymised data might lack the nuance needed for detailed competitive analysis. 💡 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗵 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲: Benchmarking data is updated every 24 hours, which may not be ideal for businesses needing real-time insights. 💬 Want to learn more about 𝗚𝗔𝟰 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴? Check out our comprehensive guide linked in the comments! ♻️ P.S. If you found this valuable, feel free to repost it! ♻️