Coverage and limits

Industries
Organizations are grouped into sectors such as:

• Financial services
• Manufacturing
• Retail
• Healthcare
• Public sector
• Technology and media

Limitations:

• Niche or highly specialized industries may have limited sample sizes
• Some organizations are diversified; they may be represented in a broad “diversified” bucket

You should confirm which industry your profile is mapped to and whether that matches how you actually view the business.

Organization size
Size segmentation typically uses:

• Annual revenue bands
• Sometimes employee count bands as a secondary view

Limitations:

• Very fast growing or shrinking firms can move bands between data collection cycles
• Holding companies or groups can skew results if IT scope and financial scope do not match

You should pick the size band that reflects the scope of IT you are benchmarking, not just the parent company headline revenue.

Geography
Benchmark datasets often support:

• Global comparisons
• Regional groupings such as North America, EMEA, APAC

Limitations:

• Regional labor cost differences can be significant
• Multinational delivery models can blur geographic distinctions

Choose geography regions that match the scope and delivery model of your IT function, not just where headquarters is.

Time periods
Benchmark datasets are based on full fiscal years.
Key points:

• There is always a lag between a calendar year ending and benchmarks being fully processed
• Benchmarks are snapshots of how participants looked in that year
• They are not updated month to month for that year

Your comparisons should line up:

• Your IT cost and volumes for fiscal year N
• With benchmark data for the same or nearest common fiscal year N