About the Benchmarking Tool

What is the benchmark?

The Infrastructure Benchmarking Assessment Tool (the "Benchmark") measures how well an organization is doing in building, operating, and maintaining its IT infrastructure. The benchmark covers eight top-level criteria sets, represented by eight axes on the benchmark output graphic. The eight axes are:

1. Infrastructure optimization & utilization
2. Simplification & standardization
3. Availability & continuity
4. Security
5. Platform & business process integration
6. Business flexibility & responsiveness
7. Information integration & knowledge management
8. Management vision & innovation

The tool benchmarks your responses against data from similar companies, providing a real measurement against live data from other organizations. The benchmark was seeded at launch with 150 example companies per country (except the US which has 300 examples) which allows us to benchmark you against any combination of industry sector and company size in the countries covered.

When you have entered all the online questionnaire data requested and chosen what set of other organizations you want to be benchmarked against, the main benchmark graphic and a set of sub-benchmarks are generated on-screen. A jpeg of the graphics will also be emailed to you.

What does the benchmark do for me?

The benchmark is not designed to tell you all the answers to your most pressing problems. Neither is it a replacement for the in-depth paid-for benchmarking that you can obtain from a range of consultancies (not least IBM BCS or The Bathwick Group!). What the Benchmark can do however is give you a good indication of where there is the most need for investigation and action, and where you might therefore expend limited resources most effectively.

What countries and sectors does it cover?

The countries initially covered (for which we have seed data and therefore against which you can directly benchmark) are:

The sectors covered are:

In addition, there are three size ranges to choose from when benchmarking:

When you execute a benchmark, you will be able to select the sample that you wish to benchmark against from these three dimensions – for example:

Any of the dimensions may be specified as "all sample" i.e. organisations of any size, or from all sectors, or all countries. For example, you might choose to benchmark yourself against all sectors and/or all countries. This option will be useful if you are not in one of the initial countries or sectors covered.

How does it work?

The benchmark is executed by answering all the questions in the online questionnaire. The system then assesses the answers and calculates your score against a series of algorithms. The algorithms are constructed against a series of models developed over many years by The Bathwick Group to measure different aspects of organisations. The live data entered will determine your score. The benchmark tool will select the average (mean) and best in class scores of the sample against which you want to be benchmarked, and illustrate all three on the output graphic. Every benchmark that is successfully completed is incorporated into the overall data set, so the best in class and mean scores are continually updated with fresh data from a continually widening set of companies.

What & who is behind the benchmark?

The questionnaire and algorithms behind the benchmark, and the application that executes it, were devised and constructed by The Bathwick Group, an independent, specialised research, analysis, and marketing consultancy which was founded in 1997.