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Peer Benchmarking Report for Consultants
Every comparator graded before it counts, so the row nobody can defend is labelled on the sheet rather than buried in the peer average.
River fixes the peer set and the metric definition before it pulls a single number, then builds the comparison one graded row at a time. Each row carries the comparator, the figure, the document and page the figure came from, the period it covers, and the specific difference between that comparator and your client. What comes back is the sheet plus the note on where they genuinely lag, where a comparison would not survive the room, and what is not comparable at all.
Search this and page one splits in two. Valuation guides on picking comps for a multiple, and benchmarking data vendors selling the peer figures themselves. Both arrive at the same sentence and stop there: normalise for structural differences. Neither says how, and neither says what to do with a comparator that cannot be normalised. The consultant who gets dismantled in a steering meeting rarely has the wrong number. He has a peer average that quietly included a distributor.
Built for the consultant who has to say how a client compares, then hold that claim in front of the client's own operators, who know the peer group better than anybody else in the room. Its rows feed a diagnostic scored against a reusable rubric and findings that name their criteria. Where the comparison points at cost, the operational diagnostic types and values what it finds rather than totalling it.
What makes a peer comparison survive the room
The most detailed published rulebook on whether two companies can be compared at all is a tax regulation. 26 CFR 1.482-1 names five factors to compare, functions, contractual terms, risks, economic conditions, and the property or services involved. Then it draws the line every benchmarking template skips. Where a material difference exists, an adjustment must be made if the effect can be ascertained with sufficient accuracy to improve reliability. Where it cannot, the comparator stays usable and the reliability of the whole analysis falls.
Two consequences follow, and neither shows up in a peer comparison slide. A comparator significantly less comparable than the rest is left out of the range rather than averaged into it. And where you cannot identify and adjust every material difference, the range narrows to the interquartile range, the 25th to the 75th percentile, with the point estimate at the median instead of the mean. The regulation states the whole failure mode in one clause: unadjusted industry average returns cannot establish a result by themselves.
Thurlow Doors, a fictional commercial door fabricator on $84m of revenue, runs SG&A at 22.4 percent. Nine self-nominated comparators average 19.1 percent, so the naive slide reads 3.3 points of excess and $2,744,000 of savings. One of the nine is a distributor with no plant, one is 4.1 times the size and allocates corporate services into segments on an undisclosed key, and two need a reclass or a 53rd week removed. Seven graded comparators run 19.2 to 24.7 with a median of 21.3.
How it works
Name the metric
What you want compared, and the definition the client's own system actually produces for it.
Fix the peer set
Who counts as a peer, the reason each one is in, and the basis written down and dated.
Grade every row
The specific difference per comparator, then an adjustment with its arithmetic or a refusal.
Argue it in chat
Add the peer an operator insists on, and watch what it does to the range.
What you get
- The peer set fixed and dated before any figure is pulled, with its written basis
- Every comparator figure carrying its source document, its page, and its period
- One named difference per row, with an adjustment and its arithmetic or a refusal
- Rows that are not comparable kept on the sheet and labelled, never quietly dropped
- The interquartile range and the median wherever the comparator set is not clean
- The objections the client's own operators will raise, answered before the meeting
Common questions
The client picked the peer set. Do I have to use it?
You use it as the starting list and grade every name on it. In the worked example two of nine names came out, and both were the client's own favourites and the two lowest ratios. Refusing a comparator on a stated ground is a much easier conversation than defending a number the peer average quietly broke.
Can I just widen the peer set until the answer looks better?
Not without showing both readings. Public companies face exactly this rule: Regulation S-K Item 201(e) requires a registrant that swaps the comparison index to explain why and to report its return against the old one as well as the new. The peer set here is dated and versioned for the same reason.
What if I cannot get a comparable figure at all?
The row stays and says so. A difference that is material and cannot be sized from anything published is a stated limit on the finding, not a gap to fill with an estimate. Two unionised plants against a peer set that discloses no union coverage is that case, and inventing an adjustment for it is worse than admitting it.
Why the median rather than the average?
Because one bad comparator moves a mean and barely moves a median. In the worked example the two refused names swing the mean 2.7 points and the median 0.1. Where the comparator set is clean enough that every material difference has been adjusted, the full spread is fair game and the mean is fine.
Where do the comparator figures come from?
Public filings, published accounts, regulator returns, investor packs and trade association data, with the document, the page and the period recorded on the row. A figure whose source cannot be named does not go on the sheet. Where a subscription benchmark is the only source, the row says that and carries the definition it uses.
Where does this sit in the engagement?
After the client's own numbers are straight and before anything is quantified. It reads against the client figures established in the cited evidence log, and its output is the external reference inside a business case written to the client's own hurdle.
Peer Benchmarking Report for Consultants
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