Benchmarks

How do I know whether a SaaS benchmark applies to my company?

Run four checks in order: does the denominator match, does the panel match, is it the same statistic (median vs mean), and is it the same time basis? If a comparison fails any one of them, the gap you are looking at is measurement, not performance. Most comparisons do fail, usually on the first or the third.

Add a fifth check on provenance: how many of the sources you are citing are ultimately quoting each other? Benchmark categories go circular quickly — a figure published without method gets repeated by a vendor blog, cited by an SEO page, and becomes "industry standard" within two years.

Evidence

What this is based on

Every claim above comes from work LeanScale published. These are the sources.

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