02 · Benchmarks & research
This chapter covers the benchmarking half of the platform: instant self-serve price checks for hundreds of vendors, your whole portfolio scored against the market in one view, the analyst-delivered reports you get when you upload a proposal, the vendor grade book, and the research library. Reach for it whenever you need to know whether a price is fair, where the money is across your stack, or what a vendor is doing in the market.
Instant benchmarks
Self-serve price checks for more than 1,069 vendors and product lines, no upload needed. Answer a few questions about your deal and get a market comparison in about two minutes.
Opened from your home screen (app mode), the page walks you straight into the room: the Ask the market toolbar runs edge to edge under the navy band with the search bar ready, and the page header and cross vendor suite row sit below the working surface. Opened from the dashboard, the page keeps the composition described here, header first.
On the screen
- Ask the market — the search bar at the top, with the quick asks and the corpus counts beneath it. Vendors suggest instantly as you type, and the preview card beside the list shows the highlighted vendor's benchmark depth, reference deals, your own agreements, and the next renewal. You can also type a plain language question ("am I overpaying for Salesforce?") and the Ask Vera row answers it with grounded, cited figures. Press / from anywhere on the page to jump into the bar, then ↑↓ to move, Tab to complete the vendor, ↵ to run, and Esc to clear.
- Quick ask pills — one press starters for the three questions buyers ask most: am I overpaying, what a strong deal looks like, and what to push for.
- Tool cards — one tool per vendor or topic: Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, AWS, and more, grouped by category, with your own vendors floated first.
- Peer comparison — results show where your deal sits against a cohort of similar companies, with percentile bars.
- Saved scenarios — your past runs are saved so you can revisit or share them.
How to use it
- Press
/(or click the bar) and type a vendor name. Arrow keys move through the matches, Tab completes the name, Enter runs. A vendor with one benchmark opens its tool directly; a vendor with several lists them below the bar. - To score your whole stack at once instead of one vendor, open the Portfolio benchmark.
- For a deeper expert review, upload the proposal for analyst benchmarking.
Tips
- The full set of vendor tools is the benchmark library below. The hub groups them by category so you can find yours fast, or press Ctrl/⌘ K and type the vendor name.
- Typed questions from the bar land in Ask Vera with the question prefilled, so the search and the assistant are the same instrument.
Related: The benchmark library · Portfolio benchmark
Portfolio benchmark
Your whole software stack compared with the market in one view: which vendors look expensive, which look fair, and where the money is.
Your position sits in the masthead: positions placed, how many beat the market median, how many sit above it, and the total annual headroom between what you pay and the median. Before you have saved a scenario, the page shows how the roll-up fills in three steps rather than telling you it is empty.
On the screen
- Standing per vendor — each vendor's position against market pricing, built from your proposals and agreements.
- Savings prize — the estimated annual amount on the table if above-market deals moved to the median.
- What next — the roll-up ends with its next moves: rework the largest-headroom position in its vendor tool, start the negotiation, open the savings plan, copy the one line verdict, or take the numbers to Vera or a booked analyst.
How to use it
- Open a vendor that looks above market to see the detail behind its standing.
- See ranked savings opportunities in Opportunities.
Related: Opportunities · Benchmark all my vendors
Benchmark all my vendors
A three page portfolio benchmark generated from every agreement you have uploaded: spend per vendor, market position where our reference data defends one, and an explicit insufficient-data note where it does not.
On the screen
- Generate button — scans your agreements, places each vendor in its peer cohort, writes the report, and checks every figure against your stored data. Takes 1 to 3 minutes.
- Trust strip — like every AI-generated report, it opens with its grounding state ("Figures verified against your data", or a review notice when a figure needs one), the source count, the generation date, and feedback thumbs.
- Spend per vendor — page one: portfolio vitals and an overview of annual spend by vendor, largest first.
- Market position table — page two: each vendor's position and the basis for it, a delivered analyst score, a cohort percentile with a ± range, market reference data, or insufficient data.
- Data coverage — page three names the vendors we cannot benchmark yet and the one step that closes each gap. We never estimate a position without data.
- What next — the report ends with its next moves, built from its own totals: turn the positions into the savings plan, start a negotiation on the largest headroom vendor, copy the one line verdict, ask Vera which vendor to take to the table first, or book the analyst. The Send it on panel drafts the CFO, CIO, vendor, or colleague email from the report itself.
How to use it
- Generate or regenerate the report.
- Download as Word; the export matches the on-screen brief.
- Close a data gap by adding a list price or seat count in the vendor's benchmark tool, which moves it from reference to ranked.
Tips
- This report reads from agreements, not one-off instant checks. The more complete your Agreements list, the more of your stack it can place.
Related: Portfolio benchmark · Delivered reports
Delivered reports
Benchmark reports our analysts delivered for your proposals, plus anything still in flight with its estimated delivery date. This page is also your documents library: everything the platform has ever written for your organization lives in the All documents section below the shelf. Report covers on the shelf lead with the annual value found; the overall score sits as a small corner mark.
On the screen
- Report page — a metrics table with percentile bars, market low, median and high, an overall score, and the analyst summary. Reports generated from August 2026 lead with a paged executive brief: a vitals strip, the executive summary, a deal snapshot of your current position against the benchmark supported position, your terms against the market band with a standing verdict per metric, the headline metric drawn against its band, a savings bridge priced from the stored metrics, numbered negotiation levers with a sequencing note, and scripted talking points; earlier reports keep the layout they were delivered in. Long reports show a thin gold reading-progress line at the top of the window, a reading-time estimate in the byline, numbered figures with their sources, and a Top button once you scroll.
- Open the case — on a delivered report, "The case file" navy band on the proposal's Report tab opens the benchmark as a full screen case: numbered executive brief documents in a grouped left rail, paged with the arrow keys, with a read meter and Esc to close. Six documents: the cover, the source proposal record, the analyst brief, a metrics atlas with the market ranges and the verdict table, an ask sheet priced from the stored figures, and a What now sheet with a drafted CFO brief, a vendor safe meeting request, chat ready copies, and the PDF. Drafts open in your own inbox, nothing sends from a case, and every figure is read from the report itself.
- In-flight benchmarks — proposals still in review, with an estimated delivery date.
- All documents — every brief, memo, and report your organization has generated. The library opens as a shelf of document covers, hued by type, with the vendor, title, and date on each spine; a Covers | Table toggle switches to the dense table (sortable, searchable, pageable, CSV export) and remembers your choice. The library also lists your saved drafts, contract decodes, and quote face-offs alongside the AI deliverables. A cover or row opens the document itself, with the owning record one click away in the table's Context column.
- Origin filter — beside the type filter, narrow the library by where a document came from: All origins, AI report, Tool run, or Draft.
- Boardroom Brief, presented — after writing a Boardroom Brief from this page, Present beside its download actions opens it full screen as a four movement show: the posture, renewals and risk, savings and leverage, then the asks, with the brief's KPI figures on the stage ticker and a printable leave-behind of the screens you walked.
- Boardroom Brief, as a case file — once a brief is written, Open as a case file in the dialog and preview footers expands it into the same full screen case reader: a cover sheet with the headline numbers and the bottom line, one exhibit per section of the brief, and a What now sheet carrying the same Word and PowerPoint downloads, a team circulation draft, and the desks to open next.
- Word downloads — rows whose type supports it show a clickable Word link in the Formats column, so you can export straight from the list. Most document types export to Word, including vendor dossiers, QBR prep packs, deal handoff memos, audit exposure reports, clause coverage reports, consolidation memos, position trajectory reports, diligence reports, SOW rate reviews, vendor relationship analyses, and saved tool analyses.
How to use it
- Open a report and walk the metrics.
- Download the report as a PDF.
- When you are hunting for something the platform wrote earlier, sort or search All documents instead of revisiting the record that produced it; the row opens the document itself, and the Word link in its Formats column downloads it directly.
- Bookmark a report for later, and find it again in Saved.
Tips
- A delivered report comes from uploading a proposal for expert review, not from an instant check. Start one on the Proposals screen.
Send it on: the follow up email, drafted
A report is rarely the last step; someone has to act on it. The Send it on panel at the foot of every report drafts that email for you. Pick the reader and Vera writes a short, friendly note built only from the report above it, never from figures the report does not carry. Nothing sends from the platform: you copy the finished email and paste it into your own mail client.
On the screen
- Reader chips — To the vendor (named when the report knows the vendor), To your CFO, To your CIO, To a colleague. Each reader gets its own draft: the vendor note is friendly but firm and careful about what it reveals, the CFO note leads with the money, the CIO note frames the platform decision, the colleague note is a quick heads up.
- Subject and body — both fully editable before you copy. Drafts are short on purpose, two paragraphs at most, and sign off with a [Your name] placeholder.
- Copy email — copies the subject line and body together, ready to paste into Outlook or Gmail.
- Redraft — writes a fresh draft for the selected reader if the first one misses the mark.
- Confidentiality check — vendor drafts pass the same scan as negotiation language; if a draft carries an internal figure or a name it should not, a warning lists exactly what to remove.
- On the dashboard — the desk rail carries a Send it on card listing your newest documents; Draft email opens the same panel without leaving the dashboard.
- In theatre mode — presenting a brief adds an envelope button to the stage controls; it opens the drafting drawer over the show, built from the document on stage, so the follow up is written before the room empties.
How to use it
- Open any report and scroll past the document to the Send it on panel.
- Press the chip for the reader you have in mind and give Vera a few seconds.
- Edit the subject or body until it sounds like you.
- Press Copy email, open a new message in your mail client, and paste.
Tips
- Drafts only state figures that appear in the report itself. If a number is missing, the email speaks in direction instead; add specifics in your edit if you want them.
- Switching chips keeps each reader's draft, edits included, until you leave the page.
Related: Delivered reports · Renewals
Reporting studio
56 standardized reports on your own contracts and spend, plus custom commissioned ones. Every run is written from your stored agreements only, addressed to the reader you choose (CIO, CFO, or procurement), at the length you choose (2 to 5 pages), and figure checked against your data after writing. Where the data cannot support a number, the report says not on file instead of estimating.
On the screen
- The commissioning stage — the dark masthead opens with your estate's own numbers: tracked annual spend, the agreements grounding every figure, and the 56 reports on the desk.
- Run controls — Reader, Length, and Scope float beneath the stage as one instrument, applied to whichever report you run next. Report default lets each report address its natural reader; the scope select narrows any run to one vendor.
- The catalog — 56 reports across eight groups, each card a miniature executive brief cover: executive and board, spend and cost, renewals and pipeline, vendors and concentration, risk and compliance, market position, negotiation and savings, and data and operations. Search filters by title and topic; the category chips narrow by group; the whole card is the Run button.
- The Writing Room — running a report raises a full screen stage where the document writes itself in front of you: the masthead and gold rule land first, the vitals arrive with the fact pack, the prose writes line by line, and the fact check sweeps the figures in gold, beside a five stage checklist, a live progress rail, and an analyst ticker narrating the work.
- Commission a custom report — a title and a one sentence brief produce a report the catalog does not have, to the same grounded standard.
- Recent runs — your latest reports as chips, one press back to any of them.
- The run page — the finished document with its Word export, print to PDF, Reader and Length controls for regenerating, and version history.
- Present — runs the report full screen on the shared stage as a working session: the executive summary opens, the vitals get their own screen, each section walks as its own act, and the close carries the recommendations and the bottom line. The stage's envelope button drafts the follow up email without leaving the show.
- Forward — emails the report to a colleague with your own note and a 30 day read only link. No account needed on their side.
- Send it on — beneath every finished report, the follow up email drafter: to the vendor, your CFO, your CIO, or a colleague (see Send it on).
How to use it
- Pick the reader and the length in the run controls; leave Reader on Report default to let each report address its natural audience.
- To report on one vendor, choose it in the Scope control. Reports marked Runs on one vendor require it.
- Press Run on any catalog card. Generation takes 1 to 3 minutes and lands you on the finished report.
- On the run page, export to Word, print to PDF, or change the reader or length and press Regenerate.
- Press Present to walk the report on the stage, or Forward to email it to a colleague as a 30 day read only link.
- For something the catalog does not have, give the commission desk a title and a brief and press Run.
Tips
- The same report reads genuinely differently per reader: the CFO version leads every section with the number, the CIO version reads the estate as platform strategy, the procurement version is an ordered work list.
- Every run files into All documents on Delivered reports with version history, so a monthly rerun never overwrites last month's edition.
- A report is only as complete as the record: the Data gaps report in the catalog tells you exactly which missing values and dates to fix first.
Related: Delivered reports · Benchmark all my vendors · Proposals
Vendor scorecards
Every calibrated vendor graded as a counterparty: the renewal corridor behind our benchmarks turned into an A-to-F grade, plus how verified buyers rate the vendor's renewal fairness, audit conduct, and flexibility.
Read against your own estate. The page opens with how many of the graded counterparties you actually hold, what you pay them a year, and what renewing them at their own calibrated medians would add. That last figure, your annual value times the median uplift, is stated per vendor and as a total, and the vendors you hold are listed first in that order. Every corridor is drawn on one shared axis with the median marked and a hairline at a flat renewal, so two vendors compare by eye rather than by reading two sentences.
On the screen
- The grade — renewal economics from the calibrated corridor, not a popularity score.
- Buyer ratings — one review per organization, shown only as floored aggregates.
- Public page — each vendor has a public scorecard the whole market can cite.
- Put the grade to work — the vendor page's rail routes onward: run an instant benchmark against the corridor, ask peers on the Buyer Network, build the renewal plan, open the vendor room, or start the negotiation.
How to use it
- Rate a vendor you hold paper with.
- Open the public page for a vendor you are renewing.
Research
Our latest white papers and market notes: vendor pricing moves, licensing changes, and negotiation guidance.
The series you will find here
- Negotiation Toolkit — one per covered vendor: the levers, the counters, and how to run the deal.
- Negotiation Intelligence Report — for the major vendors: the seller's calendar, comp plan, and tactics decoded.
- Renewal Outlook (quarterly, top 10 vendors) — what your renewal will cost in the next 12 months and what to lock in now: announced price changes with dates, uplift corridors, and a month-by-month timing calendar.
- Vendor Strategy & Viability Assessment (annual, top 10 vendors) — where the vendor is taking pricing, packaging, and product, what that does to your cost curve, and a closing posture recommendation.
- Topical papers on specific market events, such as licensing policy changes and audit campaigns.
For covered vendors, the newest Renewal Outlook also appears automatically on that vendor's renewal, contract, and negotiation pages, and the assessment on the vendor's page, so the right paper is at hand where you work the deal.
On the screen
- The search toolbar — the page opens on the search field, the topic filters, and a line counting the papers, the vendors, and what arrived in the last month. The field filters the whole library as you type and shows a live match count. Press / from anywhere on the page to start typing, and Esc to clear. Matched words light up in titles and summaries, and while a search is active the results rank best match first.
- The library rail — the dark column down the left of the results, in three blocks. Its search box drives the same catalog as the stage above, with two modes: Keyword is the strict matcher, where every word you type has to appear, precise and unforgiving of a wrong word; Meaning counts any word that lands and weighs topic and summary matches alongside titles, so a question phrased the way you would say it out loud still finds the paper. Both run in your browser over the whole index, so both answer as you type, and the rail says how many papers match. Your shelf holds the briefs you have opened in this browser under Recent and the ones you starred under Starred, one click back to where you were. Cite what you read acts on the last paper you opened: Cite into case copies the title, the publisher, and the link that opens that exact paper, ready to paste into a case or a brief; Open the case takes you to that vendor's benchmark case when the library covers it; Copy the reader link copies one link that opens the paper for anyone in your workspace.
- Topic pills — every paper is tagged by topic (Negotiation, Renewals, Pricing and inflation, Audit defense, CFO and board, Cloud, AI licensing, Exit and alternatives, Contract terms). One tap narrows the library to that topic; tap again to release it.
- Vendor chips — filter to one vendor. The counts on the chips update live with your search and topic, so you always see how the current result set breaks down. Vendors that appear in your own agreements carry a small gold dot.
- For your vendors — when nothing is filtered, a shelf above the results keeps the newest research on the vendors you hold contracts with.
- New badge — papers published in the last two weeks are marked New.
- Sorts — recent (or best match while searching), Most liked · top 25 (the 25 most liked papers platform wide), oldest first, and By vendor, which groups the library into a directory with a header per vendor.
- Cards or Shelf — a layout toggle beside the sort. Shelf stands every brief as a case spine on a gold rail, vendor on the spine, following whatever filters and sort you have set; a bright gold band is an unread brief, and spines you have read dim to soft gold. Your choice of layout is remembered in this browser.
- The reader — papers open in a reading dialog. A note published without an attached file renders as a formatted brief with an estimated reading time at the top. When a paper has an attached file, an Open in tab button beside Download opens it in its own browser tab. Previous and Next (or the left and right arrow keys) walk the whole filtered shelf in order with a position counter, so a series reads cover to cover; read cards carry a green check.
- Reading mode — the Reading mode button in the reader takes the paper full screen on the same stage as the playbook theatre: the room goes truly fullscreen (F toggles it) and the header fades after a few seconds of stillness, returning on any movement. The sun and moon toggle sets the stage light to light or dark independently of your app theme, and the choice is remembered on this browser. The arrow keys still walk the shelf; Escape or the X returns you to the normal reader.
- Share link and Forward — both live in the reader header, in the normal reader and in reading mode. Share link creates a public link and copies it: anyone with the link can read that one paper for 90 days, no account needed. Forward emails the paper to up to five colleagues with an optional personal note.
- Like button — one press, one vote, with the live count beside it: what readers across the whole customer base found worth their time. Counts are anonymous; only totals are ever shown.
- Bookmark icon — save any paper as a favorite. The bookmark sits on every card and in the reader header, so you can favorite a paper while reading it. Favorites also appear on your Saved page.
- Favorites chip — leads the filter row and shows your saved count. Press it and the page becomes your own shelf: vendor chips, search, topics, and sort all work inside your favorites.
How to use it
- Type what is in front of you, a vendor name, "audit", "briefing the CFO", and open the top match. Results update on every keystroke.
- Read or download a paper, and press the thumbs up on anything that earned it.
- Share a paper with a colleague straight from the reader: Share link copies a public link, Forward emails it with your note. The Recommend button on each card opens the same dialog.
- Short on time? Switch the sort to Most liked and read what everyone else rated, or start from the For your vendors shelf.
Download limit: reading a paper in the viewer is unlimited, but file downloads are capped at ten per day and thirty per week per person so access stays fair across organizations. The allowance frees up on its own as your recent downloads age out. If you reach the limit and need more before then, ask us and a VendorBenchmark admin can reset it for you right away. All platform limits are collected in Plans, allowances & limits.
Related: Saved · Vendor scorecards
The benchmark library
The instant benchmarks hub is a front door to roughly 1,336 individual vendor tools, one page per vendor and product line, from Microsoft EA and RISE with SAP to Snowflake, CrowdStrike, and Autodesk, including the AI tool stack (AI coding assistants, model and inference APIs, GPU cloud, data labeling, voice, and video) and the Google estate (Google Ads, YouTube, Marketing Platform, Analytics 360, Maps Platform, Mandiant, Cloud Support). Each page is a self-serve price check: you enter your own numbers and see where your deal lands against a cohort of comparable transactions, with no upload and no wait.
Real estate and staffing are covered as industries rather than as a handful of names. On the property side, alongside Yardi, RealPage and MRI Software the library prices CRE data and marketplaces (CoStar Group, Cotality, Altus Group), property management platforms (AppFolio, Entrata, Storable), leasing, deal and investment management (VTS, Dealpath, Juniper Square), and worktech, lease accounting and residential brokerage (Eptura, FinQuery, HqO, Lone Wolf). On the staffing side, alongside Bullhorn, Beeline and iCIMS it prices the agency front and back office (Avionté, TempWorks, Crelate, Loxo, Daxtra), talent engagement and experience (Sense, Phenom), recruitment marketing and job advertising (Radancy, Appcast, ZipRecruiter, DHI Group), and the PEO and staffing payroll platform underneath (PrismHR). Neither industry meters per employee, so each page names the unit that actually bills you: per unit under management, per facility, per building, per lease, per recruiter seat, per active job slot, per worksite employee. Four of these pages are built on a published rate card, and two of those tell you the escalator matters more than the discount, because Crelate publishes a 7 percent annual price rise and Loxo is reported at 5 percent.
Retail and commerce has its own category on the hub. It covers the enterprise store estate (Aptos ONE, Cegid Retail, Diebold Nixdorf Vynamic, Toshiba ELERA, Zebra Workcloud), the shelf and the shrink stack (VusionGroup electronic shelf labels, Nedap iD Cloud RFID, Sensormatic, Everseen checkout vision AI, Scandit smart data capture), merchandising, planning and shopper data (SymphonyAI Retail CPG, ToolsGroup, Impact Analytics, dunnhumby, Placer.ai, alongside Blue Yonder and Oracle Retail), digital commerce, marketplace and channel (VTEX, Spryker, Mirakl, Rithum, alongside Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, commercetools and Salesforce Commerce Cloud), product and customer content (Syndigo, Akeneo, Bazaarvoice), and fulfilment, post-purchase and the frontline workforce (Fluent Commerce, Narvar, WorkJam). Retail almost never prices per employee, so each page names the meter that actually decides the bill: per terminal or per store, per lane, per shelf label, per RFID tag, per named planner, per seat, per order, per SKU and recipient, as a share of gross merchandise value, or per frontline employee. Several of these pages say plainly that the discount is not the lever and explain what is, because the money in a retail contract is usually somewhere else: the consumable tag schedule behind an electronic article surveillance install, the year-seven shelf label replacement price, the double-run between an old point of sale maintenance line and its cloud replacement, the take rate rather than the subscription, and the seasonal headcount a frontline licence is struck against.
Energy and utilities is a category of its own, and it is the largest single build in the library. It runs from the operating estate of a utility (ADMS and SCADA, DERMS and virtual power plants, metering and the grid edge, vegetation and asset inspection, crew and field service, retail energy platforms, water data) through oil, gas and industrial operations (subsurface and drilling, production and upstream ERP, pipeline and terminal, industrial analytics, machine health, maintenance management) into energy trading and markets (E/CTRM, trade surveillance, market data and price reporting, power forecasting) and the clean energy transition (storage optimisation and battery analytics, electric vehicle charging, solar and wind design and performance, carbon accounting, utility data access, environment and safety, environmental commodity markets). Several of these are not licence deals and the pages say so rather than forcing them into a discount frame: an efficiency provider that installs equipment at no up-front cost and earns from your energy saving is a financing agreement, where the measurement baseline and the early buyout decide the cost, and a charging network that earns per kilowatt hour turns on who carries the demand charges when a fleet plugs in at once.
ITSM and ops covers the estate around ServiceNow rather than only ServiceNow, because the alternatives are what give a ServiceNow renewal any tension at all. Security is built the same way, covering the shortlist a buyer actually runs a platform against instead of only the platforms themselves. In both categories the page tells you where a credible alternative exists and where one does not, since a renewal with no second quote is a different negotiation from one with three.
Open source vendors that sell commercial support are covered as their own kind of deal, because the software is free and what you are buying is support, indemnification, certified builds, and long term security maintenance. Your genuine alternative is not a competitor, it is running the same software unsupported for nothing, so each page says where the community edition is already sufficient and where the subscription earns its place. The library covers databases and data platforms, Java runtimes, Linux and operating systems, private cloud, middleware and developer tools, content and collaboration, monitoring, and security tooling. Some are unusually clear cut: one monitoring vendor gates no features at all and sells only response time, one hypervisor is free to run in production with published per socket tiers, and one community platform has no paid tier to unlock, which makes a self host threat unusually credible. Two carry a specific threshold worth knowing before you open a quote: MySQL Enterprise does not discount below roughly $100,000 of annual value and then moves from 10 to 60 percent as the deal grows, and Azul runs 30 to 60 percent off list.
Advertising and media has its own category on the hub. Fifty vendors cover the stack a brand, an agency or a publisher actually signs for: the exchanges and supply platforms (Magnite, PubMatic, Index Exchange, OpenX, Equativ, Yieldmo, GumGum), native and content recommendation (Taboola, Teads, MGID), demand side platforms and media buying software (StackAdapt, Viant, Basis Technologies, Zeta Global, Adform, Moloco, MiQ, Smartly, Skai, alongside The Trade Desk and Criteo), verification and fraud (HUMAN Security, Zefr, Pixalate, alongside DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science), audience measurement and the television currencies (Nielsen, Comscore, Kantar Media, VideoAmp, iSpot.tv, EDO, Samba TV), marketing effectiveness (Measured), mobile and app attribution (Adjust, Branch, Kochava, alongside AppsFlyer), shared advertising identity (ID5), agency ad operations (Mediaocean, which now owns Flashtalking and Innovid), out of home and audio (Vistar Media, Broadsign, AdsWizz, Triton Digital), search and AI visibility (BrightEdge, Conductor), affiliate and partnerships (impact.com, Awin), creators, social and communications (CreatorIQ, Later, Cision), creative production (Celtra, VidMob), supply path curation (Scope3) and consent management (Didomi). Advertising almost never meters per employee, so each page names the unit that actually decides the bill: a percentage of media spend for a demand side platform, a percentage of publisher revenue for an exchange, a cost per thousand impressions for verification and identity, a cost per attributed event for mobile measurement, a percentage of tracked sales for an affiliate network, and a price per screen for out of home. The published anchors sit on the pages: platform fees run about 15 to 20 percent of media and compress toward 7 to 13 percent above roughly $3m of annual spend, sell side take rates average about 14 percent of publisher revenue, and verification runs about $0.05 to $0.10 per thousand impressions. Several pages say plainly that the discount is not the lever and explain what is, because a measurement currency your television deals settle against and the workflow your agency bills through do not negotiate on rate. Ownership matters more here than in any other category, so each page names it: your mobile measurement partner may belong to a company that also sells you media, your audio technology may belong to one of the largest audio sellers, and your television data vendor may be part owned by the broadcasters it measures.
The library also covers professional services under its own category. Twenty services providers, from the strategy houses (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) and the Big 4 (Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG) through the global SIs (Accenture, IBM Consulting, Capgemini, NTT DATA), Booz Allen Hamilton, Slalom, Kyndryl, and the offshore majors (Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCLTech, Tech Mahindra), are benchmarked on blended hourly rate per consultant rather than discount off list: enter your total fees and hours and see where your effective rate lands for that firm and engagement size, with your onshore/offshore delivery mix and commercial leverage as the levers.
Alongside those firms, the library benchmarks the four software vendors that also sell the services to implement their own software, one tool per practice rather than one per firm: ten Microsoft Industry Solutions Delivery practices (Azure infrastructure and migration, data and AI on Fabric, Copilot deployment, Dynamics 365 finance and operations, Dynamics 365 customer engagement, Microsoft 365 and modern work, security, Power Platform, app innovation, and industry cloud solutions), ten Oracle Consulting practices (Fusion Cloud ERP and EPM, HCM, SCM and CX, NetSuite, OCI migration, E-Business Suite, database and Exadata, Oracle Health, and managed services), twenty IBM Consulting practices split across its Strategy and Technology line (strategy, hybrid cloud and Red Hat, application modernization, data and AI, cybersecurity, the SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft and AWS practices, IBM iX, finance, supply chain, talent, sustainability, quantum and mainframe) and its Intelligent Operations line (application managed services, business process operations, and cloud platform operations), and ten SAP Services practices (RISE adoption, S/4HANA brownfield conversion and greenfield implementation, premium engagement, SuccessFactors, Ariba, BTP, analytics, Signavio, and custom development). All fifty use the same blended hourly rate metric as the firm-level tools. The point each page makes is the same one: a vendor's own consulting arm can defend a premium for the work only it can credibly do, such as an SAP brownfield conversion or an Oracle database architecture with licensing consequences, and cannot defend one for the work a systems integrator delivers just as well, which is why the rates inside one vendor range so widely.
The largest publishers are covered by product line rather than as one tool, because they do not price as one vendor. Oracle has its own deep set: the Fusion cloud applications (SCM, EPM, and the CX suite of Sales, Service, Marketing, CPQ, and Commerce), Analytics Cloud, the industry clouds (Health, Retail, Hospitality, Financial Services, Utilities, Communications, Transportation Management, Field Service, Primavera Cloud), and the on-prem license and ULA-family estates (E-Business Suite, Siebel, JD Edwards, Primavera P6, Pool of Funds, and Perpetual ULA). Salesforce is broken out into Sales, Service, Commerce, Experience, Revenue (CPQ), Field Service, Platform, Agentforce, CRM Analytics, and the Health, Financial Services, and Nonprofit clouds. ServiceNow covers ITSM, ITOM, CSM, HRSD, SPM, Security Operations, IRM, App Engine, Field Service Management, and the Now Assist AI add-on. SAP covers S/4HANA (on-prem and RISE), GROW, Analytics Cloud, Datasphere, Integrated Business Planning, Fieldglass, Commerce Cloud, Sales & Service Cloud, Signavio, LeanIX, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur, and BTP. Pick the exact product line you are negotiating.
The Microsoft EA tool models the November 2025 licensing change directly. Microsoft removed the EA volume discount levels for online services on November 1, 2025, so the tool carries a pricing era control: deals under the new rules benchmark roughly 10 points less discount than the legacy price sheet, unless the deal commits Copilot on an E5 (or E7) estate, which restores pre 2025 discount levels. Set the era to match your agreement; renewals still on a legacy price sheet keep it until they renew.
SAP on-prem pricing changed regime in 2026 and both SAP tools say so on the page. SAP ECC is no longer discounted at all (new purchases price at list, with value delivered only through RISE conversion credits), and S/4HANA on-prem discounts are effectively fixed volume-commitment bands well below the historical 40-60% norms. Treat pre-2026 SAP reference deals as history, not as a target for a 2026 negotiation.
The Oracle ULA benchmark is a deliberate exception to reading the discount at all. It opens with a panel titled how Oracle actually prices a ULA, because Oracle does not price a ULA off a discount curve: the number comes from your budget, the three year growth forecast Oracle discounts against, any uplift on your last ULA, and often the deal rationale itself (audit resolution can settle a large exposure as a much smaller ULA). Read the percentiles as context, and use the panel's negotiation guidance: keep growth estimates conservative because they are not contractual, always signal you may not renew, and negotiate the terms that outlast the price (the certification clause, public cloud deployment rights, a support fee cap after the ULA ends, coverage for every legal entity, and merger and acquisition rights).
On the screen
- Your deal panel — the inputs on the left: currency, your net fee, unit count, an optional list value for the discount reading, region, industry, and any deal-structure levers such as term length or competitive presence. The verdict updates live as you type.
- Open the case — the navy band at the top of the results. It opens your placed verdict as a full screen benchmark case of four executive brief documents, every figure computed from your live position. Your deal sheet is two pages: the order form facsimile with Vera's markings and margin pins on every placed term (risk pins in brick), then a reading ledger (field, what the paper says, what it means for you, a verdict pill) and the deep dive panels on the clauses that decide the deal. The verdict brief runs three pages: the position summary, a commercial journey chart from list paper to your paper to the close target, a peer scatter drawn from the real cohort with your gold ringed dot called out, section by section verdict words (Ahead, At market, Behind, Exposed), a numbered How the target gets achieved sequence, a pull quote, and the bottom line. The field atlas shows all four instruments in sequence: the range bars, the percentile ladder with your YOU cell placed among the cohort's quantiles, the captured versus defended dollar stack whose totals reconcile with the verdict line, and the full verdict table. The ask sheet carries eight to ten sequenced asks (anchors first, protections second, the rate once the table is set, timing last), each with its clause anchor, its priced value, a Say this script line, and an If they push back counter. Press any figure, tag, or chip inside the case and it jumps to the exact clause the number was read from; Play the read walks the deal sheet one lit term at a time. The case recomposes from your live position every time you open it, levers included.
- The workroom dock and rail — the icon strip on the case's right edge and the finding blocks under the document list. Press ⚡ and the paper slides left to make room for the What now panel beside it, so you can read the verdict brief and fire the moves at the same time; press ✦ and the same split opens Ask Vera, grounded on the whole case, with one chip per document. Click a chip and the cited document opens on the stage. Questions asked here land in the same saved conversation every time you reopen this case. Esc unwinds one layer at a time: the open dock panel, then the open room, then the case. Below the document list the rail carries Find a case (search every vendor benchmark by name, recent cases first; a recent reopens with its case on the stage and your numbers prefilled, and a vendor you have not benchmarked yet lands on its page so you can enter your deal, because a case is only ever built on figures you supplied), a Research search over your own uploaded documents, and your shelf: the last benchmark cases you worked, under Recent and Starred tabs, each reopening its page with your numbers prefilled, plus a Star this workroom button for the open case.
- The case rooms — the pills in the top band beside the case title: Benchmark case, Compare room, Deal room, Second opinion. They swap what is on the stage without closing the case. The chrome, the document rail, the dock and every figure stay where they are, so nothing is lost and the way back is the Benchmark case pill, any document in the rail, the back button at the foot of the room, or Esc. On a narrow window the same pills ride the end of the document strip.
- Compare room (in the case) — your saved positions for this vendor, listed newest first. Tick up to three and press Replay them together: each one is replayed alongside the position on the page now, through the same peer-cohort math against today's data rather than the standing stored at save time. You get the scenario verdict (which position is strongest, the gap in discount points or fee per unit, and what that gap is worth per year at your volume), a standing band with every position dotted on it and the strongest in gold, and the table underneath: metric value, standing, cohort median, top-quartile target, annual headroom to median, and the save date. With no saved positions yet, the room offers to save the one on the page so the next quote has something to land against.
- Deal room (in the case) — what the Vera Deal-Room adds to this benchmark: it reads the contract itself and assembles the decode, the vendor intel, a credible alternative, the brief and the playbook around it. Below that sit your existing deal rooms, this vendor's first and flagged, each opening at its own stage, and one control to hand in a contract and start a new one.
- Second opinion (in the case) — the same shape for the four page verdict brief: what a second opinion adds to this benchmark, your existing opinions with their verdict lines and this vendor's first, and one control to run a new one. Both of these read a contract and take a few minutes, so they run as their own jobs; this case stays on your shelf, one click from where you left it.
- What now — the case file's sixth document, and the answer to "what do I do next with this benchmark?". The same moves also ride the ⚡ dock panel beside every page of the case. Twenty plus moves in five families, every one running on the case's own numbers. Send the word: Vera drafts six emails you edit and send from your own inbox, to the vendor account team (opening the negotiation, or putting your asks on the table), your CFO, procurement, your reseller, and your own team; the vendor facing drafts never reveal your percentile, your cohort, or where the numbers come from. Every draft is written against what is known about how that particular publisher negotiates, where it concedes, and where its fiscal year sits, so an Oracle email and a Salesforce email do not read the same. Put it in front of people: copy a chat ready summary or the one line verdict, mint a 30 day share link that recomputes as the market moves, or copy a prefilled page link for a workspace colleague. Turn it into paper: generate the three negotiation toolkit briefs as executive brief PDFs, or download the one page position snapshot. A brief is written from scratch against your position and takes about three minutes, so the move shows a progress meter with the seconds elapsed and the usual duration while it works; the estimate tightens against your own past runs, and you can keep reading the case while it finishes. Keep it working: save the position as a named scenario, with or without market alerts, set the renewal date, or jump back to the levers. Go deeper: Ask Vera with the case loaded as the question, compare vendors side by side, open a full negotiation workup, or book an analyst review with the agenda prefilled.
- The email desk — what opens when you pick one of the six drafts. Three controls sit around the draft. The angle is a row of buttons across the top: the reason the email is making its case. The vendor facing drafts offer competitive pressure (the default, which names an alternative you could credibly move to, says the price is above market for a customer your size, and asks for a competitive offer before you go further), budget pressure (the line is capped and today's number does not fit, no alternative named and no target stated), and market price (you know what this goes for at your size and the next term has to reflect it). The internal drafts have their own three: your CFO email can ask for the decision, lead with the money, or lead with the risk of renewing untouched; procurement can take the frame, the money, or the timing; your team note can route contact through you, be a light heads up, or ask for the usage evidence. Pressing an angle rewrites the whole email around that premise. Ask Vera for a rewrite is the field under the draft: say what to change in your own words ("shorter and firmer", "name our March renewal", "drop the last paragraph") and she rewrites what is on screen, so edits you already made by hand survive; leave it empty for a fresh take on the same angle. The alternative named in a competitive draft is researched rather than assumed, from your own alternatives analysis when you have one and a live search when you do not, and when nothing can be verified the email refers to your alternatives in general terms rather than naming a company. Nothing sends from here; you copy it or open it in your own email app.
- The conversation log — under every vendor facing draft: save this email and it becomes the opening move on a negotiation track for that vendor, which is where their reply will land. If a track is already open the panel says how many messages are on it and the draft files onto the same thread rather than starting a second one. Closing the window with an unsaved draft asks once before it lets the ask go. When they answer, paste their reply into the counter desk (The vendor replied? Paste it, get your response): Vera reads the message against your position *and* against everything already on the log, so a number they are quietly repeating or a concession they are walking back is visible, then tells you what the account team is doing, what to hold, and drafts the response, which never reveals your percentile, your cohort, or where the numbers come from. Save it to the log keeps the whole round: their message, your response, and her read of it. The conversation log move opens the tracks themselves. If you would rather work the thread from your own inbox, the desk links to the ghost writer, where you forward vendor mail to a private agent address instead of pasting.
- Where this lands — a percentile band pinned under the inputs showing the middle 50% of your peer set with your deal marked, and the verdict pill (favorable, mid, or above market).
- The brief — a placed deal reads as a six section decision brief. 01 The verdict: the document masthead (the judgment sentence, the stat band, and the market field with your deal as the gold dot), then the recommendation in full, written from the same targets and clock every instrument runs on: what to open at, what to settle at, the floor, the notice deadline, and the expected outcome in dollars. 02 Your market, your numbers: the region and industry selects on the left re-cohort every figure for real, and on discount benchmarks a list-value dial lets you test how every discount figure reads if the list anchor moves, your net spend staying fixed, with your standing recomputed live; below it, every comparable deal plotted by deal size. That chart reveals itself the first time it scrolls into view: the comparable deals light up one by one, a gold trend line sweeps through the field, and your dot lands with a gold pulse; after that, every change renders instantly. 03 The deal snapshot: your position against the benchmark supported one, dimension by dimension. 04 The ask: the three targets (defensible floor, strong close, stretch anchor), each priced, with the savings bridge printing what you pay today against the target and the open. 05 Timing and the plan: the engagement roadmap, one card that opens with the four numbers on the clock (the vendor's quarter close, the open window, your notice deadline, and the renewal, each with its days remaining), then three phase lanes (prepare, engage, paper it) on a month ruled time axis with every deadline dropped through the lanes, and closes with the three moves in the same phase colors, each composed from your own figures. Add your renewal date on the card and the notice deadline joins the roadmap. 06 What next: Ask Vera on one side, and the Take it forward console on the other, the page's one dark panel, with the recommended next step first and every further path numbered beneath it. Every instrument carries a short "what this is, how to read it" note, and hovering any figure offers an enlarged view with the same reading.
- The brief and the working file — the toggle beside the verdict chapter. The brief (the default) is the ninety second read above. The working file adds every remaining instrument at the end of the page: the peer comparison suite, the placement curve, the deal played forward, region and signing-year medians, the deal-structure levers, the should-cost waterfall, your leverage scorecard, the pushback counters, and the scenario theatre where you drag seats, term, and price and the totals reflow. The working file only adds; nothing in the brief changes.
- Saved scenarios — save a position to track it over time, feed the portfolio view, and get alerted when that vendor's market moves.
- Action bar — download the placement as a PDF, or create a share link (valid 30 days, optionally kept live so it recomputes against current data each time it is opened).
How to use it
- Find your vendor from the hub cards, the search box, or the Ctrl/⌘ K palette, and open its page.
- Enter your deal on the left. The verdict, targets, and play light up as soon as your deal is placed against a deep enough cohort.
- Read the play and take the target and counters into the negotiation. Save the scenario or share the result with your team.
Tips
- When too few comparable deals match your position to rank it honestly, the page says so instead of showing a noisy percentile. Widen the region to all regions, or check the deal size.
- Amounts entered in another currency are converted to USD at a fixed, disclosed rate before the placement math.
- For vendors whose discount scales with deal size, such as Oracle cloud, your deal is ranked inside its own value tier, so a small deal is not judged against whale discounts and a large deal is held to the deeper discount its size should command.
- An instant check is a fast read you run yourself. For a full, hand-verified analysis of a specific quote or contract, upload it for analyst benchmarking; the vendor page links straight into the upload wizard with your vendor and deal value prefilled.
Related: Instant benchmarks · Proposals · Portfolio benchmark
Next: Chapter 03 · Tooling & playbooks
Was this page helpful?
Thank you. Your note goes straight to the team that writes this manual.