Benchmarking Within The Sourcing Life Cycle

Forrester clients often tell Forrester that they have a strong demand for service price information and a high interest in comparing their existing business and IT services with the market. Many of these market price inquiries are done sporadically by different roles and departments. But Forrester increasingly sees sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals taking a systematic approach to defining processes, intervals, the level of details, and the type of services which should be benchmarked or compared with the market. Contrary to the beliefs of many of our clients, however, it is not always necessary to conduct expensive and comprehensive benchmarking exercises. Alternatives like market price indications or market price analyses are cheaper, though they do provide less (and sometimes insufficient) information.