The salespeople say it's lost on price. Management says the quality is better anyway. Marketing wrote a story three years ago about service and reliability, and nobody has since asked whether the customer sees that story the same way. Everyone in the building feels the difference with the competitor. Nobody has ever laid it next to a source.
That is where this page begins: not with the feeling, but with what is on the table after the benchmark to test that feeling.
The result is not a presentation and not a summary of opinions. It is a set with four components, all built from the same evidence matrix:
On top of that come two things that pull the picture toward a decision: a white-space analysis that shows which dimensions nobody in the peer group occupies well, and a claim test that indicates per claim in your own story whether there is evidence for it or not. How it works describes the steps that lead there; this page describes what is available once those steps have been completed.
Every score in the matrix can be traced to a source, a date and a name. This happens through four channels that correct each other:
What has no source gets no fact status. It appears in the matrix as opinion, recognizable as such, and does not count as evidence for a claim. That correction between sources — internal picture versus external evidence, your interpretation versus that of the competitor — is the core of why a score means something and is not just someone's impression.
The setup. Sector, a proposal for the dimensions from the library, the five-level scale calibrated with examples, and a peer group of three to seven players.
The sourcing round. Invitations to your own people and to customers or experts, desk research write-ups per competitor with mandatory source URL, and data import where possible.
The evidence matrix. Every cell: a score, sources, a date, a name. No source, no fact — that is the correction in action.
The report. The four views, the white-space analysis, the claim test and a priority overview with urgency. Precisely here the path splits toward what happens with it next, as outcomes explains.
Not a picture to frame. A gap on a dimension the customer doesn't weigh is not a problem — a small gap on the dimension the deal is decided on, is. The report points out which of the two it is; it does not simply lay everything side by side without distinction.
No claim without evidence. A score without a source remains an opinion in the matrix, never a fact that substantiates a claim. Anyone who wants to defend a claim must find the source for it — that is precisely what the matrix exists for.
No interviews conducted by the tool. Nobody is interviewed; the tool invites your people and adds up the answers. Anyone who does want expert interviews or the hardest peer scores carried out by someone else does so via a partner, after this report — with the tool as the record, or with the partner running the full benchmark in partner mode while the report remains yours.
With the report in hand, three outcomes are possible: continue yourself with the priority list and the worksheet to rewrite a claim into something defensible; a partner who adds the expert interviews or difficult scores while the matrix continues to be maintained; or a partner who runs the full benchmark, with the report still your property. Whichever route is chosen, more about the background of dimensions and scoring method can be found in the knowledge base.
A sharp benchmark makes clear where you win and lose — but that insight changes nothing as long as it is not translated into tasks, hours and systems. That translation is made by the work scan on ftetoai.com.