Union Street developed the Benchmarking Service in response to what it believes is a growing awareness within the channel of the importance of analysing data to identify emerging opportunities. The reporting utilises rolling average data collected over the previous twelve months.
The averages derived from the data and included in the reports are based on data submitted by comms provider (CP) clients that have subscribed to the service. Once a billing period is closed in the aBILLity billing platform, statistics will be submitted automatically to Union Street via a secure web service.
When a minimum of 50 CP clients have submitted their data, then anonymised statistics for the billing period they have contributed to will be made visible. Industry averages are recalculated daily as more resellers submit their monthly statistics. Union Street believes that once a minimum of 200 CP clients are included, the sample will be large enough to provide averages that are very close to the industry as a whole and therefore statistically valid.
To ensure that anomalous readings will not distort the reports, the Union Street team has taken steps to smooth the data featured in the Benchmarking Service by using the 95th percentile method when calculating the averages. By ignoring the top and bottom 5% of samples the overall average is closer to a realistic industry benchmark.
Commenting on the launch of the Benchmarking Service, Union Street’s Managing Director, Tony Cook, stated, “Analytics is driving business forward in all sorts of ways, so we are actively encouraging our partners to opt into the service which is offered free of charge to all participating companies. With over 450 communication providers using our aBILLity billing platform, our partner base represents a significant proportion of resellers operating in the UK.
“The consolidated data harvested will provide a strong industry benchmark average and a valuable indication of business performance for resellers against their peers. As the service gains traction we believe it will help Union Street’s clients to spot trends in sales of certain services early on, giving them a significant competitive advantage as they can then focus their sales and marketing activities in those areas ahead of competitors.”