Distance from benchmark
Every operating number is placed inside the range for businesses like yours. The distance from a typical peer, times what the number is worth, decides what the plan works on first.
What a benchmark is here
A benchmark is the range a number usually falls in for businesses like yours. The middle half of similar businesses sits inside the band; the median is the typical one. Your position says how far you sit from a typical peer, and in which direction.
Position inside the industry band: 25 is the lower quartile, 50 the median, 75 the upper quartile.
How to read it. Longer bars are stronger. Green is already ahead of the median, orange is behind it. Where lower is better, such as churn, the position is flipped so right always means stronger.
The right peers
Published statistics for an industry code often average businesses that have nothing in common. The sample’s code holds hosted phone companies and satellite ground stations; averaging them describes neither. MonoBridge measures the sample only against hosted-voice providers that own their platform.
A platform owner and a white-label reseller earn very different margins: about 68% and 50% respectively. The blended median of 62% describes neither, so the bands used here are the own-platform ones.
| Benchmark | The sample | Band (P25 / P50 / P75) | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service gross margin | 62% | 58 / 68 / 76 | constructed |
| Overhead | 33% | 24 / 32 / 42 | constructed |
| Research and development, % of revenue | 3.5% | 8 / 12 / 16 | constructed |
| Capital spending | 1.5% | 0.5 / 1.5 / 3.5 | observed |
| Cost to acquire a new seat | $250 | 200 / 400 / 800 | constructed |
| Days sales outstanding | 25 | 12 / 22 / 35 | observed |
| Residuals paid to channel | 5% | 5 / 12 / 18 | observed |
| Largest-customer share | 7.9% | 2 / 5 / 12 | observed |
Observed bands come straight from the industry research’s sources; constructed bands are scaled or derived, and read as statistics but are the best available scaffolding. Each band carries its grade.
Protect and push
Distance alone doesn’t decide what to work on. A weak number that barely moves the value can wait. The plan ranks each input by how far it sits from the benchmark and how much it moves the value, which sorts every input into four groups.
- Levers to pushWeak against the industry and worth a lot. These are where the plan looks first.below 50, large swing
- Strengths to protectAlready better than the median and worth a lot. Losing one costs real value.above 50, large swing
- Minor, and weakBelow the median but small in dollars. Fixed when convenient.
- Minor, and strongFine as they are.
The largest single swing in the sample is owner dependence, at $485k: the business runs the same without the owner today, and that is a strength to protect.
- Benchmarks don’t move the value. The medians the engine prices with are a table written into the valuation policy and stamped with its version. A band that moves in new research changes your position and the back-test, but can’t move your value without a recorded policy change
- Swing. Each input moved across its plausible range (±5% for an owner figure, ±15% for an inference, the full band for a median) and the whole model re-run
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