Benchmarks are seductive, particularly for business leaders. It is simple to see why:
- Commercially available benchmark reports cover a wide variety of IT functions across companies of all sizes and industries.
- Benchmarks are based on historical, empirical data and provide an external perspective on reasonable levels of spending and performance.
- Benchmarks appear to be objective and are presumed to be representative of like companies.
- Gathering performance data for benchmark comparison is relatively quick and easy.
For IT leaders, benchmarks can be distracting, or worse, result in actions that destroy business value.
