IT Spend Benchmark vs Peers
Hand your CFO conversations spend deltas they can take to the board — not vendor talking points.
Your account spends half the IT-per-revenue-dollar that every peer does
| Company | IT / $B Rev | vs. Target |
|---|---|---|
| 🎯 Your Account | $44.97M | — |
| Peer A (Sony) | $81.30M | +81% |
| Peer B (Dell) | $74.00M | +65% |
| Peer C (Broadcom) | $114.24M | +154% |
| Cohort Median | $90.29M | +101% |
Overview
Your sellers need to walk into a CFO conversation with specific spend deltas, not vendor-market talk. This workflow benchmarks the prospect's HG company_spend across 12 IT categories against a 5-peer cohort, computes % delta vs cohort median, and normalizes per $B revenue (the comparison CFOs actually trust). Surfaces the top 3 board-ready findings — under-investing in security, over-investing in legacy infra, cloud-spend trajectory below peers.
Use cases
CFO-level conversations your AEs can lead
Your sellers usually pitch to IT buyers — but the budget owner is the CFO. This workflow gives the AE a normalized-per-$B-revenue spend signature comparing the prospect to 5 named peers across 12 HG company_spend categories. The opener becomes 'your IT spend looks like a company 2 years behind your peer set' — the language a CFO acts on, not a buyer-defended IT line item.
Renewal prep that sees budget headroom before the objection
When a customer renews, your CSMs need to know whether the budget exists for an upgrade. This brief surfaces HG company_spend in the categories your platform addresses, ranks them vs cohort median, and flags where the customer is under-invested by ≥30%. The save conversation starts with 'you have headroom in this category right now' instead of waiting for the budget objection.
View workflow prompt
# IT Spend Benchmark vs Peers
## Parameters
- `{{domain}}` *(required)* — Target company domain HG Insights uses for lookup. Example: `siemens.com`
- `{{peer_count}}` *(optional)* — How many peers in the cohort. Example: `5`
## Purpose
You are an AE building a CFO-grade spend narrative for {{domain}}. The output benchmarks the target's IT spend against a peer cohort with cohort medians, % deltas, and cloud-spend trajectory — surfacing the top 3 findings a CFO would actually take to the board. Cite every figure with its data window.
## Process
1. **Cohort definition** — call `company_firmographic` for {{domain}}. Use `search_companies` (identity only: `companyId`, `companyName`, `domain`) to find candidate peers in the same industry/geography, then call `company_firmographic` on each candidate (pass its `companyId` as `hg_id`, or its `domain`) to get revenue. Keep {{peer_count}} (default 5) within the ±25% revenue band and matched-scale global footprint — you need each peer's revenue for the per-$B normalization in step 4.
2. **Per-category benchmark** — call `company_spend` on target + each peer. Compute cohort median (excluding target) for the top 12 IT categories. For each, calculate `(target $ - cohort median $) / cohort median $ × 100%`.
3. **Cloud-spend trajectory** — call `company_cloud_spend`. Compare AWS / Azure / GCP spend growth rate at the target vs the cohort. Note multi-cloud vs single-cloud posture.
4. **Normalize** — also surface IT spend per $B revenue (cohort median + each member). This is what CFOs actually compare; raw dollars don't translate across scales.
5. **Top 3 findings** — pick the 3 deltas a CFO would surface in a board update. Heuristic: largest % deltas where the absolute dollar gap is also material (≥$50M), AND a story attached (under-investing in security with rising attack surface; over-investing in cloud during a public cost-discipline initiative).
## Output Format
Markdown with these sections in order:
- `# 💰 {{domain}} — IT Spend Benchmark vs Peers` (header + data window)
- `## Cohort & Methodology` (table of {{peer_count}} peers + selection rationale)
- `## Spend Deltas` (table: Category | Target $ | Cohort Median $ | % Delta | Direction)
- `## Cloud-Spend Trajectory` (AWS/Azure/GCP comparison + multi-cloud note)
- `## Normalized: IT Spend per $B Revenue` (table)
- `## Top 3 Board-Ready Findings` (each: the delta, the story, the implication)
Every figure tags its data window (e.g. "FY2024 per HG `company_spend`, refreshed 2026-04-20").
## Quality Checklist
- Cohort median is calculated excluding the target (not skewed by it)
- Top 3 findings each combine a % delta + an absolute-dollar gap + a story (not raw numbers alone)
- Cloud-spend section explicitly names cloud(s) by vendor (AWS/Azure/GCP) — not "the cloud"
- Per-$B-revenue normalization shown separately from raw dollars
- No fabricated peer numbers — if a peer is missing spend data, the row says "N/A" with the source line