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Analyze vendor pricing of relevant organizations

Compare fee-for-service expenses, understand vendor use trends, and view how much specific organizations spend on vendors

In this help article...

Understanding how much relevant organizations spend procuring products and services gives you insights that are helpful when creating winning proposals. Additionally, comparing fee-for-service expenses of peer organizations helps you understand how your clients' service expenditures match up against similar organizations. That's why Cause IQ has tools and features to help you view and compare vendor fees for organizations, including changes over time. Cause IQ customers use:

  • The benchmark tool to compare fee-for-service expenses for up to 250 peer organizations at once;
  • The analyze tool to view trends in vendor fees and to see which vendors organizations use most; and
  • The table tool to sort and view organizations by fee-for-service expenses.

Compare vendor fees to peers with the benchmark tool

Cause IQ's benchmark tool is used to generate custom reports that compare fee-for-service fields for up to 500 organizations at once. These reports help Cause IQ customers run pricing analysis to support proposal development and client services, by comparing client vendor fees to their peers. Here are the general steps:

  • Step 1

    Choose the organizations you want to benchmark

    Either create a new search for a desired search segment, load a saved search, or open a list (from scratch or from an uploaded CSV file) in the search interface.

    In order to use the benchmark tool, keep in mind that your search segment or list must contain 500 or fewer organizations.

  • Step 2

    Access Cause IQ's benchmark tool

    Select the "Benchmark" tab from the search interface to launch the benchmark tool.

  • Step 3

    Choose your benchmark type

    Since you're looking to compare fee-for-service expenses for organizations, choose "Organization details" as your benchmark type.

  • Step 4

    Select your reference organization (optional)

    In the "Benchmark type" step, you have the option to include a baseline reference organization in your custom report. You can pick a reference from the organizations you're benchmarking, or search for one by:

    • Name
    • EIN
    • Metro area
    • State
    • Revenue range

    If you're looking to compare fee-for-service expenses for a prospective client that you're creating a proposal for or a current client to its peers, this is where you select the appropriate organization as the reference.

  • Step 5

    Select the fee-for-service expenses you want to benchmark

    The "Fields and analysis" step is where you choose the fee-for-service expenses that you want to compare the organizations by.

  • Step 6

    Generate your custom report

    Select "Next: Generate report," and Cause IQ will start creating your custom benchmark report.

  • Step 7

    Download the benchmarked information

    You can package your benchmarked information in an Excel file by clicking "Download to Excel" on the right of the screen. This file lets you share your benchmark report with colleagues and view how the selected fee-for-service expenses have changed over the years.

Cause IQ's analyze tool automatically summarizes the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of organizations. Many Cause IQ customers add fee-for-service expenditure fields and frequently used vendors to the analyze tool so they can view trends on how much organizations spend on services and which firms they use most.

To use the analyze tool, create a search to segment relevant organizations or open a peer list in the search interface. Click on the "Analyze" tab in the search interface to access the analyze tool.

The screenshot below shows how the analyze tool summarizes fee-for-service fields and vendor fields. The bar graph helps you understand how much the relevant organizations spend in a specific service industry, and the list shows you which firms the organizations use most.

Analyze fee-for-service fields and change your selected fields

Sort and view organizations by vendor fees paid

Cause IQ customers use the table tool to quickly see the most recent fee-for-service expenses for organizations in their target market and organizations they've added to a peer list (manually or from an uploaded CSV). With the table tool, you can compare how much organizations spend in specific service industries and easily identify which organizations spend the most by sorting them by column header.

To use the table tool, click on the "Table" tab from the search interface and choose the fee-for-service fields you want to add as column headers. To sort the organizations, click on the appropriate column header, and Cause IQ will show which organizations spend the most money in the selected service industry. Here's a look at where to access the table tool, how to change the columns, and how to sort organizations by specific fee-for-service expenses:

In addition to selecting fee-for-service expenses as column headers, many Cause IQ customers add vendor fields (e.g., Tax preparer firm, IT products used) to the table tool. This helps them understand which companies relevant organizations use.

View how much a specific organization spends on products and services

The vendors tab, on Cause IQ's organization profile pages, lets you view all the identified service providers the given organization uses. The information available within the "Vendors" tab includes the:

  • Vendor name
  • Service the vendor provides the organization
  • Amount the organization paid the vendor (if available)
  • The year(s) the organization was using the vendor
  • Date of the most recent piece of data that confirmed the organization using the vendor

Here's a look at the vendors tab on an organization's profile and the information that's available to view.

Vendor's tab on an organization's profile