What is a Peer Group?
A Peer Group is a customized list of companies used for targeted benchmark analysis. Once created, A Peer Group can be used in the Market Queries data generator tool.
How do I create a Peer Group?
1. Go to the Peer Groups Library
After logging onto the Radford Network, open the Peer Group library by clicking on “Peer Groups” tab.
2. Create Company List by Country
Click on the “Create Peer Group” button. From here, you can select one or multiple countries.
*Tip: If you are looking to create a global Peer Group, you may want to break your Peer Group into regions (APAC, EMEA, NA) as opposed to validating all countries at once. This method is also effective if you are going to be creating more than one Peer Group per country.
3. Filter to Find Peers
You can filter to narrow your company results by Industry, Revenue Range, Headcount Range, and/or Ownership Type. Click “Refine” to apply filters.
You can also search by company name
Alternately, you can type in company names into the company search field and add them individually. Once added, companies remain in the “My Selections” column, unless you decide to remove them by clicking on the red “X” or the “Reset” button.
4. Proceed to Review Jobs
Peer Groups require a minimum of 10 parent companies to validate. Once you have selected the 10 or more companies you would like to validate, proceed to the next step of validation by clicking “Review Jobs”.
5. Review Country, Companies and Jobs
Review the companies and jobs available by country. If the selections did not pass the first round of validations the red “select” button will not be available. Click “Select” for the countries you want to include.
Once you have validated a Peer Group for a country, it cannot be modified. If you do not use the Peer Group in a Market Query, you can delete it.
6. Review in Peer Group Library
The countries selected will now go through final validation process. In the Peer Group Library, Peer Groups that have validated will have a green check mark. Peer Groups that fail validation will have a red exclamation point. Click on “see more” to review why the Peer Group failed. Common reasons for failure are:
- The Peer Group is too similar to an existing Peer Group
- The Peer group duplicates a cut already available in Market Queries
You can track the history usage of your validated Peer Groups in this area.
7. Build Peer Group Reports in Market Queries
You can now proceed with using your Peer Group in a Market Query. Go to Data/Market Queries and choose the “Peer Group Breakout” option. Select a country to see the Peer Groups you have available for that country.
Best Practices and Helpful Information
- While you cannot edit a Peer Group once validated / used in Market Queries, you can use an existing Peer Group as a starting template for a new one. Select “duplicate,” and make sure to include 5 or more different companies from the original to have a better change of successfully passing validations.
- Peer Groups can be deleted unless they have been used in a Market Query.
- There is a character limit of 30 for Peer Group names, so please plan your naming convention accordingly.
- Peer reports are now delivered in one worksheet in the same format as our standard output. This will help you significantly reduce post processing time.
- Before creating a Peer Group, it is highly recommended to review and select the Peers you would like to include from the Participant List which is available from the Data Tab. You can filter on Industry Code, check data availability by country, and search other demographic details.
- We have implemented additional data protection rules for peer group validation to supplement our existing data privacy framework.
- A minimum of ten companies are required to create a peer group.
- A new peer group must have at least 5 different companies compared to all other active peer groups created by users at the same client company.
- Once a Peer Group is successfully created and used in a Market Query, it can no longer be deleted until the following survey year.
- To refresh the data within a Peer Group, it must be re-submitted for validation checks to ensure the peer group continues to comply with all data privacy rules.
The Peer Group training video is accessible here.
A comprehensive FAQ is available on the Radford Knowledgebase which is accessible from every page of the Network and via this link.
You can download this guide as a PDF from this article below.