Documentation

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Benchmark My Service

Watch the Benchmark My Service training video

The Benchmark My Service tool in SP-Bench is a powerful and fast way of making a like-for-like comparison of one of your services to services with similar features in your Authority and other Authorities like yours.

The training video on the right will take you through all you need to know to begin using the Benchmark My Service Report - it is the best place to begin learning about SP-Bench.

Follow these steps to generate the report:

  1. Log in to SP-Bench.
  2. Navigate to the homepage if you are not there already (click on "Home" in the menu bar).
  3. Choose one of the "Benchmark My Service" reports to begin with.
  4. Select one of your services from the list on the right hand side of the page.
  5. Click "Go" and SP-Bench will begin searching for services similar to the one you selected. Once a set of appropriate comparison services have been found, the benchmarking report will be displayed.

Now you have the report, keep in mind the following:

  • Initially, the chart shows regional values, you can click the "+" icons in the x-axis to expand these into LA values and then Service values.
  • The service you selected is highlighted in green to make it stand out from the comparison services and the exact value for the service is shown below each chart for quick reference.
  • Hovering your mouse cursor over any of the bars or x-axis labels will reveal more information about the values and services displayed, including the number of data items that make up the value you are viewing, e.g. the value is an average of 5 services.
  • The filters that SP-Bench automatically generated to select this group of services can be found (as with the other reports) in the filters area of the report. The filters can be modified as you wish to alter the services displayed in the report.
  • You can also switch between cost, performance, quality and outcomes reports using the report selector area on the left. Switching reports will not change the filters you have applied.

Layout

Benchmark Report layout
  1. Service selector - Here you can select any one of your services, by name, to benchmark against the others in SP-Bench. Once you click "Go" the service will be analysed and the reports displayed below with that service highlighted in green (once you drill down to the service level).
  2. Report selector - This list lets you quickly switch between the reports available, while keeping the filters you have selected.
  3. Chart selector - This list of checkboxes allows you to choose which charts are displayed on the dashboard. Tick the ones you want and click "Apply your selection" above to refresh the report with the charts you chose.
  4. Filters - Here you can quickly see the filters SP-Bench has generated based on your Service. If you want to change them, just click on one of the fields in the filter area to drop down a list that will let you tick what you want.
  5. Toolbars - The toolbar for each chart allows you to save or copy the chart, change the layout, and more. Hover your mouse cursor over the icons to see what they do:
    1. Save entire chart image - Allows you to save an image of the chart to your computer.
    2. Properties - Allows you to modify the chart layout including the title, legend and data labels.
    3. Export to Excel - Allows you to save a copy of the data grid as an Excel file to your computer.
  6. Chart/Grid tabs - The "Chart" tab displays the chart and the "Grid" tab displays the data on which the chart is based.
  7. Chart areas - The dashboard format shows several smaller charts at once to give you an overview of how your service compares across several measures. Each chart is also interactive, hover over a column to view more details about what it displays, including its exact value and the number of data items behind it.
  8. X-axes - The labels on the x-axis of each chart will let you dig down into the data by expanding a region into its component Authorities and expanding Authorities into their Services, just click the + and - icons to expand or collapse an element. You can also hover over the label of one of your services to see its full name - note that this will only work for your services, not ones from another Authority.
  9. Total item count - This is the current number of items (services) that match the filters and that are included in this chart.
  10. Selected service's value - This is the value of your selected service in this chart, e.g. £29.54 per support hour.

How does SP-Bench select the services to compare?

To make the best choice of services to compare to your selection, SP-Bench looks at the following properties of the service you chose:

  • Service type
  • Primary client group
  • Accommodation type
  • Support duration
  • Support provision
  • Household units available
  • Number of staff
  • Local Authority:
    • Type
    • Area classification (group)
    • Nearest neighbours

SP-Bench will first look for services that match exactly with those properties of the service you selected. If it doesn't find enough matches to produce a sensible set of results, it will remove some of the filters to include a wider range of services to give you a better comparison group.

Using the report

Take a look at the Using the Reports section for more details of how you can:

  • Filter to show the services you are most interested in.
  • Drill into the data to see values at the regional, LA and service levels.
  • Switch between reports.
  • Choose which measures to display.
  • And more...

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