Comparisons: how side-by-side and peer comparison works

What Comparisons is

Comparisons is not a page on the platform. It is a capability that lives inside the sections where a comparison actually matters: Vendors, Jobs, and Carriers (Carriers live under the Clients section, as a client type alongside TPAs, retail, and commercial clients). If you type iq.verinode.ai/comparisons into the address bar, or follow an old link to it, you land on /comparisons, which immediately redirects you to Vendors. There is no standalone Comparisons item in the sidebar. That is deliberate: a comparison only means something in the context of the entity you are looking at, so Verinode puts the comparison tools next to the data instead of in a separate destination you have to remember to visit.

There are two distinct comparison modes, and they answer two different questions:

• Side-by-side entities. "Which of these vendors should I keep?" You pick two to four things you already have (or catalog alternatives you don't yet have) and see their facts lined up in columns. This is entity vs. entity, inside your own book.
• Vs. peers. "Is my number normal?" You pick a single entity (a job, a vendor relationship, a carrier) and see how its metrics stack up against a cohort of other operators. This is your number vs. everyone else's.

Both live inside the same detail views. Neither requires you to leave the section you are already in.

Side-by-side entities: the Compare modal

Where to find it

Open Vendors from the sidebar (/vendors). In the vendor list, cards and table rows each carry a small checkbox. Select up to four vendors, active relationships and catalog alternatives both count, and a compare pill appears pinned near the bottom of the page, reading Compare N, with a Clear button beside it. Click Compare N to open the modal. You can also open it directly from inside a single vendor's detail view; the current vendor is pre-loaded as the first column.

The same modal opens for Jobs, and Franchise HQ has its own version scoped to network vendors, but the mechanics below describe the Vendors version, which is the reference implementation.

What each column shows

The modal opens with the eyebrow Vendors and the title Compare. Once you have at least one vendor selected, a small counter appears in the header: N of 4, so you always know how much room is left.

Each vendor gets its own column. The column header shows:

• The vendor's logo, large and centered.
• A small eyebrow label above the name: Your stack for a vendor you already have an active relationship with, or Alternative for a catalog vendor you don't currently use. "Your stack" columns get a faint copper border and tint so they read as yours at a glance.
• The vendor's name.
• A small × in the top corner to remove that column from the comparison.

Below the header row, one metric row runs the full width of the grid, label on the left, one value per column to the right. The metrics, in order, are:

• Category. The vendor's category, humanized (for example "Restoration Equipment," not a raw category key). Catalog alternatives don't carry a category value in this view and show a dash.
• Verinode Score. For a vendor in your stack, this is the Verinode Score computed for that specific relationship, on a 1.0 to 10.0 scale, with its label (Strong, Solid, Mixed, Weak) shown beside it in small text. For a catalog alternative, the same row shows the vendor's research score, the same scale, the same kind of label, sourced from Verinode's independent vendor research rather than from your own relationship history. Either way the row reads the same way: a number, then a word.
• Monthly cost. For a vendor in your stack, this is what you are actually paying, drawn from your relationship record. For a catalog alternative, there is no billing record to read, so this shows the median monthly cost that other operators report paying for that vendor. It's a real comparison point, just sourced differently depending on the column, so read it as "what you pay" in your own columns and "what peers typically pay" in Alternative columns. A dash means no cost is on file.
• Cost / seat. Monthly cost divided by seat count, shown only when both a cost and a seat count are on file. Useful for comparing tools priced per user against ones priced flat.
• My rating. Your own 1 to 5 satisfaction rating for that vendor relationship. Only available for vendors in your stack; catalog alternatives show a dash because you haven't rated something you don't use.
• Team rating. The average satisfaction rating across everyone on your team who has rated that vendor, out of 5, rounded to one decimal. This is your own team's consensus, not a cross-operator peer number, so a strong Team rating means your people like the tool, not that the whole industry does. Catalog alternatives show a dash.
• Renewal. The contract renewal date for vendors in your stack, formatted like "Mar 14, '26." Catalog alternatives show a dash, since there's no contract to renew.
• Switchability. A humanized label describing how easy that vendor is to switch away from (drawn from your relationship record: things like data lock-in, contract terms, integration depth). Catalog alternatives show a dash.

Any value that isn't available shows a plain dash, never a zero or a blank cell that looks broken.

How to use it

1. 1From the Vendors list, check the box on each vendor you want to compare (up to four). Mix vendors from your own stack with catalog alternatives if you're weighing a switch.
2. 2Click the Compare N pill that appears at the bottom of the screen.
3. 3Read down each metric row to see how the columns differ. Cost, score, and ratings are the fastest read; renewal and switchability matter most when you're deciding whether now is even a good time to move.
4. 4To add another vendor once the modal is open, expand + Add another vendor to compare below the grid and pick from "From your stack" or "Catalog alternatives."
5. 5To drop a vendor from the comparison, click the × in the top corner of its column.
6. 6If you want Verinode Advisory to go source real quotes instead of just comparing what's already on file, use the callout at the bottom of the modal (see below).

Getting quotes instead of just comparing

Below the grid, a callout reads "Source new vendors for me," with the body: "Hand the comparison to Verinode Advisory. We'll shortlist three to five vendors against your stack profile, run the outreach, and bring quotes back with peer-grounded negotiation notes." The button reads Get quotes via Advisory →. Clicking it opens an in-app request, pre-filled with the names of the vendors currently in your comparison, that goes straight to the Advisory team's queue. You stay inside the product; nothing routes you out to a public site or a separate sign-up.

Empty states

If you open the Compare modal with nothing selected yet, you get a picker instead of an empty grid:

• From your stack lists your active vendor relationships as tappable pills (logo plus name), up to 12 at a time.
• Catalog alternatives lists vendors in the category you don't currently use, same pill style, up to 12 at a time.
• If both lists are empty, the picker reads: "Nothing available to compare yet."

Tapping a pill adds that vendor as a column and the grid replaces the picker. Once you've picked at least one vendor, the same picker reappears (collapsed, behind "+ Add another vendor to compare") so you can keep adding up to the four-column cap.

Vs. peers: the benchmark panel

Where to find it

Every Job, Vendor, and Carrier detail view opens with a How You Compare panel near the top, above the section's own detail tabs. This is the "vs Peers" mode: instead of comparing two of your own entities, it compares the one entity you're looking at against a cohort of other operators.

What the header shows

The panel title reads How You Compare, then a headline like vs National Peers (Jobs, Clients, Carriers) or vs National Operators (Vendors), depending on which noun the section uses for its cohort. Next to that headline, when a peer count is available, you'll see a small count like "· 42 operators," so you have a feel for how much cohort weight is behind the numbers you're seeing. When the cohort is too thin to show a count yet, that piece is simply omitted rather than showing a placeholder.

Beside the headline sits a scope switcher: pills for National, your state (once you've set one in Settings → Profile), and your group (once you've joined a franchise system or association like RIA or KnowHow). Switching scopes re-fetches the comparison at that scope. A scope pill you haven't unlocked yet is shown disabled rather than hidden, with a hover tooltip explaining what unlocks it, for example "Set your state in Settings → Profile to compare against operators in your region," or "Join a franchise system or association (RIA, KnowHow, etc.) to compare against your peers." While a scope switch is loading, the whole switcher disables so you can't queue up several requests at once.

What each metric row shows

Below the header, one row per metric that you actually have a value for (a metric with nothing on your side simply doesn't render a row: there's no "missing data" ghost row). Each row shows:

• The metric label in small caps on the left (for example "Days to Pay," "Margin %," "Approval Rate").
• Your value, bold, on the right.
• A delta next to your value, colored green when it's moving the right direction for that metric and Ember Red when it isn't (a metric like Days to Pay is better lower; a metric like Margin % is better higher, and each row knows which way is which). The delta is captioned vs Peer when it's measured against the cohort, or vs Industry when there wasn't enough peer data and it fell back to a research benchmark instead.
• A thin horizontal bar beneath the numbers: a filled bar showing where your value sits, and a small tick mark showing where the peer (or industry) reference sits, so you can see the gap at a glance, not just read it as a number.
• A footer line naming the reference source verbatim and its value, for example "IICRC S500: 35d" on a job metric, or "Verinode Score: 8.7" on a vendor. Jobs and safety metrics cite research standards (IICRC S500, RIA figures, OSHA national averages); vendor and equipment rows cite the Verinode Score itself, since for those entities the Verinode Score is the authoritative reference value.

If a metric only has a research/industry reference and no peer figure at the current scope, the row falls back to showing that research line only, still with the bar and the footer, just without a peer figure. Nothing renders on a metric row until your own value is present.

The empty state

If every metric row on the current scope has no peer figure at all (only research fallbacks, or nothing), a line appears under the rows: "Not enough peers in this scope yet. Switch scopes above or check back as more operators contribute. Industry research values are shown as a fallback." Try switching to National first; it's the widest cohort and the most likely to have enough contributing operators to show a real peer figure.

Carriers, specifically

Carrier and TPA comparisons live inside a client record's detail view (client type Carrier or TPA), alongside a multi-criteria rating widget scoped to that carrier and, where relevant, an adjuster-level view. The same "How You Compare" mechanics apply: your relationship's own figures (days to pay, for example) against the peer cohort at your chosen scope, with the same fallback to industry reference figures when peer data is thin. Every time you contribute a rating or a scorecard, you'll also see a short data-dividend note confirming what cohort your contribution just joined or grew, because every contribution to the intelligence layer is supposed to come back to you as a sharper comparison, not disappear into a one-way feed. Verinode never sells this data, yours or the aggregate, to carriers.

Why the numbers differ between the two modes

It's worth being explicit about this, because the two modes can look similar and answer different questions:

• The Compare modal's "Monthly cost" and "Verinode Score" for a vendor in your stack come from your own relationship: what you actually pay, and the score computed against your history with that vendor.
• The Compare modal's figures for a catalog alternative are peer-sourced by necessity (median monthly cost across other operators, a research score), because you have no relationship history with a vendor you don't use yet.
• The How You Compare panel is always peer-sourced on the comparison side: it exists specifically to put your number next to everyone else's, at whichever scope you pick.

If a number in the Compare modal and a number in the How You Compare panel for the same vendor look different, that's usually why: one is drawn from what you're actually paying, the other is drawn from a wider cohort.

Best-practice example

You're deciding whether to renew a drying-equipment vendor. Open its detail view first and check How You Compare at National scope: your Days to Pay and Monthly cost sit right where the peer bar shows most operators, so the relationship itself isn't the problem. Then open Vendors and select that vendor plus two catalog alternatives in the same category for a side-by-side. The Compare modal shows your renewal date is six weeks out, your Verinode Score for the current vendor is Solid, and one alternative's research score is meaningfully stronger at a lower peer-median monthly cost. That's a real decision worth having, not a hunch: use Get quotes via Advisory to have Advisory bring back real numbers on the stronger alternative before your renewal date hits.

Data sources

Related reading: Benchmarks overview, Reading a benchmark, How benchmarks work, Clients and carriers, The decision workspace, Understanding your margin.