Choosing who you compare against (National / State / Group)

What this control is

Every number Verinode shows you is more useful next to a peer number. A margin of 14% means something different if the operators around you are running 10% or 20%. But "peers" is not one fixed group. You might want to know how you stack up against the whole country, against operators in your own state, or against the specific franchise system or association you belong to.

The Peer Scope Switcher is the small pill control that lets you choose which of those groups you are being measured against, right where the comparison is shown. It looks like a row of rounded tabs, for example National · Texas · Restoration Alliance, with the active choice filled in copper and the others sitting quietly beside it. Verinode never picks a scope for you and hides the rest. You can always see every dimension that exists for that entity, even the ones you cannot use yet.

This article covers what the switcher is, where you will run into it, what each option means, why a dimension might be grayed out, and how the platform decides what to show you before you have touched it at all.

Where you will find it

The switcher does not live on its own page. There is no standalone "Comparisons" screen to visit, it is a control embedded directly inside the "How You Compare" panel that sits near the top of an entity's detail view, before the agent's recommendation and before the financial breakdown. That panel is the first thing your eye lands on when you open a job, a vendor, or another comparable entity, by design.

Where it shows up today:

• Jobs. Open any job from /jobs into its detail view. The panel compares your portfolio margin, days to pay, and supplement approval rate against peers, and offers National, your state, and your group (franchise system or association) as scopes.
• Vendors. Open a vendor from /vendors into its detail view. Same three scopes, applied to the vendor relationship's own metrics.
• Safety, Team, Recruiting, Compliance, Certifications. These sections also offer National and State.
• Equipment. Equipment fleet benchmarks are state-only today, because the underlying data does not yet support a wider cascade. Rather than show a National pill that would quietly return the same number as State, the switcher only offers State.
• Clients and Margin (adjuster) views. These currently compare only against National, because state- and group-scoped cohorts have not been wired for those metrics yet. You will see a single pill, not a disabled row.

Each entity type decides which dimensions make sense for it. The control itself does not care what the pills mean, it just renders whatever list the section hands it and reports back which one you clicked.

The scope options, one by one

• National. Every operator across the country who has contributed enough data on that metric. This is the widest, most stable comparison, and the one most sections default to.
• State. Operators in the same state as you. The pill label is your actual state (for example "Texas"), not the word "State", once Verinode knows it. Useful when local labor rates, weather patterns, or carrier mix make a national number feel too broad.
• Group. Your franchise system or industry association (for example a network like RIA or KnowHow, or your own multi-location group). The pill label is the group's real name once you belong to one. This is the tightest, most relevant comparison for many operators, because it is the group of businesses you actually think of as your competitive set.
• Entity-specific dimensions. Some entities compare on their own terms instead of national/state/group. Equipment compares by State only, because the fleet cohort is built from operators in the same state. The switcher is built to carry other dimensions too, for example a size band grouping mid-sized operators together, as more entity types wire up cohorts that make sense for them. When a section only exposes one meaningful axis, it shows one pill rather than padding the row with duplicates.

Why a pill is grayed out

An unavailable pill is never hidden, it is shown disabled with a hint you can read on hover. That is deliberate: you should know a dimension exists even before you can use it. The two hints you will see across Jobs, Vendors, and similar sections:

• On State: "Set your state in Settings → Profile to compare against operators in your region."
• On Group: "Join a franchise system or association (RIA, KnowHow, etc.) to compare against your peers."

A pill can also be enabled but come back empty if too few peers have contributed data at that scope yet. Verinode never publishes a peer number built from a handful of businesses, since a thin cohort can be worked backward to guess at somebody's real figures. Rather than expose specific counts, the platform simply waits until enough operators are in a cohort before it will show a peer value for it. If you flip to a scope that is not there yet, the panel tells you plainly:

"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."

In that case the panel still shows the industry research reference (for example an IICRC standard, an RIA benchmark, or the Verinode Score) where one exists, so you are never looking at a blank row, just a peer column with nothing in it yet.

If you have not turned on Contribute to peer benchmarks under Settings → Privacy, none of the scopes will show a peer value at all, at any pill. That toggle is what makes your anonymized data part of the cohorts other operators compare against, and it is the same reciprocity that unlocks peer numbers for you: contribute, and the comparisons open up. See how benchmarks work for how that exchange is built.

How the resolver picks a scope before you touch anything

Before you ever click a pill, Verinode has already made a comparison for you elsewhere on the platform, on your margin gauge, your benchmarks tiles, your scorecards. Behind those numbers is a cascade resolver: it tries your group first, then your state, then falls back to National, and shows you the tightest cohort that clears the minimum size needed to publish a number safely. If your group has enough contributing peers, you see your group's number by default, without asking. If not, it steps out to state, and if that is also too thin, it steps out to national. You are always shown the most specific comparison available, automatically.

The Peer Scope Switcher works differently, and on purpose. Once you are looking at an entity detail view and you pick a scope yourself, say Group, Verinode locks to exactly that scope. It does not silently widen to state or national if your group happens to be thin for that particular metric. Instead it tells you there is not enough data at that scope yet. The reasoning: if you deliberately asked "how do I compare to my own group," a silent fallback to a different, wider cohort would answer a question you did not ask and could mislead you into thinking you were seeing a group comparison when you were not.

So the two behaviors sit side by side: the automatic cascade picks the best available scope for you by default, and the switcher lets you override that pick and hold a specific scope on purpose, even when it comes back empty.

Why operators switch dimensions

A few concrete reasons operators reach for a different scope than the default:

• "My state is different." Labor costs, storm frequency, and carrier presence vary enough by state that a national days-to-pay figure can undersell or oversell how you are doing. Switching to State answers "am I slow for Texas, or slow, period?"
• "I want my real competitive set." If you belong to a franchise system or association, National tells you about the industry, Group tells you about the businesses you are actually compared against at conferences and renewal conversations.
• "I want to sanity-check a surprising number." If a metric looks great nationally but the cohort is thin, switching scopes (or noticing a pill is disabled) tells you whether that "great" number is resting on a wide, stable base or a narrow one.
• "I don't have a state or group set yet." Seeing the disabled pill and its hint is often the first nudge for an operator to finish their profile (state) or confirm their franchise/association membership (group), because it makes the payoff concrete: do this, and a whole extra comparison lens opens up.

What each metric row shows once a scope is selected

The panel underneath the switcher is one row per metric, each with up to three reference points:

• Your value. The entity's current number.
• Peer value. The cohort average at the scope you selected, only shown once that cohort clears its floor and you have benchmark contribution turned on.
• Research value. A curated reference figure where one exists (an IICRC standard for jobs, the Verinode Score for vendors and equipment, an OSHA average for safety), labeled with its source. This is shown regardless of scope, and stands in as your comparison point when the peer value is not there yet.

The panel header also shows how many peers make up the active cohort, phrased in plain language (for example "vs Texas Peers · 12 peers"), so you understand the weight behind the number, without Verinode ever naming which businesses those are.

Best-practice example

You open a job and the panel defaults to National, showing your margin sitting a few points under the national peer figure. Before assuming you have a pricing problem, you click your state pill. The state cohort is thinner but available, and against operators in your own state your margin is actually a point above peer, because your state's national peer figure was being pulled down by markets with very different cost structures. You then try Group, and it comes back with the "not enough peers" message, your franchise system has not yet crossed the size needed to publish a number for this particular metric. You read that as: keep an eye on this once more of your group contributes, but for now trust the state comparison over the national one, since it is the closer match to your actual conditions.

Related reading

• How benchmarks work
• Reading a benchmark
• Benchmarks overview
• Understanding your margin
• Acting on decisions

Data sources