Following the conduct of a source audit the benchmarking of source effectiveness seeks to quantify clients’ sourcing configuration against Best Practice benchmarks and best-use sources. The range of benchmarks and analytical tools for establishing the benchmarks are tailored to the specific client circumstances, while the comparative benchmarks are adapted to suit.

These benchmarks establish the following:

1. By examining the list of sources against an industry standard and the Hawk library of sources, one can identify missing sources, or weaknesses in the types and spread of sources used for different types of intelligence assessments and different types of analyses.

2. The pattern of source utility by establishing the proportion of intelligence drawn from different sources. This will present a segmentation of high utility, medium utility and low utility intelligence - drawn from clusters of sources - and effectively establishes a categorisation of sources according to their importance. This data is then used to analyse Source : Analysis ratios, benchmarked against Best Practice standards and then used to prioritise sources.

3. A Source : Intelligence map is established in order to identify the degree to which high-medium-low utility intelligence is being drawn from trusted sources, out-of-date sources, un-validated sources, or unreliable sources. These measurements are then benchmarked against best practices. This allows a further examination of the relative over-utilisation or under-utilisation of certain sources for different needs and this reveals relative weaknesses in the current sourcing pattern.

4. When this is then cross-referenced against the range of different analytical objectives such as customer, competition, economics, technology and risk, new priorities are established for revising the sourcing balance.

5. In order to optimise the Source : Intelligence balance the type of intelligence is analysed according to its state, ranging from: raw intelligence; qualified intelligence; part processed/applied; and processed/applied intelligence. This provides another view of the balance between sources and can be correlated against the time, cost and the techniques & tools required to process and apply the intelligence. After these parametres are benchmarked against Best Practices, the outputs highlight where more carefully considered sourcing practices can be implemented which will establish unrealised efficiencies that can be gained. Moreover, it may also prompt a review of the type of staff and technological skills and/or tools that are recommended to make best use of the intelligence in the future, and prioritise the team training needs.

6. A budgetary analysis can then be conducted which establishes where sources are being purchased and where the sources are freely available. When this is then correlated with the type of intelligence gathered, benchmarks can be created for comparison against recommended investment patterns to ensure that free sources are maximized and that investment in acquiring intelligence is balanced against/representative of the type and use of the intelligence required. Hawk intelligence analysts can review the sourcing practices to examine where and how intelligence can be sourced to save cost, source redundancy, source replication and source duplication. In an optimisation exercise this will lead to rapid cost benefits.

7. The consolidated analysis from the benchmarking process provides an immediate view of the relationship between sources and intelligence and contributes considerably to the broader assessment of any ‘intelligence gap’ in the next phase.