Understanding Price Benchmarks in Tropic

Overview

Tropic’s Price Benchmark tools help you assess how your supplier pricing compares to similar contracts in the market. Whether you're negotiating a renewal, reviewing a new proposal, or identifying savings opportunities across your portfolio, benchmarks help you make informed, confident decisions.

This article explains the three types of benchmarks available in Tropic, when to use each, and how to take action.

Step-by-Step Demo

Watch this walkthrough for a visual guide on how to view, generate, and interpret Price Benchmarks in Tropic.

What Are Price Benchmarks?

A price benchmark shows how your quote compares to anonymized pricing data from Tropic’s customer base - pulled from over $13B in actual spend. This allows you to:

• Identify suppliers with room for negotiation
• Prioritize where to focus procurement efforts
• Evaluate if you’re paying above or below market 

❗Important:Benchmarks are for internal use only. They are never shared with suppliers and are not used to set pricing.

Types of Price Benchmarks in Tropic

Each type ultimately delivers the same benchmark experience, but the trigger method and processing time vary.

When Can You Generate a Benchmark?

You can generate a Price Benchmark from the Request page, Supplier Intelligence, or Discover. What happens next depends on how much data Tropic already has:

• Instant Benchmark: Generated immediately when Tropic has enough data for the supplier.
  Best for: Quick pricing insights during vendor evaluations or negotiations.
• Custom Benchmark: If Tropic doesn't have enough data, you’ll be prompted to submit a request. A specialist will review and build the benchmark manually.
  Best for: Niche suppliers or unique pricing structures.
• Proactive Benchmark: These appear automatically when Tropic surfaces a pricing insight from your existing contracts.
  Best for: Spotting savings opportunities ahead of renewals.
  Found in: Contracts page, Benchmark Index, and renewal reminder emails.

Tropic handles the logic behind the scenes. If you're unsure what type of benchmark you’re looking at, use the filters in the Benchmark Index or check the type and status label.

What Do the Statuses Mean?

Each benchmark has two components:

• Savings Opportunity, which tells you how your pricing compares to similar contracts:
  • High — Strong potential for savings
  • Typical — Pricing is consistent with the market
  • Low — You’re already getting a good deal
  • No Recommendation — Benchmark exists, but there's no strong guidance
  • Unavailable — Not enough data to create a benchmark
  • Not Set — No label has been applied yet
• Status, which tells you where the benchmark is in the process:
  • Processing — A Custom benchmark is being prepared by Tropic
  • Completed — The benchmark is ready and visible in your dashboard

You can filter by both Savings Opportunity and Status in the Benchmarks Index

Where You’ll See Benchmarks

Benchmarks appear in multiple places depending on how they were triggered:

• Requests (linked directly to procurement tasks)
• Supplier Intelligence and Discover pages
• Benchmark Index (your centralized view of all benchmarks)
• Contracts page (for Proactive benchmarks)
• Renewal Reminder Emails (for contracts with high savings potential) 

Each entry includes the supplier name, benchmark status, savings opportunity label, benchmark type, and who requested it. You can also archive benchmarks for a cleaner view or revisit them later in the Archived section.

How to Get Help or Request a Manual Benchmark

If Tropic doesn’t have enough data to generate a benchmark instantly, you’ll be prompted to use Ask an Expert Advice. Clicking this opens a panel where you can provide context and upload documents. A Tropic team member will follow up in the app via the benchmark’s activity feed.

Additional Resources

• AI Negotiation
• Integrating Price Benchmark into Your Workflow
• Proactive Price Benchmarks in Tropic: Enhancing Pricing Insights
• How to create a Price Benchmark WIP