“How are we performing compared to our closest competitors?” is a constant concern for CFOs seeking to drive growth and profitability. Yet it is a stubbornly difficult question to answer. Traditional benchmarking services are expensive and time-consuming, added to which they frequently ‘straight-jacket’ businesses into a narrow range of performance measures that leave nagging doubts about the validity of any conclusions drawn. But the advent of ERP and other financial applications in the cloud seems set to transform finance functions - and possibly the cloud software industry as well.