Home > About IBF > Principles

Confidentiality
On joining, members agree to strict confidentiality terms to protect themselves and other member organisations. IBF ensures that these terms are adhered to so that any information you choose to share is restricted to member organisations only.

Our benchmarking report on your intranet is disclosed only to you. In meetings, you can reveal as much or as little of your experience as you like. In practice, we find that members are happy to exchange information because they know discussions are kept confidential within IBF, and because the benefits of mutual sharing are there for all to see.

Exclusivity
To join IBF, your organisation must meet strict entry criteria. You must be a Fortune 500 or equivalent-sized company or a major public body. This ensures that the organisations you are benchmarked against and with whom you share knowledge are of comparable stature and are frequently dealing with the same kinds of challenges as you.

Independence
IBF is a membership group not a consultancy. We do not provide consultancy services to members or other organisations and do not get involved in implementing any of the recommendations we make. This means that our benchmarking findings and recommendations for improvement are impartial and not coloured by any vested interest.

In addition, we are independent of any technology vendor or solution. We provide insight based on wide experience across all intranet and portal technologies from a neutral stance.

Active participation
IBF thrives on the active participation of member organisations. The more you contribute to IBF’s knowledge base – by being benchmarked, by contributing to our research into best practice, and by sharing knowledge at meetings, on our secure extranet and informally via ongoing dialogue with fellow members – the more value you get from your membership.

All members must commit to being benchmarked at least once every two years. In many cases, members choose to be benchmarked annually – sometimes in several areas of our benchmarking model.