Once plans are segmented by industry, analysts at JDA scour Plan Prospector to pull account balances, employer and employee contribution rates, rates of return on investments, and other factors within thousands of plans in an industry to arrive at an ultimate industry score.

The exhaustive benchmark report represents one supercharged way to use Retirement Plan Prospector, says Eric Ryles, vice president of customer solutions at ALM Media, which owns JDA and BenefitsPRO.

At its essence, Plan Prospector gives advisors the diagnostics to understand which 401(k) plans around the country could benefit from some attention. But despite the unfathomable amount of data and quantitative analysis behind it, Ryles insists the platform is built to align with advisors' natural skill set as communicators and investment experts.

In other words, you don't need to be a quant to leverage data to drive sales.

"It really doesn't take that much time at all to get a good grasp of the tool," said Ryles.

JDA's support staff provides training for its advisor clients, but Ryles underscores the value of digging into the platform and experimenting with its features to fully understand its benefits.

"We're of course here to assist, but it really helps to get in and work with the platform, rather than just watching someone else do it. Once you are fluent with it, you can pull streams of useful data in little time," said Ryles, who recommends his clients commit a half hour a week with the technology "to stay sharp" with the tool.

New features are being added to Retirement Plan Prospector to help advisors dial down on those plans that lack proper guidance. Heat maps will allow a look into plans of a certain size at state, and even county level, giving advisors a deeper understanding of the opportunities in their own backyards.

The platform will even to generate talking points around a given plan, based on performance metrics, said Ryles. "We're investing a lot of energy and time in the design phase to make Retirement Plan Prospector as graphically friendly as possible."

This year's 401(k) benchmark report, available free of charge, shows total plan assets increased $400 billion at the end of the 2016 plan year, accounting for a 10 percent increase over the previous years.

Participation rates, and sponsor and employee contributions, remained relatively flat when measured for all industries. A considerable uptick was seen in automatic enrollment, the report found.

In some ways, benchmarking plans by industry confirms conventional wisdom. Employees at accounting firms, for instance, have access to healthy 401(k) plans; not so much for restaurant workers.

But a deeper dive into the numbers can help advisors understand how clients in certain industries measure up to their peers. In the construction industry, which was the most improved year over year, the average account balance increased $6,000 to $55,000, a dramatic 11 percent increase.

By comparison, CPA firms, which boast an average account balance of $110,000 and rank the highest among 27 industries, saw an average return of 7.6 percent. The report suggests the muscular gains in the construction sector are explained by the overall equity returns in construction, and the fact that employer stock offerings and ESOPs are high in the construction sector.