Benchmarking is a powerful management tool used by businesses to track progress and assess their goals. It involves measuring the company’s operational performance compared against internal and external standards. 

Benchmarking is also about researching best practices in the industry to help a company reach a high-ranking performance level. It allows organizations to build a solid starting point.

Andrea Minelli, a management consultant at The KPI Institute, wrote an article on Performance Magazine about why companies must invest in benchmarking. He stressed that benchmarking has the potential to be a “powerful tool to promote continuous improvement in performance.”

Andrea explained that benchmarking allows businesses to concentrate on their advantages and disadvantages. It also enables them to increase their market position.

In another article on Performance Magazine, benchmarking enables businesses to compare performance data collected by analyzing identical processes or activities carried out by other businesses. The process of benchmarking lets organizations discover, adapt, and replicate the strategies that created the greatest outcomes for their best competitors.

According to the author, Andrada Ghețe, benchmarking supports the idea “that performance numbers can mean less when analyzed without having a point of reference (a benchmark) as a comparison starting point.”

“For example, in the airline industry, an airline company has a turnaround time of 55 minutes. Is it good, or bad? It is hard to find the answer, unless you compare this 55 minutes turnaround time to an objective standard, such as the industry average turnaround time for other airline companies,” Ghete wrote.

According to Business News Daily, the three most common types of benchmarking are Internal, Competitive, and Strategic.

Internal benchmarking refers to conducting comparisons within an organization. It can help a company save time and money by identifying and eliminating waste. Employee performance and effectiveness, as well as how employees use the resources supplied by the company, are examples of internal benchmarks that firms should consider. яндекс

Competitive benchmarking allows businesses to compare their company’s performance, product, and services against their competitors in the same market. Competitive benchmarks let companies catch up with the trends and adjust their marketing strategies to have a competitive advantage.

Strategic benchmarking refers to taking “a long-term view of company direction relative to the future strategies of competing companies.”

If you would like to know more about how your organization can benefit from benchmarking, join The KPI Institute’s Certified Benchmarking Professional Live Online on 18-22 April 2022.

Understand the importance of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your best competitor. Learn how to constantly improve the performance of your organization. Know the difference benchmarking can make in your business  and register here.