Good Benchmarking Tips. What shortcomings may arise?

Good Benchmarking Tips. What shortcomings may arise?

When things are not going very well in a company, to put it mildly, experienced managers advise turning to the experience of direct competitors or companies that are successful in the same economic segment. Marketing analysis - benchmarking will help in this: its goal is to learn from the mistakes and achievements of the best, applying successful experience in your business.

Benchmarking differs from industrial espionage using publicly available information. Not all company information is on the surface, but what is open is enough for study and application.

Options for comparison

• labor productivity;
• Cost structure for the production of goods or the provision of services and their implementation;
• Qualitative indicators of products in terms of functional use by consumers;
• The effectiveness of the promotion of goods on the market (advertising, packaging, communication with customers);
• Introduction of new equipment and new products in physical and ruble terms;
• Surveys of the target audience, aimed at identifying interest in the properties of competitors' products.

Types of benchmarking:

1) General. Comparison of the quantity and quality of production, sales, services of its production with competing. The result is to develop and implement advanced developments. Or intensify investment. The most difficult type of benchmarking.

2) Functional. Comparison of the parameters of individual functions (processes, methods, operations) with those of competitors. The difficulty is that it is not always possible to put the results into practice.

3) Internal. Comparison of departments and services within the same company in order to identify the best. For example, the Bank decides to find out which branch is more profitable and better. Or which store department is better.

Studying the information received, identify useful methods that are worth applying in your business.

Benchmarking partners

Those whose experience they are going to learn are called partners. Specialists call competitors, their suppliers and buyers, if the sector is b2b. They study the experience of successful companies in other similar industries with a similar business structure.

Research process. Before starting the study, they analyze the "weaknesses" in their organization, develop a benchmarking plan:

1. Object selection: product, work of individual company departments, business methods, cost optimization (other options are possible);
2. Choice of criteria: finance, quality, new technologies, promotion, customer satisfaction;
3. The choice of partners for analysis;
4. Actually conducting research: competitors' own websites, reviews about them in networks, the media, the use of personal contacts, offline and online polls, the Mystery Shopper method and others;
5. Analysis of the material obtained;
6. The practical application of the best methods found in the study.

You should not make a full copy of a competitor from your company. It’s more profitable to tighten up “weaknesses” and exclude your own mistakes.

Benchmarking Disadvantages

This method will take a lot of time and financial resources to find the necessary information. Most commercial information is confidential.

With a creative approach to this event, the result can be profitable and successful.

Dwain Ross

Financial analyst, writer, news reporter and a certified professional journalist. He was born in Liverpool in 1980. Has a great experience of managing multi-million dollar budgets while giving examination and record uphold inside item advancement divisions. Experience making quarterly gatherings dependent on patterns and anticipated costs.

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