Benchmark: How about reducing risks by implementing new practices or being able to decide the best plan of action based on tested and successful strategies?
That’s the promise of benchmarking. Learn from competitors to optimize your organization. This is not only important for large companies, and small businesses can increase their knowledge about their segment and become more efficient using this methodology.
But how to benchmark and get excellent results? We will tell you in this article. Be sure to check it out!
What Is Benchmarking?
Before understanding how to do benchmarking, it is necessary to understand everything this concept encompasses. The management strategy aims to find the best practices from companies referenced in the market.
Thus, benchmarking serves as an analysis tool for developing research to know competitors’ experiences, adapting them to their reality and adopting them, generating optimizations.
They can benefit from its application in areas such as quality or costs, with the implementation of more efficient processes and methods, to commercial service, when looking for ways to improve the customer experience.
Why Is This Practice Important And Strategic?
Benchmarking is an important way to obtain increasingly positive results, as, in addition to allowing the company to achieve constant optimization, it encourages innovation. All this with lower risks since the solutions have already been tested in other corporations, increasing security in the decision.
Its implementation is strategic to keep the business in line with the latest trends in the market, ensuring its competitiveness. In addition, it has a role in brand positioning. After all, knowing the competition in depth makes it easier to present your differentials to customers.
What Are The Types Of Benchmarking?
Essential information when planning how to do benchmarking is the types of analysis it allows. Knowing the objectives of each one helps in defining which is the ideal option to be applied given the needs of the business. Thus, the 4 evaluation models that exist are:
- competitive: optimizes competitors’ practices to overcome them;
- Cooperative: works through a partnership in which learning is spontaneously exchanged;
- functional: compares the work formats, regardless of the segment of the undertakings involved;
- Internal: seeks improvements within the business ecosystem itself.
How To Benchmark?
Implementing this strategy is a task that requires attention to decisions in several aspects — scope, methodologies, indicators, tools, etc. — that influence the outcome of the analysis. Check out our tips on benchmarking and getting the best insights for your company!
Define Goals And Needs
For benchmarking to work, it cannot be applied in all areas simultaneously. Of course, any improvement helps to generate a competitive advantage, but for the adoption of optimized practices to be successful, it is necessary to focus and prioritize.
As criteria for this, the ideal is to stipulate objectives and know the company’s needs. Check in which area there are more limitations: bottlenecks in operations, inefficient customer journey, problems attracting talent, etc. After that, establish what is most urgent and what adds the most value. Thus, a hierarchy will guide the process.
Choose Data Collection Methods
The most delicate point of this strategy is data collection. For your company to conduct the analysis based on reliable information and without going beyond ethical limits, it is essential to know the best methods.
Cooperative partnerships to surveys can be used. The internet has greatly facilitated this process; however, participating in events and carrying out technical visits are alternatives to enrich understanding. Another possibility is consulting and mentoring.
Survey The Competition
Comparing your company with the competition is the main benchmarking action to achieve what this strategy aims for. However, it is not any business that serves as a reference. Considering the type of analysis, objectives, and needs, one can choose the ideal enterprise for this.
A survey of the main players in the segment and which are corporations with approaches recognized as innovative is the beginning. Above all, check whether the person who will serve as a model has been through the same situation you are in during the assessment. In this way, the possibility of not finding useful solutions will be less.
Keep Track Of KPIs
The KPIs or key performance indicators serve both to be compared with those of the reference company and to monitor the effects of the new practices adopted in your business.
Start by defining which metrics best provide evidence of the problem to be overcome or the development achieved. More than just monitoring them, it is important to analyze what impacts each trend — decrease, stagnation, or growth — they present.
Embrace Strategic Technology Partnerships
As seen, all processes that makeup benchmarking involve several aspects, making the operationalization of its steps something complex. Therefore, technology is an ally in consolidating so many variables.
There are several useful tools for analysis. Starting with solutions aimed at collecting information and going through means for comparing metrics between companies.
What Are The Impacts Of Benchmarking On The Company?
Strategic benchmarking changes the way the company works, encompassing the development of the entire enterprise and generating benefits that impact the business, such as:
- repositioning in the market through a deep understanding of competition and trends;
- anticipation of decision-making concerning identified opportunities and threats;
- The continuous evolution of organizational practices, with the adoption of changes based on solutions from companies that reference;
- Update of tools and methodologies that add innovation ;
- Cost reduction and increased profitability.
Following our tips on how to benchmark is the first step toward achieving maximum performance in a company. More than that, technological or methodological innovation will become part of the business mindset, ensuring continuous improvement.
Also Read: Agile Marketing: What Is It And How To Adopt This Methodology?