benchmarking services

Benchmarking is the exhaustive analysis of products, services, work processes, and strategies of your company’s main competitors to allow for comparisons with your company, department, or area, so you can identify weak points and implement improvement measures.

Benchmarking is useful to reduce the risk involved in implementing a new strategy or redesigning a product, as you take someone else’s experiences to identify potential weaknesses in your own process.

There are different types of benchmarking, depending on the scope of the comparison. The following can be pointed out, from the smallest to the largest in scope: internal, competitive, functional, international, and generic.

Performing benchmarking studies on a regular basis allows you to keep pace with the latest developments in your sector. It also encourages constant improvement in the company, allows you to get to know your competitors well, saves you costs and risky investments and helps you identify and implement practical improvements.

There are six stages in the benchmarking process:
1. Conducting an internal analysis.
2. Choosing the type of benchmarking to be carried out.
3. Choosing the companies under study.
4. Defining the data you’re going to collect and study.
5. Collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the data.
6. Implementing improvements according to the results obtained.

Benchmarking is a process of constant improvement whereby you analyze the products, services, or work processes of leading companies in your sector to determine what has worked for them and what can be implemented in your own company. This helps you avoid unnecessary risks and stay on the safe side, knowing that what has already been applied has led to positive results in other companies.

When using benchmarking, it’s critical to choose the competitors you’re going to study carefully, and to this end you need to know the market where you operate. You’ll also have to define what you want to achieve by carrying out this study: your goal and which aspects you’re going to analyze. From all the collected data, screening what makes sense for your company is necessary, as well as taking the differences between both companies into consideration. Finally, draw up a report with the conclusions and results that helps you identify opportunities, threats, and if there’s something you’re doing wrong. Based on this report, you can start acting in the right direction. You can do it yourself or have a benchmarking company do it for you.

Internal benchmarking is benchmarking within a company. It consists of analyzing and comparing different areas, departments, and even employees, to identify those performing best and to decide how the rest can employ their best practices.

Competitive benchmarking is a higher level than internal benchmarking, since it is carried out externally, but within the same sector. It allows you to identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as achievements and shortcomings of companies that are engaged in the same economic activity, or at least in a very similar one.

Functional benchmarking takes strategies, actions, and processes of organizations in other sectors as a reference, if they are good practices and have been successful, regardless of the sector.

Generic benchmarking focuses on analyzing a very specific process, strategy, or department within a company, from which good practices can be inferred. The analysis can be done with direct competitors, other sectors, or international organizations.

Benchmarks in marketing are standard reference measures that are used to compare outcomes amongst competitors and within the industry. In other words, the data collected can be grouped into different parameters to be studied and analyzed with greater accuracy. These include brand recognition, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, pricing, market share or customer retention. This benchmarking data can be obtained from public sources through quarterly or semi-annual reports, surveys or interviews conducted within the target market. This data is often provided by dedicated research firms. To carry out benchmarking, hiring a benchmarking company is advisable.