case study benchmark analysis

Understanding Benchmarking Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide

So, you've heard a lot about benchmarking analysis lately, but what on earth does it actually mean? Don't worry, you're not alone. This peculiar term may sound like it belongs in an engineer's guidebook, but it's actually a powerful tool used by businesses to gain a competitive edge.

Whether you're a business owner looking to outperform the competition or just a curious individual eager to delve into the world of strategic analysis, this step-by-step guide will take you on a journey to understanding benchmarking analysis in the most humanly comprehensible way possible. So, fasten your seatbelts and get ready to unlock the secrets behind benchmarking analysis as we explore this fascinating concept together.

What is Benchmarking Analysis?

Definition of benchmarking analysis.

Benchmarking analysis is a systematic process used to compare and evaluate an organization's performance against industry standards or best practices. It involves identifying areas for improvement, selecting benchmarking partners, collecting and analyzing relevant data, and implementing improvements based on the findings.

For example, a retail company can compare its customer satisfaction scores with industry benchmarks to identify areas where they need to enhance their service quality.

Importance of Benchmarking Analysis

The importance of benchmarking analysis in any business strategy lies in its ability to provide valuable insights into industry trends, best practices, and areas for improvement. By comparing key performance metrics with those of competitors or industry leaders, organizations can identify opportunities to optimize processes, enhance efficiency, and gain a competitive edge .

For instance, benchmarking analysis can help uncover innovative marketing strategies, cost-saving measures, or operational efficiencies that have proven successful for others in the industry. It enables businesses to stay ahead of the curve and continuously evolve by adopting proven strategies and adapting them for their own unique circumstances.

Real-Life Examples of Benchmarking Analysis

Real-life examples of benchmarking analysis can provide valuable insights into its practical application. For instance, a manufacturing company can benchmark its production processes against industry leaders to identify areas of improvement. Similarly, a retail business can compare its customer service metrics with those of top-performing competitors to enhance the overall customer experience. Benchmarking analysis can also be used in the healthcare sector to compare patient outcomes and treatment effectiveness across different hospitals. By examining real-world benchmarks, organizations can gather actionable insights and implement strategies to drive performance improvements and stay competitive in the market.

The Benchmarking Process

Step 1: identify areas for benchmarking.

To kickstart the benchmarking process, the first step is to identify the specific areas or processes in your organization that you want to benchmark against industry standards or top performers. This involves carefully assessing your business operations and determining the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are critical to your success.

For example, if you're a manufacturing company, you may choose to benchmark your production efficiency, product quality, or time-to-market against industry leaders. By pinpointing the areas for benchmarking, you can focus your efforts and resources on improving those aspects that have the greatest potential for impact and competitive advantage.

Step 2: Identify Benchmarking Partners

• Look for organizations in your industry that excel in the areas you are benchmarking.
• Seek out companies that have a similar size, market presence, and customer base to ensure relevance.
• Consider partnering with organizations outside your industry for fresh perspectives and innovative ideas.
• Utilize industry conferences, research reports, and professional networks to identify potential benchmarking partners.
• Look for organizations that are known for their best practices and have a strong track record of success.
• It is essential to approach benchmarking partners with a collaborative mindset and willingness to share information.

Step 3: Collect and Analyze Data

--Step 3: Collect and Analyze Data--

To conduct an effective benchmarking analysis, meticulous data collection and analysis are imperative. Begin by identifying relevant key performance indicators that align with your objectives. Gather quantitative and qualitative data from various sources, such as financial reports, customer surveys, and industry publications. Analyze the data to identify performance gaps and areas of improvement. Use statistical techniques to compare your metrics against industry benchmarks and top performers.

For example, compare your customer satisfaction scores to those of your competitors to understand your competitive standing. This data-driven analysis will provide valuable insights for implementing targeted improvements and driving performance enhancements.

Step 4: Compare and Evaluate Performance

Once you have collected and analyzed the benchmarking data, it is time to compare and evaluate your performance against the benchmarking partners. Look for gaps, similarities, and areas of improvement. Identify the best practices that lead to superior performance and see how you measure up.

For example, if you are benchmarking your customer service department, compare metrics like response time, customer satisfaction scores, and complaint resolution rates. If you find that your response time is slower compared to top performers in the industry, it may indicate a need for process optimization or resource allocation.

By evaluating performance in a comparative context, you can pinpoint strengths and weaknesses to guide your improvement efforts effectively.

Step 5: Implement Improvements

Once you have compared and evaluated performance using benchmarking analysis, the next step is to implement improvements based on the findings. This is where the real value of benchmarking analysis comes into play. Start by identifying best practices and strategies used by the benchmarking partners that are applicable to your own organization. Then, develop an action plan and communicate it to the relevant stakeholders. Implement changes gradually and monitor the impact to ensure effectiveness.

For example, if you find that a benchmarking partner has a more efficient customer service process, you can consider implementing similar streamlined procedures in your own organization. Continuous evaluation and adjustment are crucial to successful implementation.

Types of Benchmarking Analysis

Internal benchmarking.

h2. Internal Benchmarking

Internal benchmarking involves comparing performance metrics and practices within different departments or divisions within the same organization. It allows companies to identify areas of improvement and best practices that can be shared across teams. For example, the marketing department can analyze the success metrics of different advertising campaigns run by various teams to determine which strategies yielded the best results.

By leveraging internal benchmarking, companies can foster collaboration, enhance efficiency, and identify opportunities for process optimization within their own organization. This approach encourages cross-functional learning and drives continuous improvement by implementing successful strategies across departments. Internal benchmarking is a cost-effective method for organizations to improve performance and achieve operational excellence.

Competitive Benchmarking

Competitive benchmarking involves comparing your company's performance against direct competitors in the industry. It helps identify areas where your organization can improve and gain a competitive advantage. By analyzing competitors' strategies, processes, and outcomes, you can uncover best practices and innovative approaches to implement in your own operations.

For example, examining how competitors handle customer service can inspire improvements in your own customer support processes. Competitive benchmarking allows you to stay informed about industry trends and adapt your strategies accordingly. It provides valuable insights into how your company measures up against the competition, enabling you to make informed decisions and drive continuous improvement.

Functional Benchmarking

• Functional benchmarking is a type of benchmarking analysis that focuses on specific functions or processes within an organization.
• It involves identifying best practices and performance metrics from other companies or industries that excel in the same function.
• By studying and adopting these practices, organizations can improve their own processes and achieve better results.
• For example, a manufacturing company can benchmark its supply chain management processes against a leading logistics provider to identify areas for improvement.
• Functional benchmarking enables organizations to learn from others' successes and apply them to their own operations, leading to increased efficiency and effectiveness.

Generic Benchmarking

--Generic Benchmarking--

Generic benchmarking, a type of benchmarking analysis, involves looking outside of one's industry to identify best practices and innovative solutions. It allows companies to gain inspiration from other sectors and adapt successful strategies to their own context.

To conduct generic benchmarking effectively, consider the following:

• Look for companies facing similar challenges in different industries.
• Analyze their approaches to problem-solving and performance improvement.
• Identify transferable practices that can be implemented in your own organization.
• Examples of generic benchmarking include studying customer service techniques in the hospitality industry for application in retail, or learning about supply chain management from the automotive sector to improve efficiency in manufacturing.

By exploring ideas and practices from diverse sources, generic benchmarking encourages fresh perspectives and can lead to innovative and successful outcomes.

Benefits of Benchmarking Analysis

Identifying performance gaps.

Benchmarking analysis allows businesses to identify performance gaps by comparing their performance against industry leaders or competitors. This helps in understanding areas where the company is falling behind and needs improvement.

For example, a retail company may discover through benchmarking analysis that its customer service response time is slower compared to its competitors. By addressing this performance gap, the company can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. Identifying performance gaps enables organizations to set realistic improvement goals and allocate resources effectively to bridge the gaps between their current performance and desired benchmarks.

Driving Continuous Improvement

• Continuous improvement is a fundamental objective of benchmarking analysis.
• It involves using insights gained from benchmarking to identify areas of improvement and implement changes.
• By comparing performance against industry leaders, organizations can identify best practices and strategies to enhance their own operations.
• Benchmarking enables companies to set performance goals, track progress, and establish a culture of ongoing improvement.
• It helps identify areas where innovation and efficiency can be enhanced, leading to increased productivity and cost savings.
• Continuous improvement through benchmarking analysis allows organizations to stay competitive and adapt to changing market conditions.

Enhancing Competitive Advantage

Benchmarking analysis is a powerful tool for companies aiming to gain an edge over their competitors. By identifying industry best practices and comparing performance against them, organizations can uncover areas for improvement and implement changes that lead to increased competitiveness.

For example, analyzing the supply chain processes of successful companies can provide insights on reducing costs and improving efficiency. Similarly, studying the marketing strategies of industry leaders can guide companies in enhancing their brand positioning and customer acquisition techniques. Benchmarking analysis enables businesses to adapt and adopt successful strategies, ultimately enhancing their competitive advantage in the market.

Challenges and Limitations of Benchmarking Analysis

Data availability and quality.

One of the challenges in benchmarking analysis is ensuring the availability and quality of data. Reliable data is crucial for accurate benchmarking comparisons. Without access to relevant and up-to-date data, organizations may face difficulties in identifying areas for improvement or making effective comparisons.

For example, if a company is unable to obtain comprehensive industry data or lacks internal data on key performance metrics, it hampers their ability to benchmark effectively. To overcome this challenge, organizations can consider utilizing industry reports, surveys, or collaborating with benchmarking partners to gather comprehensive data sets.

Additionally, implementing data quality control measures, such as data validation and verification processes, helps ensure the accuracy and reliability of the benchmarking analysis.

Lack of Benchmarking Partners

Finding suitable benchmarking partners can be challenging for organizations. Limited accessibility to industry data or unwillingness of competitors to share information can hinder the benchmarking process. In such cases, companies can explore alternative options. They can consider benchmarking within their own organization by comparing different business units or departments.

Additionally, they can seek industry associations or research organizations that provide benchmarking data and insights. Another approach is to benchmark against best practices and standards established by industry leaders. While having benchmarking partners is ideal, organizations can still derive valuable insights and identify areas for improvement through alternative benchmarking methods.

Resistance to Change

Implementing benchmarking analysis within an organization may face resistance from employees and stakeholders. People naturally resist change due to fear of the unknown or disruption to established processes. To overcome this, it is crucial to communicate the benefits of benchmarking analysis, demonstrating how it leads to improved performance and competitiveness. Encourage involvement from all levels of the organization to increase buy-in and ownership. Address concerns and provide training to help employees adapt to new ways of working. By highlighting successful case studies and sharing best practices from other companies, you can inspire confidence in the value of benchmarking analysis and ease resistance to change.

Final thoughts

Benchmarking analysis is a valuable tool that businesses can utilize to evaluate their own performance and compare it to industry standards or competitors. This step-by-step guide breaks down the process, starting with identification and selection of benchmarks. It then focuses on data collection, analysis, and interpretation, with an emphasis on the importance of choosing relevant metrics and accurate data sources.

The article also delves into the significance of setting realistic goals and making actionable recommendations based on the analysis. By following this guide, businesses can take informed decisions to improve their performance and gain a competitive edge in the market.

Ready to 20x your analysis? Get started today!

Looking to maximize speed and quality of your company and market analysis? Comparables.ai is crafted for individuals like you who desire to transform their work and achieve their goals with greater ease. It's time you experience the power of our cutting-edge AI and the world's most comprehensive dataset of companies. Make the smart move – your future self will thank you!

Root out friction in every digital experience, super-charge conversion rates, and optimize digital self-service

Uncover insights from any interaction, deliver AI-powered agent coaching, and reduce cost to serve

Increase revenue and loyalty with real-time insights and recommendations delivered to teams on the ground

Know how your people feel and empower managers to improve employee engagement, productivity, and retention

Take action in the moments that matter most along the employee journey and drive bottom line growth

Whatever they’re are saying, wherever they’re saying it, know exactly what’s going on with your people

Get faster, richer insights with qual and quant tools that make powerful market research available to everyone

Run concept tests, pricing studies, prototyping + more with fast, powerful studies designed by UX research experts

Track your brand performance 24/7 and act quickly to respond to opportunities and challenges in your market

Explore the platform powering Experience Management

• Free Account
• For Digital
• For Customer Care
• For Human Resources
• For Researchers
• Financial Services
• All Industries

Popular Use Cases

• Customer Experience
• Employee Experience
• Net Promoter Score
• Voice of Customer
• Customer Success Hub
• Product Documentation
• Training & Certification
• XM Institute
• Popular Resources
• Customer Stories
• Artificial Intelligence

Market Research

• Partnerships
• Marketplace

The annual gathering of the experience leaders at the world’s iconic brands building breakthrough business results, live in Salt Lake City.

• English/AU & NZ
• Español/Europa
• Español/América Latina
• Português Brasileiro
• REQUEST DEMO

Competitive benchmarking: Best practice guide

What is competitive benchmarking, and how can you use it to get ahead of your competition? Read on to learn how to create KPIs that effectively chart success and the best practices for developing a competitive benchmarking strategy.

What is competitive benchmarking?

Competitive benchmarking analysis seeks to understand your brand’s success against others within your industry. You might evaluate their business strategy, their practices, or the products and services they offer to see whether you compare favorably or unfavorably. Using key performance indicators, you can create a set of benchmarks for yourself to match up to others in your sector and understand where the gaps are .

Competitive benchmarking is a useful tool for understanding where you can go next with your brand strategy , and to see where you could be servicing your customers more effectively. It can help you see why your audience might choose a competitor over you , and work on strategies to attract them to your offering instead.

Typical competitive benchmarking includes metrics such as:

• Customer engagement on social channels
• Brand awareness
• Customer experience ratings, such as satisfaction , ease of use , and more
• Search engine results

Stay up to date on the market research trends of 2022 with our report

Types of competitive analysis

Competitive benchmarking can be divided into three types: performance benchmarking, strategic benchmarking, and process benchmarking.

Performance benchmarking is where you compare your brand’s performance across revenue, brand awareness , social media engagement , and more to see how you fare against others in your industry. What results do you generate, and how could you improve against your competitors?

Strategic benchmarking is where you evaluate how your brand goes about its business in comparison to competitors. What business models do they use? What planning and execution style does your company use, and how does that compare to the market leader’s approach? By taking a deep look at how you plan for and carry out your strategy, you can become more effective at implementing change and improving.

Process benchmarking is the analysis of how well your current processes work within your business. Evaluating how your processes work in comparison to your competitors can help you to see the differences between your business and the next, allowing you to take inspiration from competitors or work on providing unique selling points to your customers. Becoming more efficient is a key reason to benchmark in this way.

One of the main advantages of breaking down competitive benchmarking in this way is that your overall business strategy can be overhauled in a manageable way. Rather than solely focusing on performance, you can also evaluate the processes and strategies that lead to performance results.

Competitive benchmarking metrics

Before you can create or use competitive benchmarking metrics, you’ll need to gather data and determine what key performance indicators will form the basis of your benchmark.

Gathering data

Before benchmarking yourself against your competitors, you’ll need to complete some thorough research to define your key performance indicators. These will help you to develop some specific metrics to measure yourself against now and in the future.

You might try finding data by doing:

• Business research : What is their annual revenue? How many people do they employ? What are their online reviews like?
• Brand research : What is their share of voice or share of wallet in your sector? What are their online reviews like?
• SEO research : How do they fare in search engine results? Are they using paid social marketing to reach their audience ?
• Survey research : How do they survey their customers? How often do they ask for feedback?
• Social media research : What level of social media engagement metrics do they generate? How do their social media metrics compare against your own?
• User experience research : Are their digital platforms mobile-optimized? Are their sites easy to navigate? Is it easy to understand their product and service offering, and make a purchase?
• Content analysis : What content do they produce, how much, and when? Does it get high levels of engagement?

Of course, completing this research and creating competitive benchmark metrics without the available data can be difficult. That’s why since 2019, Qualtrics’ XM Institute™ has completed its annual XMI Customer Ratings  – Digital, a cross-industry, open-standard benchmark that provides a much-needed reference point for companies who want to compare their digital customer experience (CX) against their industry competitors.

See how our new Digital Experience Metrics can help you benchmark more effectively

Completing competitive benchmarking analysis with metrics

Qualtrics’ in-depth research into brands’ relationships with their audiences led to the definition of three critical aspects of a customers’ digital experience:

• Emotion: As measured by customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores , how do customers feel about the brand?
• Effort: As measured by customer effort scores (CES) , how easy is it for customers to complete their tasks on a brand’s platform?
• Success: As measured by task completion, how successful are customers’ experiences with the brand?

These three elements form the basis of Qualtrics’ DX3 metrics methodology. It is Qualtrics’ simplified approach for measuring meaningful digital experiences and understanding the drivers of conversion, loyalty , and improved customer lifetime value .

Brands often complete CSAT and CES scoring to create internal benchmarks for comparison over time. However, these metrics can be difficult to incorporate into your competitive benchmarking, as the results are often private data.

Qualtrics’ BrandXM™ provides you with insight into your competitors’ performance, and helps you to create data-led strategies for improvement. Unlike other competitive benchmarks, Qualtrics solutions take into account DX3 metrics methodology, which measures economic value alongside other typical indicators of success.

Use the competitive benchmarking study to see how you’re performing

The DX3 metrics in practice

DX3 metrics are able to tie business outcomes directly to increases or decreases in the measurements brands use to benchmark their success, either against themselves or against competitors.

Our latest findings:

• As customer satisfaction (CSAT) improves, customer spend increases by up to 37%
• As customer effort decreases, customer spend increases by up to 23%
• Successful task completion isn’t a useful metric

This means there isn’t a strong relationship between the completion of a task and the amount customers spend. Most customers are able to complete a task - meaning that if they can’t do so on your site, you’re falling behind your competitors significantly.

Positive sentiment and low effort scores drive loyalty

Digital loyalty - or the likelihood to return to a brand’s site - is significantly increased when customers have a positive sentiment toward the brand and find it easy to complete their tasks.

Brands that don’t focus on improving these two factors may well find themselves falling behind as consumers turn their digital loyalty to immediate competitors and industry leaders.

Gaps in Emotion, Effort, and Success reduce potential revenue

For eCommerce industries, gaps in emotion, effort, and success have a negative impact on potential revenue to be generated.

For businesses that sell their goods and services online, one way in which they can improve their bottom line above their competitors is to invest in their digital experience. Given that brands are failing to satisfy or make their experiences low-effort , this is an easy win for brands looking to get ahead.

Creating a strategic benchmarking approach

Using the DX3 metrics methodology as a guide, your strategy to outdo your competition becomes more sophisticated and increases ROI on your efforts. Rather than limiting your efforts to improve using only internal benchmarking, Qualtrics can provide you with competitor analysis and business strategies for improving your market position.

Developing a brand experience strategy using DX3

Rather than aiming to merely increase engagement or a site’s performance, using DX3 metrics alongside traditional competitive benchmarking can help you to develop a more rounded strategy for improved brand experience .

Here’s how you can use Qualtrics BrandXM with the DX3 methodology to develop your brand into an industry leader.

Improve the brand experience

Your brand experience should not only meet customer expectations , but exceed them. Brand sentiment and brand perception can go a long way to influencing a customer to choose you over the competition - make sure you invest in a strategy that not only measures this but creates insights-led action to tackle weaker areas. Customer satisfaction plays a large role in this, so make sure you’re developing a sophisticated survey program to understand precisely where pain points and successes lie.

Reduce customer burden

If there are obstacles in your customers’ way, they’re not going to choose your experience over your competitors’. It’s not enough to just meet best industry practices - you’ll need to be exceptional in making the digital customer journey a smooth process to stand out.

Assume completion is the minimum

Your customers should be able to do what they intend to do when interacting with their brand - fix the pain points in your processes to make sure you’re meeting the baseline for the competition.

The best tool for competitive research

Understanding your brand’s current position in the market and seeing how you stack up against the competition is key for improving your business outcomes.

Using Qualtrics, you can better:

• Understand how you compare to competitors in your industry
• Identify where you can leverage strengths and bolster weaknesses
• Find top areas for improvement to keep you ahead of your competition
• Create a cohesive brand strategy for a winning customer experience
• Improve your customer experience and brand renown

Qualtrics CustomerXM helps you to prioritize customer feedback, ensuring that you make changes that will drive the highest business impact.

See how you can outdo your competitors with BrandXM

Qualtrics // Experience Management

Qualtrics, the leader and creator of the experience management category, is a cloud-native software platform that empowers organizations to deliver exceptional experiences and build deep relationships with their customers and employees.

With insights from Qualtrics, organizations can identify and resolve the greatest friction points in their business, retain and engage top talent, and bring the right products and services to market. Nearly 20,000 organizations around the world use Qualtrics’ advanced AI to listen, understand, and take action. Qualtrics uses its vast universe of experience data to form the largest database of human sentiment in the world. Qualtrics is co-headquartered in Provo, Utah and Seattle.

Related Articles

December 20, 2023

Top market research analyst skills for 2024

November 7, 2023

Brand Experience

The 4 market research trends redefining insights in 2024

September 14, 2023

How BMG and Loop use data to make critical decisions

August 21, 2023

Designing for safety: Making user consent and trust an organizational asset

June 27, 2023

The fresh insights people: Scaling research at Woolworths Group

June 20, 2023

Bank less, delight more: How Bankwest built an engine room for customer obsession

June 16, 2023

How Qualtrics Helps Three Local Governments Drive Better Outcomes Through Data Insights

April 1, 2023

Academic Experience

How to write great survey questions (with examples)

Stay up to date with the latest xm thought leadership, tips and news., request demo.

Ready to learn more about Qualtrics?

Start Your 14-Day Trial

Create Your Account: Step 1 of 2

Get free expert insights and tips to grow your knowledge business sent right to your inbox.

What is benchmarking, and how to do a competitive analysis

Benchmarking is a complicated process that many large companies use to perfect their best practices and to outpace the competition. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t use benchmarking for your small online business.

In fact, you should use benchmarking, especially if you’re in the Knowledge Commerce market .

What is benchmarking? We’re going to get to that a little later, but for now, we want to paint a quick picture.

Let’s say that you’re a personal development expert who specializes in productivity. You know how to motivate people to get things done and achieve their goals.

You’ve created four online courses, two e-books, and a host of other digital products on productivity. Sales have been fairly steady over the last 12 months, but you’re not growing at the pace you expected.

Maybe your sales have stagnated. Perhaps you’ve already reached your target audience.

Whatever the case, it’s time to change things up.

If you want to maximize your revenue and brand awareness, you need benchmarking to figure out what’s working, what’s not working, and what your competitors are doing.

It sounds simple enough, but you need a clear, actionable strategy if you want benchmarking to yield positive results. That’s what we’re going to help you achieve today.

What Is Benchmarking? 

Benchmarking is the process of determining the best processes, strategies, and techniques for achieving your business goals.

That sounds simple enough, right? You’re just trying to create the best business possible.

The problem is that you sometimes need outside data to measure success. While your online business might be more profitable than it was six months ago, is it profitable enough to stand up to your competitors?

We’ll talk about competitive analysis later, but keep in mind that you need to maintain one eye on your competitors at all times. If you don’t, they can easily steal your customers and your profits.

With benchmarking, you want to start with your primary weaknesses.

Do you struggle with lead generation? Have you struggled to retain customers? Do you get complaints about your online course content ?

Sometimes it’s tough to view your business objectively. If you need to bring on a third party to help, do so.

The important thing, though, is to find ways in which your business could improve. Maybe it’s customer service, pricing, advertising , digital marketing , or something else entirely.

Once you’ve identified your first focal point for benchmarking, figure out how your current process works. For instance, when it comes to digital marketing, maybe you focus on blogging , social media, and organic SEO.

Since you’ve discovered that your digital marketing strategy hasn’t yielded the results you expected, you now need to figure out how to tweak your process to make it more effective.

Maybe you need to add email marketing to your repertoire . That’s just one possibility — benchmarking will help you figure out other potential solutions.

Those are the basics of benchmarking, but we’re going to get into even more detail so you understand why benchmarking matters, how you can use it strategically, and what other businesses like yours have accomplished through benchmarking.

Why Is Benchmarking Important for Your Knowledge Commerce Business? 

Think of benchmarking as a report card, a guidebook, and a competition comparison all in one. Conducting benchmarking can tell you what you're doing wrong with your online business and help you discover ways to improve upon past efforts.

In Knowledge Commerce, competition will always exist.

After all, we're talking about a $243 billion industry. That number is nothing to sneeze at.

If you want to grab for yourself a significant piece of this lucrative pie, you need to use every tool at your disposal to turn your business into an industry powerhouse. Otherwise, your competitors will do it instead.

Furthermore, since your business is likely not a member of the Fortune 500 list, benchmarking won't take as much time, energy, earn money. You have fewer factors to take into consideration so the process will move much faster.

If you're not sure why benchmarking will benefit your business, consider your last few months of sales. What if you could increase them by a significant margin? Would that make benchmarking worth your while?

You can gain a remarkable competitive edge if you're able to understand your competitors as well as businesses like your own outside your industry and figure out what they're doing better than you.

However, it's not about copying your competition. Rather, you want to surpass your competition through improved processes and internal policies.

Maybe you run your business by yourself. That's fine. You still have specific protocols you follow when it comes to marketing, sales, customer service, product creation, and everything else.

What Other Online Course Makers Should You Benchmark Against? 

The first step in benchmarking is defined other businesses against which to measure your own. Think of these other businesses as yardsticks. They offer the measurements into data that you want to surpass.

Start with other Knowledge Commerce professionals to create online courses and other digital products within your industry. They don't have to offer courses that are exactly like your own, but they should create similar content.

Next, venture beyond your specific industry and find other businesses that are similar in size and revenue to yours. They might operate in completely different ways, but they can still teach you how to improve your processes, marketing techniques, revenue-generation methods, and more.

Once you have found competitors against which you can benchmark your own business, conduct as much research as you can on those businesses. Find out how they're targeting potential customers, managing customer service, and otherwise serving their target audience.

You might discover that one or more of the businesses you chose don't provide a reasonable benchmark for your company. That's okay.

Simply remove those businesses from your benchmarking study and choose other businesses to take their place. You don't want to spend time and energy on a project that won't yield actionable data.

What Are the Benefits of Benchmarking?

The benefits of benchmarking are quite diverse. If you conduct a little research, you'll find that some of the biggest brands in the world use benchmarking studies to improve their businesses and to find new ways to solve old problems.

First of all, benchmarking is a completely objective process. You're evaluating data and other critical information to determine how you stack up against your competition.

Your passionate about your business, which means that you might let your subjective opinion influence your decisions. Benchmarking removes the subjectivity and allows you to approach problems logically.

You can also use benchmarking to find new opportunities. During your research, you might find that your competitors or other benchmarking partners are using strategies that you never considered.

That happens to every business. You can't always think of every potential solution to a problem or technique to achieve a goal.

You might also have made assumptions about your business. Benchmarking allows you to either validate or invalidate those assumptions.

Obviously, you'd rather validate an assumption and know that you are right. That might happen. But even if you discover that your assumption was incorrect, you now have a way to correct the issue.

By the end of your benchmarking process, you'll have discovered new ways to approach a business and set goals for the future. That's a powerful advantage over your competition.

Once you've set those goals, you can proactively pursue them.

Every business needs performance expectations. In larger companies, for example, managers set performance expectations for their employees.

If you work alone, you need to set performance expectations for yourself. How many new digital products you want to release in the next 12 months? How much revenue do you want to generate in the next four years?

Benchmarking can help you figure out what expectations are reasonable so that you can set out to meet them.

How Does Benchmarking Relate to Competitor Research? 

Benchmarking and competitor research are often misunderstood. They are actually two separate ways to approach issues within a business, but benchmarking offers several clear advantages over competitor research.

For one thing, benchmarking focuses on the future. It's not a way to find a quick fix for a temporary problem. You're looking for long-term strategies to help your business grow.

During competitive research might show you how to mirror your competition's approach, but it won't help you surpass their results. Additionally, competitor research usually involves spying on the competition and making assumptions about their approaches to certain problems or solutions. Benchmarking takes the opposite approach.

You're looking for companies and individuals who have achieved the kind of results that you want to make possible for your business. That's why it's helpful to find non-direct competitors because you might want to contact them directly.

During a benchmarking study, you might read case studies and articles written by the companies who have set the benchmarks that you want to emulate. It's not a covert operation — it's a way to take your business to the next level.

What Is the Benchmarking Process? 

The benchmarking process can vary depending on your specific goals and the size of your business. The Fortune 100 company, for example, might spend years on benchmarking in different departments and on different policies and procedures.

For small businesses, though, benchmarking doesn't have to take as much time thinking while fewer steps. Regardless of the size of your business, however, you need to observe at least these steps if you want your benchmarking study to prove effective.

1. Analyze Internal Process 

Start by taking a hard look at your own internal processes. How do you acquire new customers? How do you nurture leads? How do you retain customers and incentivize them to buy more of your products?

Asking these questions can help businesses in the Knowledge Commerce market to find ways to reach their target audiences.

You might also want to ask questions about your internal approach to creating new products. How long does it take you to create an online course from start to finish? What have the reviews been like? How does your course content compared to those of your competitors?

For every process, procedure, or technique that you want to benchmark, you need a comprehensive understanding of your current efforts and methodologies.

2. Decide How Your Benchmarking Study Will Proceed 

Next, you need to create a game plan for your benchmarking study. You've already identified your competitors and other companies against which you want to measure your own, but now you need to decide how you will approach each benchmark.

Maybe you will read case studies, interview executives for owners of other businesses, conduct online research about web traffic and other digital marketing metrics, or something else entirely.

3. Decide How You’ll Measure Success 

There are lots of ways to measure success, especially when it comes to online marketing. For example, one business might find that increased web traffic corresponds directly with increased sales.

Another company, perhaps even in the same industry, might notice that high rates of customer retention provide more revenue than high levels of customer acquisition.

With this in mind, you need to decide how you will measure success. What metrics are your benchmarking partners using to facilitate their own success, and how will you apply those same metrics in measuring your progress?

4. Research and Gather Evidence 

This is perhaps the most important part of the benchmarking process. During this stage, you are gathering evidence and data to support your hypothesis about your benchmarking partners.

As mentioned above, you can gather information through a variety of sources. Case studies, interviews, data analysis, and other sources can help you paint a rich picture of your benchmarking partners' success.

5. Apply What You’ve Learned 

Now that you know the steps you need to take to bring your business to the next level, you can begin implementing policies and procedures that will help you grow your online business and sell more Knowledge Commerce products.

Don't forget that this can be a long-term strategy. Don't expect results in the first few days after you implement changes.

6. Test and Regroup 

It's important to note that what works for one company might not work for another. Even if a company has set the benchmark for a particular process or technique, it might not yield the same results for you.

We mentioned above that benchmarking and competition research are two different animals. This is one reason.

During competition research, you might decide to steal a strategy that has worked well for your competitor. But that's the end of the game. In benchmarking, your goal is to apply strategies that you believe will help elevate your business, then make changes based on the results you achieve.

What Type of Benchmarking Should You Use? 

Believe it or not, there are several different types of benchmarking that you might use for your online business. Several of them, such as international benchmarking and internal benchmarking, are more suited for larger companies. However, the best benchmarking strategies for smaller businesses in the Knowledge Commerce market are competitive benchmarking and strategic benchmarking.

Competitive benchmarking involves studying another best practices for a particular strategy or technique and adopting it for your business. Meanwhile, internal benchmarking involves transferring a strategy you already use to another aspect of your business.

For instance, you could use internal benchmarking to expand your business into a new social media realm. Maybe you've only used Facebook and Twitter in the past, but you're interested in developing a presence on Instagram.

Using internal benchmarking, you can evaluate the best strategies that have worked on Facebook and Twitter, then adopt them for Instagram.

Instagram is a completely different social media platform, which means that you will continually have to tweak your approach until you find the best strategy for it.

You can use competitive benchmarking to apply someone else's approached Instagram to your own business. You might have seen a case study or other documentation online that matches what you want to achieve through social media.

How Can You Conduct a Competitive Analysis?  

Benchmarking often begins with competitive analysis. You want to know what your competitors are doing so that you can do it better.

Competitor research is different from a competitive analysis because you're digging deeper into your competitors' overall strategies and finding ways to surpass them with your own business.

Ideally, you'll collect as much information about your competitors as possible. You want to know how they attract new leads, how they nurture leads through the sales funnel, how they maintain their online presence, and what share of the market they possess.

What competitors should you analyze?

It depends on your goals. If you want to boost brand loyalty and awareness, consider conducting a competitive analysis on an industry leader. You're looking for a competitor who has a large share of the market and who has a powerful voice online.

To put this into context, consider your friendly neighborhood grocery store. It is a small establishment that caters to only a few loyal customers. If that grocer wanted to conduct a competitive analysis, it might focus on a large brand, such as Kroger.

Even though you might conduct competitive analyses on brands that are much larger than yours, you can still learn from the data you collect and use it to help your own business become a stronger competitor.

How do you find this information?

You start by investigating them online. You can use a tool like SEMrush to collect data on your competitors. The type of data you collect will depend on the benchmarks in which you are most interested.

For instance, if you're interested and advertising your online courses, membership site , or other digital products, you might want to know how much your competitors are spending on advertising. You can then decide your budget for advertising based on the ROI you anticipate.

SEMrush also provides data about your competitors' web traffic, keyword rankings, and more.You can even set up brand monitoring to find out how often and in what context your competitors are mentioned online.

You can benchmark for many different channels, for email marketing and social media to organic web traffic and paid traffic. You might also want to track earned media if you're interested in improving brand awareness for your online business.

When conducting a competitive analysis, you can focus on channels in which you are already engaged or on channels that you would like to pursue in the future. Either way, you're looking for data that can help your business grow over the long haul.

This is why competitive analyses can often last for months or even years. You're not just conducting one-time competitor research; instead, you're looking for trends that stays static over long periods of time.

Interpreting The Results 

After you have conducted your competitive analysis, you need to render the data in a way that makes sense to you and, if applicable, your team. You can use charts, graphs, spreadsheets, or any other tool that allows you to visualize the data and to draw conclusions from it.

For instance, let's say that you are conducting a competitive analysis to determine how often you should blog. You discover through the competitive analysis that your three main competitors blog at least once per day. Additionally, you find that each of your competitors' blog posts get at least three times the engagement that your blog posts get.

From that data, you can infer a few things. For one thing, you might want to blog more often or write longer, more detailed blog posts distill traffic away from your competitors. Additionally, you might want to incentivize your audience to engage with your blog posts, such as through commenting and social shares.

You might want to further investigate the types of blog posts that your competitors share. What topics to discuss? What CTAs do they use? What types of engagement are most common?

Over time, as you evolve your approach to blogging, you'll continually compare your results against those of your competitors. If you apply what you've learned effectively, you should see improvements in your results.

Benchmarking Examples 

To help you get the most out of marking, let's look at a couple of fictional examples that you might use to model your own competitive analysis on.

Web Traffic 

Maybe you are interested in attracting more traffic to your Kajabi website. More traffic doesn't automatically result in more sales, but it will increase brand awareness and increase the chances of converting more people.

Web traffic, in this case, is your benchmark. You just have to tie that goal to a specific competitor or to a best practice in your industry.

For example, maybe you know that your closest competitor gets four times more traffic than you do. Now it's time to figure out why.

Investigate that competitor's website content, social media activity, organic reach on the search engines, and other data that might contribute to increased web traffic. You'll likely begin to see patterns that you can interpret and use for your own business.

Email Marketing 

Maybe you have decided to start an email marketing campaign. Good for you. This type of marketing campaign can result in high ROI and limited expense.

First, you need a benchmark . You might find a case study that indicates that the average Knowledge Commerce business has 5,000 email subscribers, for example.

You don't just want 5,000 email subscribers, though. You want to surpass that number so that your business becomes more powerful and you reach more people.

We mentioned above the competitor research often involves attempting to mirror the competitors. That's not what we want here. We're looking for ways to make sure your business performs better than others in your category.

If there is a dearth of information on email marketing in the Knowledge Commerce marketplace, you might have to look outside your industry to find strategies that you might use an email marketing. For instance, you might use data from online marketers to understand the best practices for improving email marketing.

Getting the Maximum Value for Your Business 

Benchmarking has one goal: Make the most of every decision regarding your business. In other words, you don't want to waste time on marketing efforts, sales strategies, and product launches that won't result in high ROI.

During a benchmarking study, you get to know your competitors extremely well and you learn what businesses in other industries are doing to capture more market share and to improve revenue.

Both types of information can prove extremely valuable to your business.

Start by learning as much as you can about other Knowledge Commerce players in your industry. How much of the market share do they capture? What are they doing that you don't do? What can you do to make your business more attractive than theirs?

Set goals for your benchmarking study and decide what channels you want to investigate. If you're not interested in social media, there's no reason to collect data about it.

In Knowledge Commerce, data has become increasingly valuable across the board. The more you know about your competitors and about strategies that work for other businesses, the more equipped you become to compete.

Use Kajabi to Turn Your Knowledge and Content Into Products You Can Sell 

If you haven't started an online business, or if you're struggling in the Knowledge Commerce marketing, you might need a new solution to carry your business to the next level. That's exactly what Kajabi provides.

Sign up for a free trial so you can explore the Kajabi platform from the inside. Learn how you can set up an email marketing campaign, a CRM, sales pages , landing pages, and dozens of other assets.

We believe in simplifying the Knowledge Commerce market. Instead of wrangling dozens of tools from third parties, you can get everything you need under one umbrella.

Once you've set up your business, you can use benchmarking to improve your processes, strategies, and techniques. Doing so will help your business grow faster.

What is benchmarking? It's a powerful strategy that allows you to compare your business to your competitors and to find better ways to solve existing problems. It might even open your eyes to strategies you've never considered.

Why benchmarking? It's always a good idea to know what your competitors are up to. Additionally, you don't want to miss the opportunity to gather more of the market share and to improve brand awareness.

You'll start by analyzing your own internal processes. What's working and what's not? Then you'll decide on your benchmarking strategy. What channels will you analyze? How will you evaluate the data?

After you’ve made those decisions, it's time to gather evidence and to research your competitors. Use graphs, charts, and other visual representations of the data you collect.

You'll then find yourself ready to apply what you learned, to test the new strategies you've implemented, and to regroup and make changes when necessary.

Conducting a competitive analysis can help with your benchmarking study and provide more insight into your competitors. Use our fictional benchmarking examples the set up your own study today.

Find more blog posts by category:

Create Your Product Build Your Business Grow Your Business Kajabi News Kajabi Hero Stories

Similar Blog Posts

Why should knowledge entrepreneurs care about email warming?

Content marketing: what is it, plus benefits, types and examples

How to successfully collaborate with others to grow your brand

What are you waiting for? Develop your one page business plan with our lean canvas template so you can see your success mapped out.

Download our FREE niche worksheet to discover how you can make a profitable business.

Use our FREE idea validation worksheet to identify your ideal customer and the solutions you can offer to make money.

Download free AI prompts for social media, email marketing, website copy, and digital products to 10x your productivity!

Got followers? Download our free guide on how you can turn your social media following into paying customers.

Get your free worksheet to help you write the perfect sales landing page to convert leads into paying customers.

No email marketing experience? No problem. Download our free performance tracking sheet so you can refine your strategy.

• What is Strategy?
• Business Models
• Developing a Strategy
• Strategic Planning
• Competitive Advantage
• Growth Strategy
• Market Strategy
• Customer Strategy
• Geographic Strategy
• Product Strategy
• Service Strategy
• Pricing Strategy
• Distribution Strategy
• Sales Strategy
• Marketing Strategy
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Organizational Strategy
• HR Strategy – Organizational Design
• HR Strategy – Employee Journey & Culture
• Process Strategy
• Procurement Strategy
• Cost and Capital Strategy
• Business Value
• Market Analysis
• Problem Solving Skills
• Strategic Options
• Business Analytics
• Strategic Decision Making
• Process Improvement
• Project Planning
• Team Leadership
• Personal Development
• Leadership Maturity Model
• Leadership Team Strategy
• The Leadership Team
• Leadership Mindset
• Communication & Collaboration
• Problem Solving
• Decision Making
• People Leadership
• Strategic Execution
• Executive Coaching
• Strategy Coaching
• Business Transformation
• Strategy Workshops
• Leadership Strategy Survey
• Leadership Training
• Who’s Joe?

BENCHMARKING

“Benchmarking provides an inventory of creative changes that other companies have enacted.”

– John Langley, Operations Guru

Over the years, I’ve conducted my fair share of benchmarking. And, anytime I discover a big and important gap between one aspect of a company versus another it always gives me an adrenaline kick since I just discovered a rich vein of gold. To mine the gold, I simply need to address the gap. Your organization’s performance is only as good as the relative performance it has against competitors. If you are truly focused on becoming world-class, you better understand how you perform against your competitors and the industry. Benchmarking tells you where you are ugly or pretty and how ugly or pretty you really are. And, from my benchmarking experience, it is amazing how many people think they are pretty, only to realize how ugly they are. I’m talking figuratively here!

What is benchmarking?

Benchmarking is a form of variance analysis and is the practice of comparing the performance of products , processes , and financials to that of other internal, competitive, or industry performance, to understand the improvement potential or relative performance of the benchmarked products, processes, or financials. There are many types of benchmarking, including:

Customer & Competitive Benchmarking

By far, the most important benchmarking exercise is customer and competitive benchmarking. Companies that win drive customer value better than the competition , in a financially superior way. Understanding the gaps in your customer value proposition versus competitors is essential to developing winning growth strategies.

Internal Benchmarking

Using different internal entities or historical performance data to provide a guidepost in calculating relative performance. I’ve used internal benchmarking extensively with retailers, benchmarking dozens of metrics for each store against their district and national average, and placing them in performance deciles. They were also longitudinally benchmarked against their best historic performance on each metric.

Technical Benchmarking

Comparing an organization’s products, services, and customer processes against key competitors. One of the most important strategic exercises that should be completed at least once a year, is to understand core differences and opportunities in the eyes of your target customers.

Industry Benchmarking

Comparing an organization’s financial and process performance to that of other organizations, in the same or different industries.

Functional Benchmarking

Focusing on a particular function and comparing the performance of the function to that of generally accepted standards or benchmarks.

How do you benchmark?

Customer & competitive benchmarking.

At least once a year, you should do a deep dive on how your company compares to competitors on those dimensions of your value proposition that are important to your target customer . And, you should do it before any strategic or annual planning . You should read the sections on customer strategy , customer value proposition, and the voice of the customer to get some ideas on how to approach customer and competitive benchmarking.

Internal benchmarking

Historical or longitudinal benchmarking.

The easiest form of benchmarking is to compare current performance to that of historical averages and high watermarks. This historical benchmarking should be a consistently used tool in most analyses.

Internal Competitive Benchmarking

One of the most powerful strategic tools is using internal benchmarking to drive awareness and competition in similar, but separate entities, teams, business units, etc. In retail, we benchmarked individuals based on their sales per hour, personal customer service scores, and transactions per hour, and it drove incredible competition and productivity, and service improvements. It necessitates significant investment in systems, change management , and training, but once in place, ongoing internal competitive benchmarking is an incredibly effective performance driver.

Technical competitive benchmarking

Product benchmarking.

If you have a technical product, it is critical you periodically compare your product to top competitor products, or when a competitor launches a new product. Create a simple chart , with all of the different comparison elements including features, quality, performance, price, and reviews, and start comparing, using actual data where you can. You can download the chart below in the Product Strategy section. You will get a lot of ideas and typically a reality check when benchmarking your product against your competitors. Benchmarking is even better if you know how the target customers rank the relative importance of different dimensions.

Product Benchmarking PowerPoint Template

Product Teardowns

Many product companies also conduct product teardowns, where they disassemble products and compare components and designs. It is one of the best exercises to find ideas to cut costs or improve a design. I once did a project for a big rig trucking company. The first step in the design process for the new truck was to buy the three best-selling trucks (each about $100k), completely tear them apart, categorize every screw and component, and document every idea and good design learned from the other trucks.

Customer Service and Process Benchmarking

Have you ever experienced the customer shopping, purchasing, and service experience of your organization and your competitors? If not, you really should. Objectively understanding your customer journey and systematically comparing it to your competitors’ customer journey, will give you the highlight issues, advantages to leverage, and ideas on how to shape your customer journey for the future.

Industry benchmarking

Financial benchmarking.

A great first step in benchmarking is to understand the financial gaps you may have compared to competitors or the industry. Our sister company, Kentley Insights , covers over 100+ industry benchmarks across 1100 industries, which makes industry benchmarking a fairly simple exercise. Or, you can find 3 or 4 public companies, and compare your key financial metrics and ratios (e.g., gross margin, growth, sales per employee, SG&A as a % of sales, inventory turns, AP and AR as a % of sales, etc.) to the public companies.

Best Practice Benchmarking

A key to driving improvements is to ensure your organization is using industry best practices . This could include practices related to manufacturing, sourcing, packaging, logistics, customer experience, vendor relations, marketing , sales, and any part of the organization. While it can be difficult to understand your competitors’ practices, there are so many resources you can find online to help you with industry best practices.

Functional benchmarking

There are associations for pretty much every function including HR, IT, Finance & Accounting, Legal, etc. They are a great resource to understand the typical functional KPIs and metrics, and what the average and best practice benchmarks are for the KPIs and metrics. Give them a call to understand the resources they have, which often necessitates a fee to join the association, but it often pays off if you leverage the resources.

Download your free competitive benchmarking templates. Includes competitive product benchmarking, product ideas, competitive service benchmarking, service ideas, and customer journey mapping. These will get you started on your competitive benchmarking to drive strategic insights, gap analysis, and opportunities.

Download your Free Competitive Benchmarking Templates

NEXT SECTION: CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)

DOWNLOAD STRATEGY PRESENTATION TEMPLATES

THE $150 VALUE PACK - 600 SLIDES 168-PAGE COMPENDIUM OF STRATEGY FRAMEWORKS & TEMPLATES 186-PAGE HR & ORG STRATEGY PRESENTATION 100-PAGE SALES PLAN PRESENTATION 121-PAGE STRATEGIC PLAN & COMPANY OVERVIEW PRESENTATION 114-PAGE MARKET & COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS PRESENTATION 18-PAGE BUSINESS MODEL TEMPLATE

JOE NEWSUM COACHING

EXECUTIVE COACHING STRATEGY COACHING ELEVATE360 BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY WORKSHOPS LEADERSHIP STRATEGY SURVEY & WORKSHOP STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP TRAINING

THE LEADERSHIP MATURITY MODEL

Explore other types of strategy.

BIG PICTURE WHAT IS STRATEGY? BUSINESS MODEL COMP. ADVANTAGE GROWTH

TARGETS MARKET CUSTOMER GEOGRAPHIC

VALUE PROPOSITION PRODUCT SERVICE PRICING

GO TO MARKET DISTRIBUTION SALES MARKETING

ORGANIZATIONAL ORG DESIGN HR & CULTURE PROCESS PARTNER

EXPLORE THE TOP 100 STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

TYPES OF VALUE MARKET ANALYSIS PROBLEM SOLVING

OPTION CREATION ANALYTICS DECISION MAKING PROCESS TOOLS

PLANNING & PROJECTS PEOPLE LEADERSHIP PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

Benchmark Analysis: Types, Steps & 3 Examples

• January 29, 2024

Benchmark analysis stands as a cornerstone in the pursuit of excellence in business and organizational operations. It’s a methodical approach where an organization compares its processes, performance, and strategies against industry standards or leading competitors. This analysis is critical for identifying areas of improvement, understanding competitive positioning, and driving strategic decisions. In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the various types of benchmark analysis, outline the steps involved in conducting an effective benchmarking process, and explore real-world examples to illustrate its impact.

Table of Contents

Understanding Benchmark Analysis

What is benchmark analysis .

Benchmark analysis is a systematic process of comparing and measuring an organization’s processes, products, services, or strategies against those of established standards or industry bests. This analysis serves several purposes: it identifies areas for improvement, fosters a deeper understanding of how competitors achieve their performance levels, and provides insights to achieve superior performance.

Different Dimensions of Benchmarking

Benchmark analysis can be categorized into several types, each serving a specific purpose:

• Performance Benchmarking : Focuses on comparing performance metrics such as speed, quality, and cost.
• Strategic Benchmarking : Involves analyzing the long-term strategies and business approaches of leading organizations.
• Process Benchmarking : Concentrates on comparing operational processes to identify best practices.

Types of Benchmark Analysis

1. Internal Benchmarking

• This type involves comparing practices and performances within various departments or divisions of the same organization. It’s typically the starting point for benchmarking and is useful for standardizing operations across different units of an organization.

2. Competitive Benchmarking

• Here, an organization compares its processes and performance metrics directly with those of its key competitors. This type of benchmarking is crucial for gaining a competitive edge and understanding where the organization stands in the marketplace.

3. Functional Benchmarking

• Functional benchmarking involves comparing specific functions or operations with those of organizations known for their excellence in that particular function, regardless of industry. This approach is useful for improving specific processes or functions like HR, finance, or customer service.

4. Generic Benchmarking

• This broad form of benchmarking compares business processes and performance metrics with non-industry competitors who exhibit best practices in similar areas. Generic benchmarking can provide innovative insights and breakthrough improvements by looking beyond the usual constraints of the industry.

Steps in Conducting Benchmark Analysis

1. identifying what to benchmark.

The process begins with pinpointing the specific areas or aspects to be benchmarked. This decision should be strategic, focusing on areas critical to the organization’s success or those known to have a gap in performance. Potential benchmarking subjects include operational processes, customer service protocols, product quality, or financial performance indicators. The key is to choose areas where improvements can significantly impact overall business performance. Often, a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis is used to identify these areas.

2. Choosing Benchmarking Partners

Selecting appropriate benchmarking partners is pivotal. This selection is based on who excels in the area you intend to benchmark. For competitive benchmarking, this might be direct competitors. For functional benchmarking, it could be any organization known for its best practices in the area of interest, regardless of the industry. The choice should align with the goals of the benchmarking exercise – whether it’s to match industry standards or to achieve best-in-class status. Establishing criteria for selection and using reliable sources of information, such as industry reports and market analyses, can aid in this step.

3. Data Collection and Analysis

This stage involves gathering relevant data from the selected benchmarks. The methods of data collection can vary – from publicly available information, like annual reports and market studies, to more direct methods such as surveys, interviews, or even site visits. The goal is to collect comprehensive and accurate data that can offer insights into the processes, strategies, or metrics of the benchmark. Once data is collected, it should be analyzed meticulously. This analysis aims to understand the underlying reasons for the benchmarks’ superior performance. It’s not just about what they do but how and why they do it. This step often involves comparing your practices against the benchmark to identify gaps and areas of improvement.

4. Implementing Changes

With the insights gained from the benchmark analysis, the next step is to develop and implement a plan for improvement. This might involve setting specific, measurable goals and objectives. The implementation plan should detail the actions needed to close the performance gap, including resource allocation, timelines, and responsibilities. It’s essential to ensure that the plan is realistic and achievable. Change management strategies may be necessary to overcome resistance within the organization. Furthermore, it’s important to align these changes with the overall strategic goals of the organization.

5. Review and Continual Improvement

The final step is the ongoing review of the changes implemented. This includes monitoring the outcomes of the benchmarking process and measuring the improvements achieved. Key performance indicators (KPIs) should be established to track progress. Regular reviews can help in identifying if the changes are delivering the desired results and if any course corrections are needed. Continuous improvement should be the goal, with benchmark analysis not being a one-off exercise but an integral part of the organization’s continual pursuit of excellence.

Examples and Case Studies of Benchmark Analysis

Case study 1: retail company’s competitive benchmarking.

Background and Objective

A mid-sized retail company, aiming to enhance its market presence, initiated a competitive benchmarking analysis. The primary objective was to improve customer satisfaction and streamline in-store operations.

Benchmarking Process

The company identified leading retail chains known for exceptional customer service as their benchmarking partners. They focused on key areas such as customer engagement strategies, store layout efficiency, and employee training programs.

Data Collection and Analysis

Through a combination of market research reports, customer feedback surveys, and secret shopper visits to both their stores and those of the benchmarks, the company gathered comprehensive data. They analyzed customer service interactions, store navigation ease, and staff responsiveness.

Findings and Implementation

The analysis revealed that top-performing competitors had highly trained staff with strong product knowledge and customer engagement skills. Their store layouts were optimized for easy navigation, and they had efficient check-out processes. In response, the retail company redesigned its training programs to focus more on customer engagement, reorganized its store layouts for better flow, and introduced more efficient check-out counters.

Results and Review

Post-implementation, the company saw a significant increase in customer satisfaction scores and a reduction in checkout times. Regular reviews were established to ensure continued adherence to the new standards and to adapt to any evolving market trends.

Case Study 2: Manufacturing Company’s Functional Benchmarking

A manufacturing company looking to reduce operational costs and increase production efficiency embarked on a functional benchmarking project. They chose to benchmark their supply chain and logistics operations.

The company selected non-competitor organizations known for supply chain excellence across different industries. The focus was on inventory management, procurement processes, and logistics optimization.

Data Collection and Analysis Data was collected through industry reports, expert interviews, and workshops with the benchmarked companies. The company analyzed inventory turnover rates, procurement cycle times, and logistics cost structures.

The analysis highlighted several areas for improvement, such as adopting just-in-time inventory practices and leveraging technology for better supply chain visibility. The company implemented these practices, streamlined its procurement process, and adopted advanced logistics management software.

The changes resulted in a noticeable reduction in inventory costs, improved procurement efficiency, and more reliable delivery timelines. The company established a continuous monitoring system to track these areas and make adjustments as needed.

Case Study 3: IT Company’s Internal Benchmarking

An IT company with multiple departments performing inconsistently in software development sought to standardize best practices across the organization through internal benchmarking.

The company identified its most efficient department as the benchmark. They focused on development processes, project management techniques, and team collaboration methods.

By conducting internal workshops and interviews, they gathered data on various teams’ methodologies and performance metrics. They compared these against the practices of the benchmark department.

The benchmarking revealed that the most efficient department used agile methodologies, had robust project management tools, and fostered a collaborative team culture. The company decided to implement these practices across all departments. Training sessions were organized, and new project management tools were deployed.

Post-implementation, the company observed an increase in development efficiency, a decrease in project delivery times, and improved team morale. Regular internal reviews were scheduled to ensure consistency and continuous improvement.

How Benchmark Analysis is Useful in Business Analysis

Benchmark analysis is an essential tool in the arsenal of business analysis, offering numerous benefits that contribute significantly to organizational success and strategic decision-making. Here’s how benchmark analysis proves to be particularly useful in the field of business analysis:

Comprehensive Market Understanding

• Competitive Insight : Benchmark analysis helps businesses understand where they stand relative to competitors. By comparing performance metrics, processes, or strategies with those of market leaders or direct competitors, businesses gain insights into their competitive position and market dynamics.
• Industry Trends and Standards : It enables businesses to stay updated with industry trends, standards, and best practices. This is crucial for maintaining relevance and competitiveness in rapidly changing markets.

Enhanced Operational Efficiency

• Identifying Improvement Areas : By comparing internal processes and performance metrics with those of industry leaders, businesses can identify inefficiencies and areas needing improvement.
• Adopting Best Practices : Benchmark analysis exposes businesses to the best practices within their industry or in other industries. Adopting these practices can lead to significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.

Strategic Planning and Decision Making

• Informed Decision Making : With a clearer understanding of the industry and competitors, businesses can make more informed strategic decisions. Benchmark analysis provides empirical data that can guide expansion, diversification, and other strategic initiatives.
• Risk Mitigation : By understanding how competitors and industry leaders manage risks and challenges, businesses can develop strategies to mitigate similar risks.

Product and Service Enhancement

• Quality Improvement : Benchmarking against organizations known for high-quality products or services can reveal gaps in a business’s own offerings and provide a roadmap for quality improvement.
• Innovation and Development : Insights gained from benchmark analysis can fuel innovation. Understanding how other companies develop and improve their products or services can inspire new ideas and approaches.

Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

• Meeting Customer Expectations : By benchmarking customer service and satisfaction levels, businesses can understand how well they are meeting customer expectations compared to their competitors.
• Enhancing Customer Experience : Benchmarking can reveal successful customer service practices and strategies employed by competitors, which can be adapted to enhance customer experience and loyalty.

Financial Performance

• Cost Optimization : Benchmarking helps in identifying areas where costs can be reduced without compromising quality. This could be through more efficient processes, better resource management, or technological advancements.
• Revenue Growth : By understanding the revenue-generating strategies of successful competitors, businesses can adopt similar approaches to increase their own revenues.

Employee Development and Engagement

• Best HR Practices : Benchmarking HR practices with industry leaders can lead to improved employee satisfaction and retention. This includes training, development, and employee engagement strategies.

Continuous Improvement and Innovation

• Cultivating a Culture of Excellence : Regular benchmarking promotes a culture of continuous improvement and striving for excellence within the organization.
• Driving Innovation : Exposure to the innovative practices of others through benchmarking can spark creativity and encourage innovation within the company.

Elevate your career in business analysis with the prestigious Master Business Analysis Training Program offered by MCAL Global. Tailored for both aspiring and seasoned professionals, this program is your gateway to mastering the intricacies of business analysis. Whether you’re aiming to begin your journey or seeking advanced knowledge, our specialized courses, including CBDA , CBAP , and Master BA Training specifically for the Investment Banking Domain , are designed to meet your needs. With MCAL Global, you gain not just skill enhancement but also valuable industry connections, positioning you perfectly for high-paying roles at leading companies. Embrace this opportunity to transform your professional path and become a sought-after expert in the dynamic field of business analysis.

Benchmark analysis is more than a tool; it’s a strategic approach that drives continuous improvement and competitive advantage in an ever-evolving business landscape. By understanding and implementing various types of benchmark analysis, organizations can uncover valuable insights, adopt best practices, and ultimately elevate their operational and strategic performance. Embracing benchmark analysis is not just about keeping pace with the competition; it’s about striving for excellence and leadership in the industry.

Share this:

Discover more from mcal global.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

Benchmarking

Benchmarking Definition

Benchmarking is a strategy tool used to compare the performance of business processes and products with the best performances of other companies inside and outside the industry.

Benchmarking is the search for industry best practices that lead to superior performance.

What is Benchmarking

One way an organization can judge its performance is by comparing itself with other internal units or past data. However, these measurements reveal limited insights and often reinforce complacency or generate “not invented here” excuses.

Comparisons with outsiders, however, can highlight the best industry practices and promote adoption. This technique is commonly known as Benchmarking .

Benchmarking is a form of variance analysis and is the practice of comparing the performance of products, processes, and financials to that of other competitive or industry performances to understand the improvement potential or relative performance. [1]

Origin of benchmarking

The term “benchmarking” has its origins among surveyors who chiseled marks in stone to indicate levels and heights as reference points for construction calculations.

While benchmarking may seem like a management trend from the 20 th century, it is not even from that era. Its origins date back to a time when man first looked at his neighbor’s hut and thought ‘That design lets in less rain than mine, perhaps I should build one like that’.

One can imagine that somewhere near the start of the road to modern civilization, men realized they could learn from each other’s discoveries and improve their own situation. The Industrial Revolution made it clear that large profits could be made by developing better products in ways that were faster and more efficient. It also became necessary to be aware of the competition, where they stand and their future moves.

Modern benchmarking activities were established in the 1940s when governments reverse-engineered military equipment. Since then, the application of benchmarking has grown rapidly to include product/service, finance, processes, functions, strategy, and projects.

The enthusiasm for benchmarking in the 20 th century was particularly fueled by two things:

• First, the Japanese development of the Total Quality Management (TQM) [4] and Kaizen [5] . These were systems for continuous improvement built on careful measurement of industrial activities and close monitoring of measures. It not only forced managers to make such measurements but also to compare with competitors and the industry.
• Second, the work of Michael Porter [6] on competitive advantage forced firms to think more about their competitors and where they stood in relation to them rather than where they stood in terms of their own history.

Why organizations use benchmarking

Organizations benchmark for several reasons, the most common of which are:

As a tool to support the continuous improvement culture

Most organizations today follow continuous improvement philosophies such as TQM, the Quality Management Standard ISO9000 [7] , and Quality Circles [8] amongst many others.  While these tools are excellent, by themselves, they do not:

• Suggest where to focus improvement activities.
• Identify appropriate performance levels, and.
• Suggest what practices are likely to lead to optimum performance levels.

Benchmarking, on the other hand, addresses these issues by answering questions such as:

• How competitive are we?
• What improvement activities should we focus on?
• Where do we stand in terms of performance in each area when compared with other organizations?
• What is the expected return on investment for improvements in each area?
• How do we prioritize improvements?

To short-cut the improvement process

Without benchmarking, organizations must expend effort on analysis, process redesign, re-training, and other costs. Even then, they may not achieve the same performance levels as others. Benchmarking, on the other hand, helps identify current best practices, adapt and improve them and then expend effort on implementing changes with a high degree of certainty.  

For target and budget-setting

Organizations often set arbitrary targets– for example, a 5%-10% improvement from current/past performance. Such targets are of little practical use.

Benchmarking helps identify specific and relevant targets based on what others are achieving. The returns on achieving such targets are often higher.

As a driver for improvement

Benchmarking against competitors is a strong driver for improvement because if an organization fails to perform at similar or superior levels to competitors, market forces will eventually force an organization out of business.

For problem-solving

Benchmarking can also be used to solve specific problems. Looking at others carrying out similar work reveals what processes, tools, or equipment they use and the problems they encounter.

As a mandate of Business Excellence Models

Many excellence models including the Baldridge Award in the USA [9] , and the European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Award in Europe [10] among others require or at least imply the need for benchmarking.

To target a competitor’s weak points

Though not common, some organizations use benchmarking to find a competitor’s relative weak points as perceived by customers. This helps them to ensure that their own performance remains better in those areas or markets, thus providing a competitive edge.

Types of benchmarking methods

Several benchmarking methods exist. Organizations can either choose any one method suited to their needs or use a mix of methods to achieve the best results.

Seven of the most commonly used benchmarking methods are outlined and explained:

Public Domain Benchmarking (PDB)

In this method, the benchmarker collects data from public sources for analysis and reporting. The metrics used are usually ‘output’ metrics – the ones that measure product/service in terms of customer experience.

For example, when comparing cars, metrics used are likely to include selling price, brand perception, features, safety rating, reliability etc. Metrics important to internal business, such as employee satisfaction, manufacturing throughput, distribution, etc., are excluded.

The most common and visible example of this type of benchmarking can be seen in hobby and consumer websites which provide independent reviews of a host of products and services ranging from cars to cameras to credit cards.

Some websites also survey their subscribers to compare the customer experiences of products and services. PDB is also a preferred choice to benchmark public services such as schools (by passing rates), hospitals (waiting times), fire services (response time), transportation (timing, comfort) etc.

Participants

The participants in PDB are generally unaware that they are part of the study till the results are published. Their selection is controlled by the benchmarker and they usually do not influence membership.

Control of the Study

In a PDB, all aspects of the study are controlled by the benchmarker. While participants might be requested to supply products (e.g.: a demo car), refusal generally implies that the participant believes their product/service will fare badly in the study.

In most cases, data for benchmarking is required to be reported by law or is available in the public domain. There is seldom a need to seek any further information.

In a PDB, the risks for each of the three groups that have an interest in the process are as follows:

• Benchmarker : The organization carrying out the study (benchmarker) has a very low risk, generally limited to a lawsuit that may result if they are unable to substantiate published findings.
• Customers : Customers dependent on the benchmarking studies face the potential risk of incomplete or inaccurate analysis leading to dubious conclusions or the omission of potential participants from the study. Hence, caution must be exercised when interpreting data. Customers may also face the risk of participants manipulating their processes in order to improve their position. Another disadvantage is that when comparing products, often only one sample from each participant is benchmarked which may not accurately reflect parameters such as reliability.
• Participants : Participants’ risk is limited to the study showing them as a poor performer which may affect their image.

The timeline of a PDB study can vary from a few days, where data are already in the public domain and only need to be extracted, formatted, and reported, to several months, where extended trials or tests are necessary.

PDB is useful to provide information to the public that helps make informed decisions about products and services they use. Willing or unwilling, benchmarking participants will also have access to valuable information regarding how their products and services relate to others in the marketplace.

While a favorable report helps participants market their services and products better, those who come out poorly can use the information to drive improvement within the organization.

The PDB Process flow

While every benchmarker may have their own detailed process, the overall PDB process follows the following seven steps:

• Determining objectives and scope of the study : usually, the primary objective is to determine the best product or service from the customer’s viewpoint. A second objective is to comment on favorable and unfavorable aspects of the products or services reviewed. PDB is also used to highlight the disparity in public services such as medical services, schools, or policing.
• Check if data exists : If the data is already available (such as government sources, the internet, or other published material), the benchmarker can acquire the data and move to Step 7.
• Decide how to obtain data : Data can typically be obtained from a test or a survey. Testing involves experiencing the product or service first-hand and reporting on the findings while a survey relies on past users for the same information. Combining both approaches is a good way to corroborate test results with the survey findings.
• Acquire products : A product or service may be acquired either as a member of the public without revealing intent or by asking the participant to supply samples for testing. The latter has the advantage of lower cost but carries the risk of manipulation.
• Testing : the nature and extent of tests can vary widely, from simple reporting to taking measurements and extended field trials over time. The benchmarker may carry out tests themself and/or may invite members of the public to trial and provide feedback.
• Survey : carrying out a survey reliably can be a complex process. It is advisable to appoint specialist survey organizations/individuals with experience in the process.
• Analysis : the complexity of analyses will depend on the objectives of the study and the quantity and type of data collected. Most reports include the objectives of the study, how it was carried out, and the source of the data while identifying performance levels.

One-to-One Benchmarking (OTOB)

Originally developed by Xerox in the 1970s and 1980s, OTOB is the most widely used benchmarking method and consists of the following steps:

• Finding out which organization is the best, or amongst the best, at performing the aspect of business that is the target of the improvement.
• Visiting them to ascertain their level of performance and learn how they achieve that performance.
• Studying their best practices, modifying them where necessary, and improving them where possible.
• Adopting the new practice into one’s own organization.

While it is not necessary, or usually possible, to ensure that the target participant is the best, it is enough to know that the target participant is performing significantly better and that it is amongst the best in the area being benchmarked.

In the 1990s, Xerox Corp, the maker of high-technology copiers, took inspiration from L.L. Bean Inc., a retail firm with a reputation for delivering sweaters at the industry’s best speeds.

When Xerox went through their processes, it discovered that L.L. Bean could pick and pack goods three and a half times faster. Xerox later developed its own distribution system for copiers based on learnings from L.L. Bean and significantly improved deliveries.

While copiers had no similarity with sweaters, it was because Xerox believed that L.L. Bean was amongst the best at distribution that they visited them to learn about distribution processes. It might also be possible that L.L. Bean’s other processes, such as billing, purchasing, and order tracking may not have been better than Xerox’s.

In OTOB, the key is to determine what the target organization excels at and learn about that aspect of their business.

OTOB has two participating organizations:

• The initiator – the organization initiating the benchmarking study.
• The target – the organization with which the initiator wants to benchmark and is perceived as high-performing in terms of the scope being benchmarked.

An OTOB initiator may also perform a series of paired benchmarking studies, both within and across industries and geographies. This provides several best practices for review and comparison before implementation.

OTOB is controlled by the two participants who mutually agree on timescales, information to be exchanged, modalities and other legal and logistical aspects of the study.

OTOP presents some unique risks:

• Improper information – because only one or two representatives visit during the benchmarking, the information fed back to the initiator’s management may be incomplete, subjective, or anecdotal. Common reasons include a lack of a structured method for information collection and a fear of reporting how poor conditions are to one’s own management.
• Inaction – benchmarking visits that are not followed up with actions end up being seen as expensive trips for a privileged few.
• Implementing changes without considering relevance – a practice that helped a target participant may not always be relevant to the initiator. For example, a mass-market automobile manufacturer may be able to maintain lower inventory levels due to standardization while a luxury manufacturer may find the same practice to be logistically complex and expensive.

While OTOB has some risks, on the positive side, the associated costs are relatively lower due to comparatively less manpower and effort required to complete the study. It also offers high learning potential as cross-industry benchmarking makes it possible to identify quantum differences in performance levels.

OTOB studies are usually very quick to complete once a target organization has been identified. Depending on the scope and complexities, site visits can range between one day to several days.

OTOB is most suited to cases where the initiating participant knows what they want to learn and from whom they want to learn it. It is also a natural step following other benchmarking studies – for example, a PDB study may reveal poor performance as well as potential candidates for OTOB.

The OTOB Process flow

Typical steps in an OTOB study are:

• Determine objectives: This step typically includes identifying best practices that lead to superior performance in the area being benchmarked. If the target organization is known to be a significantly better performer, the process of gathering necessary data to demonstrate its superior performance can be skipped. Alternatively, it may only be necessary to make a rough approximation of the performance level in the case of one (or a few) participants.
• Identify and rank potential target organizations : In some cases, the potential target organizations may be obvious. For example, pit stops in Formula 1 racing have been the gold standard of synergy and efficiency and have inspired many industries. [13] In other cases, a participant can use a number of criteria to identify potential targets including perceived performance level, perceived similarity of benchmarking subject, commercial considerations, and location.
• Determine information and data requirements: Involves documenting specifics of what is to be learned and the information required from the target organization. The initiating organization must have a deep understanding of their own processes and weaknesses to complete this step.
• Contact the target organization and finalize the scope : This step involves contacting and sharing expectations from the visit along with data so that appropriate people can be appointed to answer questions and to ensure they have any data, demonstrations, documents, etc. prepared for the visit.
• Visit the target organization: A well-prepared visit provides the required information. It is important to adhere to codes of conduct and respect the decision of the target participant to withhold information or data.
• Analysis and reporting : In this step, the initiating participant prepares a report outlining what information was shared, conclusions, and recommendations for further action. The target organization may also request a copy of the report or at least the parts relating to it.

Review Benchmarking

In a review benchmarking study, a person or group visits a number of participants with the intent of reviewing certain activities at each facility to compare findings. The review may involve data comparison, working practices or a combination of both. Objectives typically include:

• Identifying the performance levels of each participant
• Quantifying performance gaps between each participant, the best performer and/or the group’s average
• Identifying differences in working practices that lead to differences in performance
• Recommending a course of action for each participant to improve performance

While most review benchmarking studies are performed by participants who initiate the study for their own benefit, some organizations, such as Best Practices LLC [14] , carry out research to discover best practices with the aim of publishing and selling their findings.

A processing plant owned by a Joint Venture (JV) for example may benchmark its efficiency by comparing its work processes to several other similar plants owned by JV partners. The resulting report will highlight the plant’s performance gaps, potential benefits from matching the best performer, and recommended actions.

Participants, Control of Study and Risks

Any group of organizations, within or across industries, may agree to take part in a review benchmarking study as participants. While a two-participant becomes similar to an OTOB, as the number of participants increases, the study demands more careful planning and control.

Typically, such a study is controlled equally by all participants, but It is also possible that the group of participants agree to the objectives of the study and leave the details to one.

Review benchmarking study has low risks as participants have total control and can specify all the aspects of the study including other participants, use of a consultant, metrics, processes, etc. However, associated costs can be high depending on how the study is run.

Review benchmarking studies are typically carried out in more depth compared to OTOB and include both, the collection of data and documenting the working practices along with a comparison. Depending on the number of participants and the depth of the study, it usually takes a couple of weeks to a few months.

Review benchmarking studies are best suited when the group of participants is small and they want to benchmark areas where differences in performance level are due to subtle operational differences. This normally requires an in-depth understanding of aspects such as commercial, legal, or engineering issues that will not be readily identifiable from data alone. Because review benchmarking is relatively expensive, its use is limited to cases where there are large differences in performance levels which poorer performers can exploit to benefit significantly.

The review benchmarking Process flow

The review benchmarking process is similar to OTOB and consists of the following steps:

• Determine scope and objectives : initiating participant(s) determine the objectives of the study which include ascertaining relative performance levels, quantifying the potential benefit of performing at the level of the best performer and identifying best practices.
• Identity potential participants : recognizing and prioritizing participants who are preferred candidates for the study. If the study is initiated due to prior benchmarking, is an internal investigation, or involves organizations with pre-existing connections, it is likely that the participants are already identified.
• Draw a list of information and data requirements as potential participants will expect to know what is being proposed.
• Contact potential participants – inviting them to take part in the study.
• Finalize plan: review the details of the study through a series of meetings to ensure everyone understands its scope, nature, and benefits. Data confidentiality concerns, if any, are also discussed (this might limit the participation).
• Complete visits – the benchmarking team visits the participants to collect data and information, and to ensure it is properly understood.
• Analyze and report : Visit findings are written up and issued as per agreement. It is a good practice to issue a draft report that allows participants to correct any inaccuracies and/or add further appropriate information.

Database Benchmarking

Database benchmarking is used in situations where a benchmarker, usually an independent consultant, has a built-up database of performance levels from many organizations over time. As each participant joins the study, their data is added to the master database and performance is compared to that of other participants.

Database benchmarking is often offered by consulting firms that maintain a database of several benchmarking studies. While some are open for public use, others are only open to members. For example, McKinsey & Company has a tool known as Portfolio Navigator that helps banks compare their performance against industry peers. [15]

The number and types of participants can widely vary in a database benchmarking study. While participants may be given a complete or partial list of other participants, their performance levels are unlikely to be divulged.

Control solely lies with the consulting organization (database owner) which controls most aspects of the study. Participants have little to no influence over the data collected, data definitions, or metrics calculated by the consultant.

Hence, participants are exposed to the risk of poor benchmarking quality as the results are largely dependent on the integrity of the consultant and the accuracy of the supplied data.

The timeline depends on the speed with which the data can be supplied and the consultant’s internal processes – typically taking a few weeks. Some online studies even provide results instantly upon providing the data.

Database benchmarking is a go-to option when a reputable consultant is known to have a database of high-quality data along with a successful track record in helping organizations improve.

Database benchmarking Process flow

The process is straightforward, with the third step depending on the chosen consultant’s internal processes:

Trial Benchmarking

Trial benchmarking is similar to PDB, but with the exception that the initiating organization itself carries out the benchmarking. As the initiator simply uses the services or products to be benchmarked, other participants are unaware that they are being benchmarked.

Airlines frequently benchmark their customer experience by flying with other airlines to evaluate aspects such as quality of food, friendliness of staff, seat comfort etc. Online websites are frequently compared with competitor websites to benchmark speed, design, responsiveness, ease of use etc.

Participants are usually the initiating firm’s competitors and are unlikely to know that they are being studied. The initiating firm controls all aspects of the study and there are very few risks associated with this type of benchmarking.

The timeline can vary widely depending on the product or service being studied. For example, evaluating the durability of paint may require several months or even years, whereas assessing an airline experience can be accomplished in just one or a few visits.

Trial benchmarking is best suited to

• Monitor competitor performance and identify potential product/service improvements.
• Identify potential participants for a detailed benchmarking study.
• Identify a firm’s own areas of high performance and market them as strengths.

Trial benchmarking process flow

Trial benchmarking consists of a five-step process:

• Determine scope and objectives – define the features & performance parameters of products and/or services to be benchmarked, which may include quantifying the costs and benefits of improving the product and/or service.
• Identify target organizations and rank them in the order of preference for the study. While the potential participants for competitor benchmarking are obvious, non-competitor benchmarking studies (e.g., online ordering processing) will require some research.
• Develop a list of information and data requirements .
• Carry out comparison – acquire/experience products and/or services as planned.
• Analyze and report the findings of the comparisons and document as required.

Survey Benchmarking

Like trial benchmarking, survey benchmarking is also a subset of PDB, and is more commonly used in the consumer goods and services market where a customer’s perception is the key to a supplier’s success.

Carrying out a customer survey is often the most direct way to gain insights into customer perception and is usually performed through interviews, web, telephone or email.

E-commerce websites frequently email guests with a survey questionnaire asking them to rate their purchase experience.

In a survey benchmarking, the initiating organization chooses whom to benchmark against and has good control over the study. Other participants are unlikely to know that they are being benchmarked.

While there are very few associated risks with survey benchmarking, the effectiveness of the process hinges on designing and administering effective customer surveys and interpreting the results which may require statistical expertise.

A one-off study with the involvement of a survey consultancy could take up to several months. However, eliciting feedback from customers is a continuous process that most organizations carry out regularly.

Survey benchmarking is typically used to:

• Monitor customer perception about competitor performance.
• Identify potential product/service improvements.
• Identify a firm’s strengths and build markets for those strengths.

Survey benchmarking process flow

Survey benchmarking generally has four steps:

• Determine scope and objectives : usually limited to ascertaining the strengths and weaknesses of competitor products and services. However, the survey could be used to gather additional information such as complaints, improvements, and new products/services.
• Design, develop, and pilot test survey – involves developing a questionnaire and selecting its method of delivery (e.g., email, post, telephone) along with other specifics such as size, sampling method, and other survey details. This is followed by pilot-testing the survey to ensure that the results produce the required information.
• Carryout the survey
• Analyze and report

Business Excellence Models

A Business Excellence Model (BEM) is a set of interrelated criteria that aims to capture

key aspects of a successful organization. The model is designed such that the extent to which an organization adheres to these criteria reflects its success.

BEMs provide a mechanism for comparing the performance of any group of organizations by scoring each one against a standard and comparing the scores. In BEM benchmarking, a direct comparison between organizations is seldom, if ever, carried out.

Most commonly used BEMs include the Malcolm Baldridge Award Model [9] , which is used in over 25+ countries and the European Foundation for Quality Management [10] which is used across Europe.

All Excellence Models work on similar principles by defining criteria that they believe, if effectively implemented, will lead an organization to operate at world-class standards. For example, the Malcolm Baldridge Award Model defines seven criteria as critical to the success of any business:

Although BEMs were not intended to be used for benchmarking, some or all of the model’s criteria can be used as metrics for comparison.

Organizations that use BEM for benchmarking generally do not publish the findings. Hence, examples are difficult to identify. Notably, From 1998 to mid-2003, Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation U.S. used the Baldrige process to increase its assets by 34 percent and profit by 54 percent, while industry performance declined by 21 percent and 35 percent, respectively during the same period. [17]

Unless participants agree to share assessment information and learning, there is only one participant – the one being assessed.  That organization is also the one in control of the study unless a consultant or an awarding body carries out the assessment.

There are no real risks in entering excellence awards except usually a fee and the time required to gather the information and make a submission.

The timeline depends on the size of the organization and the availability of data and information, typically ranging from a few weeks to months.

BEMs are a good method to review all of the organization’s activities and identify weak areas with the added benefit of good publicity if the organization does well.

Choosing a Benchmarking Method

While clarity emerges as an organization prepares for its benchmarking projects, the most appropriate method depends on a number of factors, including:

• Confidentiality requirements (the extent to which data can be shared openly, shared but anonymized or not shared).
• Whether the participant knows which organization(s) are the best performers or whether comparative levels of performance need to be ascertained.
• The scope of the study.
• Whether a benchmarking club similar in scope already exists.
• The organization’s experience level in benchmarking.

Each of the above factors can be addressed in a wide variety of ways and the benchmarking study can be tailored to meet the needs and constraints of the participants.

Types of benchmarking projects

The first step in a benchmarking study is to select a benchmarking project. While there are no globally accepted definitions or classifications of a benchmarking project, based on the focus area and the scope, they can be broadly classified into the following:

Process Benchmarking

These are benchmarking studies where partial or complete processes are benchmarked.

For example, an organization may choose to benchmark its entire purchase process. Alternatively, within the purchasing process, it might focus only on the process from issuing a purchase order to the arrival of goods on-site.

Process benchmarking can include various locations, facilities, and groups and allows for in-depth examination.

Process benchmarking need not be confined to any specific industry as many support processes, like purchasing, warehousing, and billing, are not industry-specific. While cross-industry process benchmarking is usually more difficult, it is also where the greatest learning opportunities exist.

Facility Benchmarking

Some studies benchmark self-contained facilities such as factories, power plants, or airports. Such studies are typically suited to analyze the comparative total cost and/or hours required to produce a unit of output. It is also used in situations where it is not possible to split the scope based on tasks or groups.

A facility benchmarking typically covers the whole facility and requires looking at many different activities. Thus, it provides a good overview of where strengths and weaknesses lie and helps management decide which areas to focus improvement activities on.

Studying a complete facility or group in depth can be a highly complex project and is often simplified by:

• Benchmarking activities at a high level.
• Initiating separate studies for selected areas.
• Limiting the scope of the study.

Facility benchmarking is not suited to small facilities where the same individual may be involved in several tasks or may have multiple roles and responsibilities.

Product and service benchmarking

This kind of benchmarking focuses on the output of the process as experienced by the customer – usually a product or a service or sometimes a combination of both. IT help desks, after-sales, domestic goods, cars etc., are typical examples.

A key advantage of product and service benchmarking is that it provides critical information on how the customer experiences the product or service. However, as the focus is only on the final output, such a study provides limited opportunities for learning about practices that produce better products or services.

Activity Benchmarking

Activity benchmarking focuses on individual-specific activities or tasks and is used as a part of other types of benchmarking. It is generally limited in scope and goes into great detail.

Functional Benchmarking

In functional benchmarking, the subject of the study is not a whole facility, nor necessarily a whole process but a specific function, group or subject that may extend over several sites and/or several departments. For example, finance or warehousing.

Generic Benchmarking

Generic benchmarking is the process of analyzing two companies in different industries while focusing on a general required result and the process to achieve it.

Such benchmarking studies seldom compare performance with others by using metrics; rather, they investigate how other industries successfully manage the key aspects of their business.

For example, the perfect Formula 1 pit stop takes less than 2 seconds and has inspired industrial applications ranging from patient safety to toothpaste production. [18]

While the gains are spectacular if successful, generic benchmarking is perceived as being difficult as it demands a leap from the obvious route of comparing and learning from others.

Project benchmarking

Project benchmarking is the benchmarking of stand-alone events or projects such as construction projects. It is not as common as other types of benchmarking, as no two projects are the same and, therefore, cannot be easily benchmarked.

Participants in such a study search for projects similar to the one being planned and use benchmarked data to help determine likely costs, resource requirements, typical problems and solutions.

Project benchmarking is also different from other types of benchmarking in that the data reported will reflect a complete project rather than a period.

Choosing a benchmarking project

Most benchmarking studies begin with a chosen subject, but if not, the selection process is made up of two aspects:

Identifying a list of potential benchmarking projects

To generate a list of potential benchmarking projects, an organization can consider the following:

Selecting which project(s) to progress

The following considerations are useful in narrowing the list and selecting benchmarking projects:

• The benchmarking experience of those who will be involved in the project. The selected benchmarking project must be easy to complete with a high probability of success. Once the organization in general, and those who will be involved in benchmarking in particular, have gained experience in benchmarking, more complex issues can be benchmarked.
• Key success factors – preferred areas for benchmarking are those that are key to the success of the business and where performance is believed to be poor.
• Stakeholder support – It is crucial that the gains expected from the benchmarking study attract support from management and potential participants. Key people in the area being studied must also be supportive of the project, or else it could lead to non-cooperative behaviour that undermines the success of the study.

The benchmarking process

An organization’s benchmarking processes can vary based on its needs and situations. Organizations that have no existing benchmarking processes can follow the following model which is split into three phases:

Organizations where a benchmarking study already exists and meets most of the needs can join the existing study rather than attempt to set up a new one. In such a situation, the activities in Phase 1 will reduce significantly.

Each of the stages in the above three phases is discussed in more detail:

Phase 1: Planning

Selecting a project and demonstrating the need for benchmarking.

Organizations will not allocate significant resources to a benchmarking project unless they believe that it will bring significant benefits. As benchmarking is used to identify areas of weakness, in organizations that have no apparent weakness, management may be reluctant to commit resources.

Hence, the first step is to identify the need and persuade decision-makers about the benefits of benchmarking. This can be accomplished by including references to:

• The current performance level of the organization.
• Why the current performance level is not acceptable?
• Why is it important to know the comparative performance levels vs competition.

It is important for statements to be factual and should not imply a solution or blame.

Developing a Persuasive Benchmarking Proposal

The next step in a benchmarking study is to develop or review the project charter which typically includes the scope of the study, business reason for the study, project objectives and team members as a minimum.

Justification for the study must be based on the weakness already identified and should include potential benefits. The potential benefits must be attractive enough to gain management support.

It is also important to identify the objectives that define what the study will achieve. These objectives ultimately act as a yardstick against which the success of the study is measured.

The three parts of the Charter: scope, justification, and objectives, have key roles to play throughout the study:

After finalizing the Charter, the team can create a project proposal that aligns with the Charter’s objectives.

This proposal is a vital component of the study, serving multiple needs from gaining management support to acting as a communication tool within the organization, aiding in recruiting participants, guiding the team throughout the project, and ultimately serving as the benchmark for evaluating the project’s success.

Selecting Potential Participants

Deciding who to invite to join a benchmarking study is both a difficult and important decision. The process of selecting participants involves developing a list of preferred participants ranked in the order of preference along with reasons for choice.

Typical attributes of preferred benchmarking participants include:

• World-class performers in the targeted aspects so that learning can be maximized.
• Industry peers with similar commercial environments, structures, performance metrics, and other aspects so that identifying and adopting best practices is easier.
• Those located nearby for ease of communication.

Benchmarking participants can be classified as:

• Internal – groups within the organization. This can lead to being the best in the organization.
• Competitors – who operate in the same industry. This can lead to increased market share.
• Non-competitors – within the same industry but not competing for the same market share (For example, Honda and Rolls Royce). Such benchmarking can lead to being the best in the industry.
• Cross-industry – organizations from different industries and thus non-competitors (earlier example of Xerox and L.L. Bean Inc). The organization can potentially become the being the best in the world.

Develop Metrics

Metrics enable measurement and comparison of performances between participants and quantifies performance gaps and potential gains. Management and potential participants see metrics as a key element of benchmarking study.

Clear definitions are important in developing metrics without which, participants may report to different standards. Once the metrics are finalized, the data is collected, validated, and analyzed. This is followed by a gap analysis between each participant and a selected standard (such as ‘best in class’, top quartile, or average).

The resulting recommendations are then provided to drive actions.

While metrics are important, they are not always necessary to complete a successful benchmarking study. Generic benchmarking for example, which identifies a completely new approach to running aspects of the organization does not use metrics for comparison.

Resource Planning

The final aspect of the planning stage is to determine the resource requirements and timescale for the study. This results in a persuasive proposal to management to support the benchmarking project and release the required resources.

The resource requirement and timescale will depend on many factors, such as:

• Scope of the study – the wider the scope, the more effort to benchmark it.
• The planned number of participants – a greater number of participants leads to slower decision-making and accommodating the needs of all participants becomes increasingly challenging.
• The ease with which participants can be persuaded to join the study – the more difficult it is the more resources will be required to recruit them.
• Proximity of participants – wider the spread of the participants, the greater the travel time, and, for international studies, the more difficult it is to cater for differences in aspects such as culture, cost structures, and exchange rates.
• The complexity of data requirements and analysis – the more complex the data requirement the more care is required with data definitions, development of data collection packs, analysis, and reporting.
• Anonymizing information – anonymizing info such as costs will require more effort than sharing it openly.
• Team member’s experience – the greater the experience the less time is required to complete the study.
• Need for external resources – the use of external resources (such as consultants or facilitators) brings valuable experience but is likely to be expensive.

Joining an established study

Having defined the scope and objectives of the study, organizations must search for studies

already in existence that would fulfill their need. The key advantage of joining a well-run study is the availability of well-defined, honed, and effective metrics, along with a variety of participants committed to benchmarking.

Such participants may have already identified and implemented best practices that create a positive atmosphere of learning and improvement.

Gaining management approval

As multiple projects compete for the same funding and resources, a benchmarking study must demonstrate not only monetary gains over costs but also greater benefits when compared with other projects.

A complete review of the proposal before inviting management and other participants is a good step to ensure that the proposal is well thought out, complete and enticing. This increases the likelihood of its acceptance.

Inviting Participants to Join the Study

Once the project has been approved, the next step is to invite participants to join the study. It is easier to recruit internal participants as managerial influence can be used to encourage participation.

While it is a good practice to involve participant organizations early on, new potential participants can always be invited at any stage in the process.

Phase 2: Benchmarking Performance

The second major phase of the benchmarking study begins when potential participants work together to finalize and implement the study. This phase is usually flagged off with a kick-off meeting, where the focus is on building relationships and discussing the overall aims and objectives of running the project.

Data Collection and Validation

By this stage, the participants will have agreed on what data to collect and will have developed definitions. The next step is to determine how best to capture the data.

A good approach is to design a data collection pack made of spreadsheets and/or a questionnaire for each participant to complete and return for validation and analysis. Other collection methods include hard copy forms, data-gathering visits and/or web interfaces.

Once the data is collected, the next step is to validate by resolving any omitted items, apparent inconsistencies, or seemingly spurious values.

Analysis and reporting

The amount and depth of analysis and subsequent reporting varies greatly depending on the terms of the study. In some studies, there may be a minimum of analysis (e.g.: magazines that review products and services), while in other studies, analysis could include, for example, performance level comparison, performance gap analysis, testing of theories, recommendations for improvement etc.

Phase 3: Improving the organization

The improvement stage begins once the participants have received the report or other study deliverables that help identify where and how to improve. This is the stage where the returns are realized.

There are many ways in which participants may choose to drive improvement, including:

• Initiating best practice forums.
• Taking part in information trades with one or more other participants.
• Carrying our further in-depth studies before taking improvement action.
• Implementing internal activities such as process improvement and process reengineering.

Data analysis & presentation tools

The radar chart shown at the beginning of this article is one of many tools for analyzing benchmarking data and presenting results. Broadly speaking, a benchmarking study uses such tools for three primary applications:

• For investigation – to identify relationships between variables or find differences in performance levels. Statistical analyses and charts are commonly used for this purpose.
• To summarize data – simple statistics such as the mean, quartiles and regression lines are common tools, and these are often superimposed on charts.
• To communicate conclusions to others. For example, charts and graphs

The table below provides the most popular charts and analysis tools commonly used by non-statisticians:

• “BENCHMARKING”. Stratechi.com, https://www.stratechi.com/benchmarking/ . Accessed 21 Feb 2024
• “THE FLINTSTONES”. Warner Bros, https://www.warnerbros.com/tv/flintstones . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “8 creative ways The Flintstones brought technology to Bedrock”. MeTV Chicago, https://www.metv.com/lists/8-creative-ways-the-flintstones-brought-technology-to-bedrock . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “WHAT IS TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM)?”. American Society for Quality, https://asq.org/quality-resources/total-quality-management . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “What is KAIZEN”. Kaizen Institute, https://kaizen.com/what-is-kaizen/ . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “Michael Porter”. The Economist, https://www.economist.com/news/2008/08/01/michael-porter . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “WHAT IS THE ISO 9000 STANDARDS SERIES?”. American Society for Quality, https://asq.org/quality-resources/iso-9000 . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “Quality circle”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_circle . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “BALDRIGE PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE PROGRAM”. National institute of standards and quality, https://www.nist.gov/baldrige . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “ABOUT EFQM”. EFQM, https://efqm.org/about/ . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “The Benchmarking Book”. Tim Stapenhurst, https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780750689052/the-benchmarking-book . Accessed 21 Feb 2024
• “Nikon D5600 vs. Pentax K-70 vs. Canon EOS 600D”. DPREVIEW, https://www.dpreview.com/products/compare/side-by-side?products=nikon_d5600&products=pentax_k70&products=canon_eos600d . Accessed 16 Feb 2024
• “Taking Pole Position In Your Industry: Learning From FORMULA 1”. Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/amazonwebservices/2021/10/28/taking-pole-position-in-your-industry-learning-from-formula-1/?sh=17a5bf8840e1 . Accessed 18 Feb 2024
• “About Best Practices”. Best Practices, LLC, https://www.best-in-class.com/about-us . Accessed 18 Feb 2024
• “Benchmarks”. McKinsey & Company, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/how-we-help-clients/gci-analytics/our-offerings/benchmarks . Accessed 18 Feb 2024
• “Baldrige Excellence Builder”. BALDRIGE PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE PROGRAM, https://www.nist.gov/baldrige/products-services/baldrige-excellence-builder . Accessed 19 Feb 2024
• “Baldrige Asks, “How Do You Know?””. National Institute of Standards and Technology, https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/baldrige/publications/How_Do_You_Know.pdf . Accessed 19 Feb 2024
• “5 surprising ways Formula 1 is changing the world”. World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/formula-one-f1-innovation-ventilators-fridges/ . Accessed 20 Feb 2024
• “Table”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_(information) . Accessed 22 Feb 2024
• “How a Histogram Works to Display Data”. Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/histogram.asp . Accessed 22 Feb 2024
• “Run charts”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_chart . Accessed 22 Feb 2024
• “Scatter plot”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scatter_plot . Accessed 22 Feb 2024
• “CONTROL CHART”. American Society for Quality, https://asq.org/quality-resources/control-chart . Accessed 22 Feb 2024
• “Bar chart”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_chart . Accessed 22 Feb 2024
• “WHAT IS A PARETO CHART?”. American Society for Quality, https://asq.org/quality-resources/pareto . Accessed 22 Feb 2024
• “what is a spider chart?”. MIKE CISNEROS, https://www.storytellingwithdata.com/blog/2021/8/31/what-is-a-spider-chart . Accessed 22 Feb 2024
• “Pie chart”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart . Accessed 22 Feb 2024
• “Force-field analysis”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-field_analysis . Accessed 22 Feb 2024

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment.

8 Steps of the benchmarking process

Reading time: about 7 min

Businesses are always striving for high performance, from creating more efficient processes to selling more of their products and services. But how does a company determine whether it is successful?

Through the benchmarking process, any business can compare itself against a standard and develop a consistent way of measuring performance. Below we’ll cover what benchmarking is, how the benchmarking process can help your business, and how to create benchmarks for a successful improvement plan. 

What is benchmarking?

In business, benchmarking is a process used to measure the quality and performance of your company’s products, services, and processes. These measurements don’t have much value on their own—that data needs to be compared against some sort of standard. A benchmark.

For example, suppose it takes 30 minutes to produce your product. Is the 30-minute measurement good or bad? The only way for you to know is to compare against other data, such as the time it takes another organization to produce a similar product. If another organization can produce the same type of product in less than 30 minutes, you can use their time as a benchmark for measuring your own processes and procedures.

The objective of benchmarking is to use the data gathered in your benchmarking process to identify areas where improvements can be made by:

• Determining how and where other companies are achieving higher performance levels than your company has been able to achieve.
• Comparing the competition’s processes and strategies against your own.
• Using the information you gather from your analyses and comparisons to implement changes that will improve your company’s performance, products, and services.

Common areas that you may want to target for benchmarking analysis include cost per unit, time to produce each unit, quality of each unit, and customer satisfaction. The performance metrics you get from these targets can be compared against others to help you determine best practices for improving your operations.

Benchmarks vs. KPIs

While both benchmarks and KPIs (key performance indicators) help you measure performance, they are distinct. Where benchmarks act as a reference point to compare performance levels, KPIs measure performance against stated objectives.  

Why is benchmarking important?

The goal of your business should be to grow, improve processes, increase quality, decrease costs, and earn more money. Benchmarking is one of many tools you can use as part of any continuous improvement model used within your organization.

Consistent benchmarking can help you:

• Improve processes and procedures.
• Gauge the effectiveness of past performance.
• Give you a better idea of how the competition operates, which will help you to identify best practices to increase performance.
• Increase efficiency and lower costs, making your business more profitable.
• Improve quality and customer satisfaction.

Types of benchmarking

There are many different types of benchmarking that fall into three primary categories: internal, competitive, and strategic.

Internal benchmarking

If other teams or organizations within your company have established best practices in processes similar to yours, internal benchmarking involves analyzing what they are doing so you can find areas where you can improve and be more efficient.

For example, you could compare the performance of one warehousing and shipping site against another warehousing and shipping site. The site with superior performance simply needs to share their processes and procedures so that the entire company benefits from increased performance. 

Competitive benchmarking

This type of benchmarking is a comparison of products, services, processes, and methods of your direct competitors. This type gives you insight into your position within your industry and what you may need to do to increase productivity.

For example, you can compare the customer satisfaction of a competitor’s product to yours. If your competitor is getting better customer reviews, you need to analyze what the difference is and figure out how to improve the quality of your product. 

Strategic benchmarking

Use this type of benchmarking when you need to look beyond your own industry to identify world-class performance and best practices so you can look for ways to adapt their methods to your procedures and processes.

8 steps in the benchmarking process

1. select a subject to benchmark.

What to benchmark is just as important as how to benchmark it. Executives and other senior management should be involved in deciding which processes are critical to the company’s success. Prioritize the processes based on which metrics are most important to all stakeholders, with an emphasis on processes or functions that are easily quantifiable. After prioritizing, select and define the measures you want to collect.

2. Decide which organizations or companies you want to benchmark

Determine if you are going to benchmark processes within your own company, a competitor, or a company outside of your industry.

It may be hard to collect all the data you want if you benchmark a direct competitor. So you should select several different organizations to study in order to get the data you need. Gather information from several sources to get the most detailed information about the organization you select to study.

3. Document your current processes

Map out your current processes so you can identify areas that need improvement and more easily compare against the chosen organization.

4. Collect and analyze data

This step is important—but it can prove difficult when you are trying to gather data from a competitor because a lot of that information may be confidential. Gather information through research, interviews, casual conversations with contacts from the other companies, and with formal interviews or questionnaires.

You can also collect secondary information from websites, reports, marketing materials, and news articles. However, secondary information may not be as reliable.

After you have collected enough data, get all stakeholders together to analyze the data. 

5. Measure your performance against the data you’ve collected

Look at the data you’ve collected side by side with the metrics you gathered from your analysis of your own processes. You may want to layer your performance metrics on top of your process diagrams or map out your competitor’s processes to more easily see where you’re falling behind.

As you analyze the comparisons, try to identify what causes the gaps in your process. For example, do you have enough people and are they sufficiently trained to perform assigned tasks? Perhaps there are multiple steps that can be automated or combined to streamline workflow. Brainstorm ideas to effectively and efficiently fill those gaps.

6. Create a plan

Create a plan to implement agreed-on changes that you have identified as being the best to close performance gaps. Implementation requires total buy-in from the top down. Your plan must include clearly defined goals and should be written with the company’s culture in mind to help minimize any pushback you may get from employees.

7. Implement the changes

Closely monitor the changes and employee performance. If new processes are not running smoothly as expected, identify areas that need to be tweaked. Make sure all employees understand their jobs, are well trained, and have the expertise to complete their assigned tasks.

Document all processes and make sure all employees have access to documentation and instructions so that all are on the same page working toward the same goal. 

8. Repeat the process

After successfully implementing a new process, it’s time to find other ways to improve. The benchmarking process is one of continual improvement and iteration. Review the new processes you’ve implemented and see if there are any changes that need to be made. If everything is running smoothly, look to other areas or more ambitious projects that you may want to benchmark and start the process again.

When you correctly implement and follow the continuous practice of benchmarking, your company will grow, and you will keep up with (or even surpass) your competitors.

Consider these 7 fundamental change management models as you implement new processes.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

Related articles

Make your digital transformation user focused.

Let’s dig into why understanding how a tech-savvy customer base interacts with their mobile devices can help you to transform your business model to meet their expectations and provide a user-focused experience. 

What is a workflow? Benefits and examples of repeatable processes

Ensure that important processes are completed the right way, every time. In this article, we will explain why your business needs efficient workflows and show you some workflow examples to help you get started. 

Bring your bright ideas to life.

or continue with

By registering, you agree to our Terms of Service and you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Privacy Policy .

• Product overview
• All features
• App integrations

CAPABILITIES

• project icon Project management
• Project views
• Custom fields
• Status updates
• goal icon Goals and reporting
• Reporting dashboards
• workflow icon Workflows and automation
• portfolio icon Resource management
• Time tracking
• my-task icon Admin and security
• Admin console
• asana-intelligence icon Asana AI
• list icon Personal
• premium icon Starter
• briefcase icon Advanced
• Goal management
• Organizational planning
• Campaign management
• Creative production
• Content calendars
• Marketing strategic planning
• Resource planning
• Project intake
• Product launches
• Employee onboarding
• View all uses arrow-right icon
• Project plans
• Team goals & objectives
• Team continuity
• Meeting agenda
• View all templates arrow-right icon
• Work management resources Discover best practices, watch webinars, get insights
• What's new Learn about the latest and greatest from Asana
• Customer stories See how the world's best organizations drive work innovation with Asana
• Help Center Get lots of tips, tricks, and advice to get the most from Asana
• Asana Academy Sign up for interactive courses and webinars to learn Asana
• Developers Learn more about building apps on the Asana platform
• Community programs Connect with and learn from Asana customers around the world
• Events Find out about upcoming events near you
• Partners Learn more about our partner programs
• Support Need help? Contact the Asana support team
• Asana for nonprofits Get more information on our nonprofit discount program, and apply.

Featured Reads

• Business strategy |
• How to use benchmarking to set your sta ...

How to use benchmarking to set your standards for success

How do you know when your work is successful? Benchmarking is a data-driven process that helps you create your own standards to measure success. Setting benchmarks is a simple way to set clear expectations for your team. In this article, learn the different types of benchmarking and the steps to create your own benchmarks.

Success is a vague term—what is it? And how do you know when you, your projects, and your business are successful? The truth is, everyone measures their success differently. This makes success hard to define, especially when you’re managing a team or growing a business.

What is benchmarking?

A benchmark is a predetermined standard, and benchmarking is the process of setting those standards. To determine benchmarks, you need to measure your work against something else. There are a variety of things you can set benchmarks against, including:

Competitors. Comparing your work or desired results against your competitors shows you what’s normal in the industry and what customers expect. Once you know this, you can adjust your business, product, or messaging to remain competitive.

Previous results. Using previous results as your benchmarks shows you if you’re improving internally and helps you identify gaps in your processes and workflows . If you’re improving, you can double down on what you’re doing (because it’s working). If you’re not, this is a great opportunity to make changes.

Goals. Using goals as a benchmark shows if your results are what you expected or initially wanted when you began. If you’re falling short, you might need to adjust your goals to make sure they’re achievable.

Executive reporting guide: Universal reporting for today’s leaders

Learn strategies to monitor business performance in real-time—so you can make better, more informed decisions for your team.

What’s the difference between benchmarking and setting goals?

You can use both goals and benchmarks to analyze project outcomes, but they’re slightly different in practice. The fundamental difference is the target. Goals are what you want to achieve and tend to be growth-oriented, while benchmarks compare your actual results against a reference. Put another way, goals are what you aspire to achieve, while benchmarks compare your performance to another reference point. 

For example, imagine you’ve set a business goal to hit $500K in recurring revenue this year. This goal illustrates what you want to achieve in order to grow and expand your cash flow. On the other hand, your revenue benchmarks would show you the amount of money you earn compared to competitors or what you made last year. Usually, you can use benchmarks to inform goals. If you know you hit $200K in revenue last year and you’re growing exponentially, then $500K is a realistic goal.

Benchmarking versus competitor analysis

Both benchmarking and competitor analyses use competitor research to determine how other companies operate. The difference between the two is scope—benchmarking is smaller and focuses on individual business processes, while competitive analysis is larger in scope and focuses on big-picture strategies and goals. 

With benchmarking, you use competitor research data to review your own processes and best practices. You record and save these as benchmarks, and use them to set the standard for how you work. This is slightly different from a competitive analysis, where you use the data to review your overall business strategy . Whether you decide to use benchmarking or competitor analysis depends on the scope of your project. If you're only looking at processes, benchmarking works fine. If you’re looking for data on larger strategies and goals, you might want to use a competitor analysis.

Why is benchmarking important?

Benchmarking helps you set the standards for how you work. But instead of choosing standards based on opinions or ideas, benchmarking is data-driven. This ensures that your work standards are targeted and focused on things that have the greatest impact.

Benchmarking also shows employees the rationale for workplace expectations and goals. It gives you data to demonstrate why your team's daily tasks are important, so everyone knows what they're working for and why.

There are many benefits to benchmarking, including:

Define and determine success . With benchmarking, you get to decide what success looks like for your company. For example, if your benchmark for success is a consistent 10% increase in lead generation YoY and you’re on track to hit 11%, you’ll know you’ve exceeded expectations.

Identify gaps. Benchmarking reveals gaps as compared to your competition. For example, it’s hard to stay competitive if you’re producing three new product features in the same timeframe your competitors are producing eight.

Set higher standards for product quality. Benchmarking results in higher-quality products or services that improve customer satisfaction. When your benchmark is to host four community events every year, for example, you’re setting the standard to interact with your customers more regularly.

Here’s how setting benchmarks can help you

Setting benchmarks is simple, but it’s a process. Before you begin, collect relevant benchmarking data to use for your comparison. This can be data on your competitors, previous work, or your goals. The metrics from this data collection will be the baseline for your benchmark analysis.

For example, let’s say you’re tracking product launches. You find it takes you three months to go from ideation to launch. That timing might sound long or short to you depending on your perception, but perception isn’t an accurate way to track if this is the best timing for your launch. Instead, you can use benchmarks to answer how long each product launch should take. For example, you might look into:

How long does it take your competitor to launch a similar product? 

How long did the last product launch take?

Have we made improvements to our processes that will save us time during this launch?

Note that other details will come into play here as well. Your competitor might launch a product faster than you, but that’s not relevant if their team and budget is double your size. Consider how relevant your benchmark is to your current situation and choose one that makes the most sense for each specific scenario.

Types of benchmarking

There are three different types of benchmarking: internal, competitive, and strategic. The type you use will depend on what you’re measuring, and what you’d like to get out of it.

Internal benchmarking

If you’re new to benchmarking, internal benchmarking is the easiest benchmark to start with. Like other parts of project management, internal benchmarking uses organizational knowledge to answer questions . Also, because you’re reviewing internal information, data collection is entirely within your control. For internal benchmarking, review business performance indicators for other departments, teams, or even previous work. Look for best practices or effective processes you can apply to your current work.

You can collect internal information by:

Using questionnaires and asking colleagues or direct reports what they achieved, and how.

Reviewing past projects and looking for business processes that have given your company a competitive advantage.

Studying high-impact initiatives —what made them work? If you can reuse and standardize the processes or best practices that made these projects successful, then these are good candidates for performance benchmarking.

Looking at previous goals to see if your work matches your expectations.

As you collect this information, take note of any desired results (i.e., processes you’d want to replicate and that could become a standard). At the same time, keep an eye out for any performance gaps—the difference between your actual performance and what you intended. This process is similar to a gap analysis , which compares your current performance to your desired performance. Except with internal benchmarking, you’re comparing your current performance to past performances or other team's performances. 

Once you've identified what’s worked and what hasn’t, you can end the internal review, benchmarking the processes and workflows you’d like to standardize. 

Competitive benchmarking

This is the flip-side of an internal review, where you look outwards to the results from other companies in your industry. Competitive benchmarking is trickier, because it’s harder to find reliable data. You need to rely on your competitors to share information, or get data from a third party which you may not be able to verify.

But it’s worth figuring out. Once you get past the collection hurdles, competitive research is one of the best ways to gain a competitive edge. It helps you spot patterns or themes common to your industry, which you can use for benchmarking and overall process improvement .

For example, let’s say you discover that a direct competitor gets more social media engagement than your accounts. Using this information, you can set a benchmark for your own company’s social media engagement. In short, you’re deciding what social media performance metrics your company should hit to stay competitive in your industry.

Strategic benchmarking

Sometimes you know something isn’t working, but you can’t seem to figure out why. Maybe you’re just in a problem-solving rut, or maybe you’re expanding into new markets and developing an entirely new way of working. Strategic benchmarking is a creative way to stretch beyond industry knowledge. For strategic benchmarking, you’re looking for best-in-class performance. Often, this means looking to other companies, industries, or even cultures to see if you can create a new strategic benchmark for your work.

Strategic benchmarking has been used throughout history to foster innovation. For example, when an escalator company moved to shopping malls, it had to solve the problem of helping people to rise quickly and steeply, against gravity. It was unprecedented in their industry, so they looked outwards. In the end, they used techniques from the mining industry to design mall escalators. When done successfully like this, strategic benchmarking can catapult you well beyond the competition. 

The 8 steps in the benchmarking process

By following these eight simple steps, you can use benchmarking to make continuous improvements to your workflows and processes. 

Decide what you’re benchmarking. Determine what you’d like to benchmark. If you’re new to benchmarks, start by creating benchmarks for projects, processes, or desired results that have the highest impact on your work.  

Decide your benchmarking type. In other words, determine if your data will come from competitive, internal, or strategic benchmarking.

Review and record. Look at what you’re creating the benchmark for. Record all related processes and document related workflows so you have a good idea of where you are now, before you start. 

Collect data. Depending on the type of benchmarking, data could come from competitor research or internal data. When using competitive research, be careful with secondary information on competitors (i.e. from websites or news articles) which can be hard to fact check.

Analyze data. Measure data against your own performance or work to identify gaps, patterns, and opportunities for improvement.

Make a plan. Data won’t do much on its own. Once you have a full analysis, use project planning to decide how you’re going to set and use these benchmarks.

Implement changes. Now, you can move into the project management stage to fully implement your benchmarks and create a new standard for your work, team, and company.

Rinse and repeat. Benchmarking is an ongoing process, but it’s specific to each new idea or workflow. Restart the process from the beginning for every new project.

Benchmarking sets the gold standard

Benchmarking processes, workflows, and results gives you a baseline for measuring your success. Benchmarks clarify expectations and let your team know how they can produce the best results.  

Benchmarking helps you to find the work standards that push your business, but it won’t help you get that work done. With Asana, you can track, automate, and build out workflows that let you do better work, faster. 

Related resources

How Asana streamlines strategic planning with work management

How to create a CRM strategy: 6 steps (with examples)

What is management by objectives (MBO)?

Write better AI prompts: A 4-sentence framework

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Smart Benchmarking Starts with Knowing Whom to Compare Yourself To

• Raul Valdes-Perez

How to avoid tunnel vision.

Comparing your organization to peers – also known as benchmarking – lets you understand how you’re doing, identify performance gaps and opportunities to improve, and highlight peer achievements that you could emulate, or your own achievements to be celebrated.

• Raul Valdes-Perez is CEO and co-founder of OnlyBoth Inc. and earlier co-founded and was CEO of Vivísimo Inc., acquired by IBM in 2012. He has a PhD. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon, where his advisor was the late Herbert A. Simon, and was also on its research faculty.

Partner Center

This site uses cookies to improve your experience. By viewing our content, you are accepting the use of cookies. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country we will assume you are from the United States. View our privacy policy and terms of use.

• Employee Benefits
• Change Management
• Talent Acquisition
• Applicant Tracking Systems

15 HR Analytics Case Studies with Business Impact

Analytics in HR

NOVEMBER 5, 2018

For this article, I have collected 15 of the best HR analytics case studies I’ve come across in the past two years. Each of these case studies are connected with a concrete business impact. For each case study , I will refer to their original publication. 15 HR Analytics Case Studies .

What is HR Analytics? All You Need to Know to Get Started

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

Importance of HR analytics HR analytics examples Key HR metrics Data analytics in HR: How to get started How to transition from descriptive to predictive and prescriptive analytics in HR HR analytics certification FAQ What is HR analytics? Example : Annual employee turnover rate.) We discuss more real-life examples below.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

• Beyond the Check-in: Building Trust and Performance Through Powerful 1:1s
• Cultivating Engagement: Strategies and Actionable Plans for Success
• Mastering Remote Onboarding: Proven Strategies for Seamless New Hire Integration

MORE WEBINARS

Trending Sources

HR Bartender

• Engage2Excel
• DecisionWise

13 HR Analytics Courses Online To Check Out in 2024

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

All subjects are illustrated by real-life examples of how various organizations tap into HR analytics techniques to help them flourish. A dashboard example is included below. Identify relevant HR metrics and benchmarks for organizational goals. Want to know more? Check the course’s syllabus.

Case Study: The Value Of Pay Transparency And How To Implement It

HR Tech Girl

JULY 5, 2023

Here I aim to shed light on what pay transparency looks like at Compt, explain its mechanics and influence on overall compensation structures and raises, present real-world examples of its benefits, and provide practical considerations for organizations contemplating this approach. This will also help avoid resentment across seniority levels.

Background Screening Impacts the Candidate Experience

SEPTEMBER 22, 2015

Did you know that HireRight offers an extensive resource library with case studies and checklists? In HireRight’s 2015 Employment Screening Benchmark Report , 51 percent of organizations said that finding and retaining talent was their top business challenge. You can check it out here. Enjoy the post!). So how do we do that?

HR Business Partner Resources Repository

AUGUST 20, 2021

HR Business Partner Benchmarking Report The HR business partner role is evolving. The rise (and fall) of HR analytics: a study into the future applications, value, structure, and system support. Case Study : How we Determined Optimal Staffing Levels. Case study : Key Drivers of Retail Sales Performance.

Navigating Uncertainty: The Strategic Imperative of Investing in People and HR Tech

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Case Studies of UAE Businesses Succeeding with HR Tech Investments The dynamic landscape of the UAE business scene demands robust HR strategies to attract, retain, and empower top talent. Bayzat’s success transcends individual companies, setting a benchmark for HR innovation in the UAE.

People Analytics and HR-Tech Reading List

Littal Shemer

OCTOBER 11, 2022

It will also introduce machine learning and where it fits within the larger HR Analytics framework” Handbook of Regression Modeling in People Analytics: With Examples in R and Python Keith McNulty (2021). It covers key questions: Where to find data in an organization? How to collect and analyze it?

The Complete Guide on Presenteeism (w. Example Intervention)

Digital HR Tech

JANUARY 29, 2020

To give an example , would you rather have someone be absent and not work, or be present and work less effectively? In this example , there is definitely a case of presenteeism as the employee will be less effective when at work – but it is still better than him or her being fully absent. An example . 8 ( Koopman et al.,

Unlocking the Secrets of Effective Marketing: The Ultimate Guide to Assessing Candidate Skills

Professional Alternatives

JULY 10, 2023

Understanding Marketing Skill Benchmarks And Job Qualifications In order to effectively assess candidate skills, it is important for employers to have a clear understanding of marketing skill benchmarks and job qualifications. These include behavioral interviews, case studies , skills assessments, and work samples.

A Literal THESIS on The P&L Impact of Candidate Experience

MAY 17, 2019

By this point, nearly every talent acquisition leader concerned with candidate experience is familiar with the Virgin Media case study detailing huge potential losses from poor candidate experience. I will note here that Survale clients can automatically benchmark their performance against Talent Board data.

HR Has a Bad Reputation: 6 Actions To Improve HR Credibility

APRIL 30, 2024

For example , line managers are pushing HR to recruit faster for their roles, which might mean less focus on a critical candidate evaluation. This could require education on new HR capabilities that the business might not have been exposed to, as well as demonstrating other case studies of how HR has contributed to similar organizations.

11 HR Analytics Courses Online

AUGUST 12, 2019

All subjects are illustrated by many real-life examples of HR analytics. R goes further than the traditional tools that are used for HR data benchmarking and analysis, like Microsoft Excel, Access, and SPSS. Examples of machine learning algorithms include decision trees, Bayes, simple rules, clustering, and meta-classifiers.

Guide To Drive Employee Recognition

MAY 29, 2024

   The above-mentioned case study testifies how well recognition plays a role in employee retention and helps scale employee productivity.   This blog will answer this question along with a few interesting case studies that give you an overview of recognition.  

Interview Notes: 9 Reasons To Take & Best Practices To Follow (+Free Templates)

JUNE 27, 2024

As an HR professional, you can also use interview notes to benchmark best practices based on successful hires. For example , if a candidate’s previous employers or managers express vastly differing opinions of them, you would need to conduct further research before taking the next steps. Contents What are interview notes?

Employee listening in the Intelligence Age: It’s a new era

HRExecutive

OCTOBER 24, 2023

Pay and benefits Deutsche Telekom used design thinking to tailor executive benefits programs, rather than just benchmarking or assuming to know what benefits would be most useful for their senior leadership. For example , if somebody asked, “What are my colleagues paid?”, 31), where we’ll unpack these insights.

How To Leverage AI To Enhance Customer Loyalty in 2024

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

For example , users shopping around your website may receive product suggestions matching their preferences and past purchases. Here’s an example of personalized recommendations on Amazon. Spotify's annual Wrapped is a famous example of a personalized loyalty program that uses AI.

How Data Cleansing Can Streamline Your HR Analytics

For example , imagine a scenario where an HR team is analyzing employee turnover rates. This enables them to track progress, set benchmarks , and measure the impact of HR initiatives accurately. Case Study of Successful Data Cleansing in HR Real-world examples demonstrate the power of data cleanup in HR analytics.

Hotel Giant IHG gained a 97% positive applicant experience using predictive people analytics – Can these along with other benefits be easily achieved by other companies?

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

He uses added insight from our recent case study with hotel giant IHG who recently applied AI in HR with Cognisess. . In your opinion, what element of the IHG case study was particularly successful? “On This avoided the need for applicants to undertake the usual case study module on day 2 of the assessment centre.

How to Motivate Airline Employees with Rewards and Recognition

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

  Case studies Several airlines are participating in rewards programs and contributing to the positive workforce culture in the organisation. From Southwest Airlines' SWAG Recognition to Delta Air Lines' Delta Bravo program, real-life examples illuminate the transformative impact of tailored initiatives.

New Ebook: Why Use Incentive Services?

The Incentive Solutions News blog

JULY 21, 2021

Our eBooks, FAQ’s and case studies are packed with information about deploying an incentive program that best suits your needs. For example : Goal-setting assistance. Benchmark data that can help assess a program’s successfulness. Get the latest in industry news and insights.

What is Time to Fill? Everything You Need to Know About This Recruiting Metric

MAY 18, 2021

As an example , let’s say you are replacing a senior economist. For example , some roles are filled faster with an agency, whereas other roles are best filled with a LinkedIn job ad. You can also make further calculations to measure the effectiveness of your recruitment process on various benchmarks .

Be careful! These books can change your career: People Analytics and HR-Tech reading list

MAY 14, 2018

The book covers the full People Analytics scope (Benefits, Compensation, Culture, Diversity & Inclusion, Engagement, Leadership, Learning & Development, Personality Traits, Performance Management, Recruitment, Sales Incentives) with numerous real-world examples , and shows how R can help”. Ben Eubanks (2018). Bernard Marr (2018). “A

Strategic Workforce Planning 101: Framework & Process

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Benefits of strategic workforce planning Strategic workforce planning framework Strategic workforce planning case studies Strategic workforce planning process Strategic workforce planning tools Best practices for strategic workforce planning FAQ What is strategic workforce planning? An example of such an indicator is new product leads.

Reducing Absenteeism in a Mid-Sized Organization: A Case Study

JULY 6, 2020

“ I will walk you through the steps we took: Establish a specific benchmark ; Gather theories and data for analysis ; Iteratively run the analyses ; Collectively interpret the results and decide on targeted action. Establish a specific benchmark . In fact, their absenteeism rates were doubled compared to the benchmark !

The Essential Plan Every Manager Should Follow: Balancing Employee Growth and Achieving Operational Excellence

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

From the manager’s core responsibilities to strategic approaches , case studies , and the multitude of benefits and challenges, we’ll unveil how to make OKRs shine bright as a guiding light in this critical journey. This inspires and sets a benchmark for their team to focus their efforts towards achieving company objectives.

360 Feedback Software: How to Maximize Results

JUNE 29, 2023

Real-World Case Studies Understanding 360 Feedback Software The traditional process of gathering 360 feedback requires a lot of legwork. Download Now: Free 360 Reviews Template [Get Your Copy] Good vs. Bad 360 Review Questions Here are a few examples of bad vs. good questions to ask. Understanding 360 Feedback Software 2.

New series offers guidance on talent acquisition

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

They also feature case studies showcasing real-world examples to put into action, according to Sue Marks, CEO and founder of Cielo. In addition, the availability of benchmarking data facilitates more accurate goal setting. Also see: How to prepare your recruiting team for 2020.

6 Strategies for Leading Remote Teams in SaaS Companies [2024]

DECEMBER 7, 2023

  Let’s take a look at some ways of leading remote teams and case studies of where they are applied.  Toptal is a good example of how remote-friendly teams establish clear goals and then create a collaborative environment with tools like Zoom and Slack. Build benchmarks and ways to achieve those benchmarks . 

Create An Irresistible Work Culture, Not A 'Best Place To Work'

Human Workplaces

JUNE 9, 2019

The standard within these contests is either employee satisfaction or comparison to a third-party benchmark , but both of these methods could be completely missing the mark on what makes your particular organization deeply successful. For example , many would argue that a flexible workplace is a component of a best place to work.

The Power of Partnership, Navigating the Maze of HR Software Providers

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Two trends stand out: a high degree of fragmentation (hundreds of vendors offer Recruiting solutions, for example ) and the rapid introduction of new concepts – artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, employee social networking, and the gig economy.

How To Build a Learning Culture: You Asked, We Answered

JULY 28, 2021

Degreed: Creating a learning culture starts with the culture itself and the example set by leadership. To help late adopters, we created several assets that illustrate the benefits of switching to a new way of learning, such as video success stories, written case studies , and participant testimonials.

Upskilling and reskilling the workforce for an uncertain future

JANUARY 5, 2023

Technical skills are a good example here, as even non-technical roles require increasing levels of. So good project managers can move across departments, for example . And in some cases , rapid reskilling of employees will help to avoid redundancy in the longer term. Case study : Jardine Motors Group.

How to Convert a Disengaged Employee Into An Engaged One

The action you take will depend on the feedback you receive but here are some examples of ways you might tackle engagement challenges: Frequently Monitor Engagement How often do you monitor employee engagement? For example , if an employee needs more role definition and clarity, take the time to help them review their work priorities.

Quadruple Your B2B Lead Generation Results in 2021

JANUARY 26, 2021

Cook up a tasty case study . A case study is every salesperson’s go-to collateral. Case studies build trust and act as social proof for how your product will work and impact a future lead’s buying decision. How do you create case studies for B2B lead generation? Determine industry benchmarks .

AI Recruiting Tools May Be the Future, But Proceed With Caution

APRIL 28, 2023

The following case studies —alongside some AI tools that are helping companies like Enspira HR employ diverse hiring practices—paint the whole picture of the who, what, when, where, and why of AI recruitment tools, and how companies can ensure AI boosts both efficiency and equitable hiring decisions. The problem?

TIAA's Journey of Crafting the Right Performance Management Solution For Its Culture

APRIL 26, 2016

The problem is that as we search for the perfect performance management solution, we as human resources professionals and social scientists are swimming in research, benchmarking data, and case studies that are pointing us in completely contradictory directions. Download the case study now (i4cp members only)

The Business Case for Human Resources

OCTOBER 27, 2016

They can help develop effective managers who increase revenue, understand how to keep essential people on board, and they can carry useful learnings from one department to another—just to name a few examples . Another lens to examine metrics through is by considering industry benchmarks and the activities of other peer organizations.

Cultural Sensitivity Training: The Bridge Between Employee Development and Inclusive Productivity

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Promote Diversity in Leadership: Strive for diverse representation in leadership positions to set an example and influence company culture positively. Measure and Track Progress : Establish metrics and benchmarks to track progress in fostering inclusivity, regularly assess your initiatives’ effectiveness, and make adjustments as needed.

The ROI on L&D: How Tenaris Saw a Return of 119% After One Year of Degreed

OCTOBER 29, 2019

They started by benchmarking their current strategy, developing a new and modernized platform, building a seamless implementation plan, and they were able to quantify their results. Download their latest ROI case study here! That is exactly what Tenaris was able to do after one year of using Degreed.

Bet Big on These HR Tech Conference 2017 Sessions

SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

Elaine Orler of Talent Function Group will share important talent acquisition trends, valuable solutions, and real-world examples of how inventive organizations are recruiting and hiring today – and will be in the future. Hiring the right talent is key to succeeding in business.

Stay Connected

Join 398,000+ Insiders by signing up for our newsletter

• Participate in Human Resources Today
• 2019 Human Resources Today Summer Reading List
• Stay At Home Reading List
• Add a Source
• Add a Resource
• See All 
• 2018 Human Resources Today MVP Awards
• 2017 Human Resources Today MVP Awards
• 2019 Human Resources Today MVP Awards
• 2020 Human Resources Today MVP Awards
• 2021 Human Resources Today MVP Awards
• 2022 Human Resources Today MVP Awards
• Sun. Jun 30
• Fri. Jun 28
• Thu. Jun 27
• Wed. Jun 26
• Jun 22 - Jun 28
• Employee Engagement
• Onboarding Software
• Talent Management
• Performance Management
• Time and Attendance
• More Topics 

Input your email to sign up, or if you already have an account, log in here!

Enter your email address to reset your password. a temporary password will be e‑mailed to you., be in the know on.

Human Resources Today

Expert insights. Personalized for you.

We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 398,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.

Get the good stuff

Subscribe to the following Human Resources Today newsletters:

You must accept the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions to proceed.

You know about us, now we want to get to know you!

Check your mail, we've sent an email to . please verify that you have received the email..

We have resent the email to

Let's personalize your content

Use social media to find articles.

We can use your profile and the content you share to understand your interests and provide content that is just for you.

Turn this off at any time. Your social media activity always remains private.

Let's get even more personalized

Choose topics that interest you., so, what do you do.

Are you sure you want to cancel your subscriptions?

Cancel my subscriptions

Don't cancel my subscriptions

Changing Country?

Accept terms & conditions.

It looks like you are changing your country/region of residence. In order to receive our emails, you must expressly agree. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails.

You appear to have previously removed your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions.

We noticed that you changed your country/region of residence; congratulations! In order to make this change, you must accept the Aggregage Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. Once you've accepted, then you will be able to choose which emails to receive from each site .

You must choose one option

Please choose which emails to receive from each site .

• Update All Sites
• Update Each Site

Please verify your previous choices for all sites

Sites have been updated - click Submit All Changes below to save your changes.

We recognize your account from another site in our network , please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.

You must accept the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions to proceed.

This is not me

• Solutions Corporate Market Analysis Customer Experience Product Lifecycle Brand Strategy Research & Insights Higher Education Enrollment Management Academic Program Development Student Success Operations & Finance Advancement Marketing Grants Research & Insights K-12 Education Curriculum and Instruction Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Academic Program Planning and Impact Strategic Planning Teacher Recruitment and Retention Operational Planning School Climate Research & Insights
• Data Analysis
• Qualitative Research
• Strategic Advising
• Benchmarking & Best Practices
• Market Modeling
• Research & Insights By Industry Corporate Higher Education K–12 Education By Type Insights Blog Reports & Briefs Case Studies Webinars All Research & Insights
• Client Testimonials
• Careers Overview
• Current Openings
• Recruitment Process
• Social Impact
• Careers in Research
• Careers in Sales and Account Management
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Client Login

Drive Your Strategy Using Proven Approaches

Home > Expertise > Benchmarking & Best Practices

Unparalleled insight into peer practices to calibrate your own strategies

Best-practices-based decision-making can make the difference between a successful endeavor and a costly mistake.  Our team of researchers helps you set the right course for your organization by providing analyses of key trends, pitfalls to avoid, competitor intelligence, and insight into how best-in-class organizations succeed.

Data Point Here

Best practices and benchmarking capabilities

Competitor scan.

Scans peer organizations and their approach to an issue you care about to produce in-depth intelligence on everything from messaging to services and offerings and more.

Market Scan

Identifies critical factors impacting the attractiveness, challenges, and relative ease of market entry.

Trends Analysis

Uncovers important trends over time in a given sector or market, including multifaceted analysis of regulatory and government trends.

Best Practices

Reveals proven, repeatable techniques through analysis of academic literature, proprietary data sources, and organizational case examples to pinpoint best practices around issues you care about.

Benchmarking Study

Compares your organization’s results to nationwide statistics or relevant peer or public data sets to allow you to calibrate your organization’s performance on key metrics, offerings, and other important attributes.

Margaret Murphy

Associate Director for University Performance, Australian National University

Proven approaches to drive your strategy- tap into best practices and peer benchmarking

Skilled analysts and industry experts uncover insights even on niche topics

Augment survey research or data analysis with best practices for implementation.

All research tailored to the unique context of your organization

Featured Insights

K-12 Data Literacy Checklist

2023 Trends in Higher Education

Guide to Brand Health Measurement

New Product Development Checklist

Access best practices today

Research & Insights

Receive industry-leading insights directly in your inbox.

If you have difficulty accessing any part of this website or the products or services offered by Hanover Research, please contact us at [email protected] for support.

Become a client

Access the best custom research to help hit your organization’s goals . Request your custom consult below and a member of our team will be in touch.

Have questions? Please visit our contact page .

Let us come to you!

Receive industry insights directly in your inbox.

Our newsletters are packed with helpful tips, industry guides, best practices, case studies, and more. Enter your email address below to opt in:

Benchmarking 101: Definition, Types, Benefits and How to Use Them

Table of contents

To see what Databox can do for you, including how it helps you track and visualize your performance data in real-time, check out our home page. Click here .

Have you ever read Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”?

There’s one interesting section in the book where Sun Tzu talks about sending his people to gain intelligence on the enemy’s army, and they come back with granular insights into their strengths and weaknesses.

This helped him improve the weakest links in his own army and gain a competitive advantage.

Sounds awfully familiar, huh?

Although we aren’t really examining each other’s armies per se, we do look at what our business competitors are doing and analyze their performance.

In other words, we look for insights (through) benchmarks that can help us assess our own company’s performance, identify room for growth, set smarter goals, and pinpoint useful industry practices, among other things.

Nowadays, benchmarking is considered one of the best ways to ensure proper business growth.  

But how should you get started? What tools should you use? How can you make sure the data you have is reliable?

Here’s everything you need to know.

What Is Benchmarking?

What is benchmark data, what are benchmarking metrics, why is benchmarking important, types of benchmarking, the benefits of benchmarking, create your own benchmarking process in 4 steps (or just 2 with databox), free benchmark groups to join, benchmark your performance against 1,000+ companies for free.

Benchmarking is the process of comparing your company’s performance against companies that operate in the same niche, are of similar size, and have a similar target audience, using benchmarks.

Benchmarks are simply the reference points that will be used for comparison.

Depending on what you’re looking to measure, there are a variety of benchmarking methods available. Systems, processes, industry standards, and performance metrics can all serve as benchmarks.  

However, the goal is always pretty much the same – identify which areas can be improved and use the information to set strategic goals and optimize the overall company performance.

You can look at it as a school report card. It shows you whether you’re keeping up with the rest of the class or you’re falling behind and have to put in more work.

You can benchmark your performance against drastically bigger or smaller organizations as well, but that won’t provide you with as many actionable insights as you get from studying similar-sized competitors.

But it shouldn’t be completely overlooked either. Knowing how the industry leaders are performing is also valuable information.

Nowadays, each industry has some specific set of reference points that are used for benchmarking, which leads us to industry benchmarks .

Industry benchmarks are the metrics or standards most commonly measured in a particular industry.

For example, there’s also business benchmarking, which refers to comparing your business’ performance to competitors in the same industry.

Business benchmarks help you stay on top of the latest market or industry trends by comparing metrics such as revenue, growth rate, ROI, market share, etc.

If we go a bit further down this rabbit hole, we can segment business benchmarks by different departments.

• In management, managers use benchmarks to stay on top of the various business units and compare information (such as sales per employee) to similar companies.
• In marketing, we can benchmark the efficiency of different marketing campaigns and strategies (for example, email marketing benchmarks ).
• In accounting, you can compare profitability, solvency, or gross margin to the industry average.

Here’s a visual representation of a benchmark where a company outperforms its cohort (the median values are above the group standard).

Here’s another example, one in which the company’s median value is below the standard.

Benchmark data is simply the data set that companies use for comparison.

You can extract benchmark data from a variety of sources, including industry standards, similar systems and processes, or predetermined sets of performance metrics and KPIs.

It’s a point of comparison (aka “ the reference point ”) that companies use to see whether there’s anything they need to improve.

Benchmarking metrics are the data points that companies measure to evaluate current performances, i.e. the specific evaluation indicators.  

If you have the proper data set, you can benchmark pretty much any metric you want since all data points can be recorded.

Here are a few basic benchmark metric examples divided by department:

• Marketing : cost per lead (CPL), click-through rate (CTR), return on investment (ROI), customer acquisition cost (CAC), etc.
• Sales : average deal size, closing rate, pipeline velocity, quota attainment rate, etc. There are hundreds of sales benchmarks you can use, so it’s much better to narrow it down to one specific area.  
• Finance : return on assets, return on equity, gross margin, net profit margin, etc.

Benchmarking is used to make sure that all business areas are optimized, identify room for improvement, and check out how we stack up against competitors in our industry.

The primary purpose of benchmarking is to establish a clear understanding of current performances and see which aspects we should focus more attention on.   

Furthermore, benchmarking helps a company set realistic and achievable goals, measure progress toward those goals, and make data-driven decisions that can lead to increased efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability.

It’s essentially a business compass that helps you orient yourself and see which way you should go.

Benchmarking can be segmented into two broad categories – internal and external benchmarking.

Internal benchmarking is the process of comparing performances among teams and departments within the same company, whereas external benchmarking refers to the same process but applied to outside companies.

Within these two categories, we can further divide benchmarking into these types

Process Benchmarking

Process benchmarking involves comparing processes across internal company departments or across different companies in the industry. The goal is to make your processes more cost-effective and efficient. If you’re analyzing your competitors, you might even find some new types of processes that you can start implementing.

Performance Benchmarking

Comparing your overall organization’s performance against other companies in the industry is called performance benchmarking (also known as competitive benchmarking ). The goal is to identify areas for improvement and pinpoint any performance gaps that currently exist. This type of benchmarking is typically the most complex because you need to have granular insight into the performance metrics of your competitors. If you can’t access competitor data, you can get some useful information by comparing products and services.

Performance benchmarking is the most common among B2B businesses.  

Strategic Benchmarking

Comparing the overall strategy and direction in which your company is heading against other companies in the industry is called strategic benchmarking. By analyzing your competitors’ strategies, you can identify some new practices that might be useful to implement in your own organization.

Financial Benchmarking

Comparing your company’s financial performance against industry standards or competitors is called financial benchmarking. This type involves a thorough financial data analysis (revenue, expenses, profitability, etc.), and the goal is to make sure financial decisions are data-driven. Financial benchmarks play a huge role in assessing your business’s financial health.

Benchmarking from an Investor Perspective

Refers to the comparison of investment to set industry standards, from an investor perspective. The goal is to get actionable insights that will help you decide whether to hold the investment, sell it, or invest even more money. For example, this can involve checking how the performance of a specific stock benchmark compares to others on the market, in the same niche.

Benchmarking in the Public Sector

Public administration organizations use industry standards to identify areas for improvement in terms of the services they provide.

Product Benchmarking

Analyzing the offers of competitors who have similar products is called product benchmarking. This usually involves reverse-engineering them to get a grasp of advantages and disadvantages. The goal is to find new ways to upgrade your current product or even design new products based on the data you acquire.

Functional Benchmarking

Useful for companies that want to focus on a particular function. For instance, accounting or finance departments are much easier to improve if you go about optimizing specific functions, one by one.

Best-in-Class Benchmarking

Comparing your company to the leader in your industry or the company that is considered the best in a specific aspect. This involves a lot of granular competitor analysis, but it can sometimes be easier than analyzing similar-sized competitors because of larger data samples.  

Energy Benchmarking

Comparing energy-related performance data against set industry standards that have been determined by eco-organizations.

Now that you know what benchmarking is and how it can be categorized, let’s check out some of the major ways it can benefit your business.

Improve Your Overall Competitive Analysis Process

Stay on top of current trends and forecast new ones, plan and set goals, celebrate your wins.

Proper competitive analysis is an invaluable skill in any business.

Benchmarks are an objective measure of where you are and they help you deepen your insights into how your peers and competitors perform, while also providing you with a holistic picture of your market’s performance.

When digging for useful benchmarks from your industry competitors, you’re also directly improving your analysis process.

You’ll be able to extract more granular insights from your competitive landscape and use the information to improve your performance and gain a strategic advantage.

Benchmarking also helps you stay on top of trends since you’ll constantly be looking at what’s currently happening on the market.

You’ll know which best practices are currently being used in your industry and what strategies are working for your competitors.

After some time, you’ll probably even learn how to forecast new trends and be among the first ones to take advantage of them.

Proper benchmarking gives you a better idea of what your goals should be and which performance metrics you need to focus on.

Most of your competitors are generating more traffic to their websites? Maybe you should work on your SEO and content marketing efforts.

Are their conversion rates better? Maybe you need to optimize your landing pages.

You get the idea.

Just make sure you set achievable goals and create an appropriate outline of how you’ll achieve them.

PRO TIP: Learn how Privy is leading their teams in restructuring the way they approach KPI and goal setting.

So many companies focus solely on finding areas that they need to improve that they overlook some of the great results they’ve been having.

Furthermore, knowing where you outperform your competitors can tell you that the processes or strategies you’ve implemented are working out and that you could try them out in other areas as well.

If you’re an agency that works with several clients that aren’t that familiar with benchmarks, you can use these wins to show them the impact of your work and where exactly they’re outperforming others.

Instantly and Anonymously Benchmark Your Company’s Performance Against Others Just Like You

If you ever asked yourself:

• How does our marketing stack up against our competitors?
• Are our salespeople as productive as reps from similar companies?
• Are our profit margins as high as our peers?

Databox Benchmark Groups can finally help you answer these questions and discover how your company measures up against similar companies based on your KPIs.

When you join Benchmark Groups, you will:

• Get instant, up-to-date data on how your company stacks up against similar companies based on the metrics most important to you. Explore benchmarks for dozens of metrics, built on anonymized data from thousands of companies and get a full 360° view of your company’s KPIs across sales, marketing, finance, and more.
• Understand where your business excels and where you may be falling behind so you can shift to what will make the biggest impact. Leverage industry insights to set more effective, competitive business strategies. Explore where exactly you have room for growth within your business based on objective market data.
• Keep your clients happy by using data to back up your expertise. Show your clients where you’re helping them overperform against similar companies. Use the data to show prospects where they really are… and the potential of where they could be.
• Get a valuable asset for improving yearly and quarterly planning . Get valuable insights into areas that need more work. Gain more context for strategic planning.

The best part?

• Benchmark Groups are free to access.
• The data is 100% anonymized. No other company will be able to see your performance, and you won’t be able to see the performance of individual companies either.

When it comes to showing you how your performance compares to others, here is what it might look like for the metric Average Session Duration:

And here is an example of an open group you could join:

And this is just a fraction of what you’ll get. With Databox Benchmarks, you will need only one spot to see how all of your teams stack up — marketing, sales, customer service, product development, finance, and more. 

• Choose criteria so that the Benchmark is calculated using only companies like yours
• Narrow the benchmark sample using criteria that describe your company
• Display benchmarks right on your Databox dashboards

Sounds like something you want to try out? Join a Databox Benchmark Group today!

Seeing how big of a role benchmarking plays in a company, it’s crucial that you implement it as soon as possible.

Here are the steps you can follow to do it manually:

Benchmarking Process Planning

Collecting data, data analysis.

• Presenting Your Data

Eliminate Manual Benchmarking with Databox

To make the most out of your benchmarking process, you first need to clearly define what you’re going to benchmark and how you’ll go about it.

There’s usually a lot of manpower and time behind a proper benchmark process, so you’ll have to know how to manage the process each step along the way.

Make sure you’ve:

• Defined what you want to improve / benchmark
• Know who you will benchmark against (will it be internal, external, etc.)
• Have a list of tools that will help you extract the necessary data
• Defined the timeline, responsibilities, and resources required

Next up, you’ll have to collect the data and information on the process you want to benchmark.

You should collect both your own data (current and historical) and your competitors’ (if it’s available).

There are several ways to conduct data collection, with some of the most popular ones being surveys, interviews, and competitor research, but this will largely depend on what you’re benchmarking.

For instance, if you want to benchmark website performance , you can look for Google Analytics benchmarks in the benchmark reports.

Google Analytics can also be a great source of SEO benchmarks (alongside tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush).

Or, if you want to stay on top of your PPC marketing campaign, you should focus on Google Ads benchmarks and Facebook Ads benchmarks .

However, none of these tools have any built-in functionality. They’re great places for extracting data that you will benchmark, but that’s pretty much it.

Just in case, always double-check whether the data you collected is accurate, relevant, and reliable.

Once you get your hands on all the data you need (or can find), it’s time to go through it.

Make sure to analyze the data coming from your company objectively, even if it’s not always up to par (don’t worry, no organization is perfect).

Then, also analyze your competitor’s data and find out whether there are any performance gaps. If there are, you can then try to pinpoint the strategies that they use to create those gaps.

There are a ton of methods that can help you out during this step, such as gap analysis, SWOT analysis, statistical analysis, etc. Choose the one that’s the most applicable to your type of data.

Presenting the Data

Lastly, you should compile your findings in one comprehensive report where everything is laid out in a clear and concise manner.

The report should be simple to understand and you should highlight the most important findings. Explain which areas you need to be optimized, alongside your recommendations on how to do it.

Present the data to key decision-makers in the company and work with them on coming up with strategies.

Okay, so now that we’ve covered the grueling process behind manual benchmarking… want to hear the easy way to do it?

It’s by using our own tool — Benchmark Groups .

With this product, you can skip all steps listed above and literally fast-forward to the part where you have all the data in front of you, and you’re simply working on devising the strategies for improvement.

Planning, data collection, analysis… all this is done for you and you instantly eliminate those long hours of hard work that usually go into it.

The only thing you need to do is to find the exact group you want to join and connect your data source.

From there, you can immediately get the big picture of how your company stacks up to hundreds of others in the same industry and start planning your next moves.

While there are some tools (e.g. we mentioned Google Analytics) that can speed up the process to some extent by providing you with Google Analytics benchmarking reports , they don’t have any other relevant functionality to offer.  

Benchmark Groups is as precise as it gets… and you can break down your data in a dozen different ways (e.g. from business type and industry to company size and revenue).

Another cool thing about the product is that it can also streamline the data presentation part.

You can pull up the benchmark you extracted into a Databox dashboard and have it ready immediately for your shareholders to review.

The value of the information you receive and the time you save is probably worth thousands of dollars (at least)… but we won’t charge you anything. Joining a group is completely free.

Benchmark Your Performance Against Hundreds of Companies Just Like Yours

Viewing benchmark data can be enlightening, but seeing where your company’s efforts rank against those benchmarks can be game-changing. 

Browse Databox’s open Benchmark Groups and join ones relevant to your business to get free and instant performance benchmarks. 

We have 100+ open groups that you can join for free and there’s no limit on how many you can join at the same time.

The only important thing is that you have the corresponding data source to connect and that you meet the group criteria (e.g. Medium-Sized B2C Business ).

Groups can be as detailed as you want and you can filter by four criteria – company size, revenue size, industry, and business type.

Let’s go through some of the currently popular groups among users.

And by the way, if you don’t find a specific group that you’d want to join, you can get in touch with our support team and we might be able to create one just for you .

Google Analytics Benchmarks for B2B Companies

• Google Analytics marketing benchmarks for B2C companies

Facebook Ads Benchmarks for All Companies

Social media benchmarks for b2b companies, linkedin company page benchmarks for smbs, google analytics 4 (ga4) for all-sized companies, b2b instagram business benchmarks, local seo benchmarks for small businesses, ecommerce google ads performance benchmarks, b2b hubspot email marketing benchmarks.

• Youtube Engagement Benchmarks

TikTok Ads Benchmarks

Klaviyo benchmarks for ecommerce and marketplaces, google analytics benchmarks for the real estate industry.

Built for : B2B companies

Available metrics : Compare your B2B website analytics KPIs using your Google Analytics Universal account. Marketing Benchmark Metrics include: users, bounce rate, pageviews, average time on page, sessions, average time on page, sessions, average session duration, pages per session, goal conversation rate, goal completions and goal value.

Join the group here .

Google Analytics Marketing Benchmarks for B2C companies

Built for: B2C companies

Available benchmarks : Compare your B2C website analytics KPIs using your Google Analytics Universal account. Marketing Benchmark Metrics include: sessions, new sessions, users and new users, bounce rate, average session duration, average time on page and pages per session.

Built for : Both B2B and B2C companies; company size from 1-100,000+

Available benchmarks : Reach frequency, clicks, CTR, CPM, CPC, amount spent, purchases, purchase conversion amount, and ROAS.

Designed for : B2B companies (Any size)

Available benchmarks : Facebook Ads (impressions, amount spent, and link clicks), Twitter Ads (impressions and tweet engagements), LinkedIn Ads (clicks, impressions, and spent), and Snapchat Ads (total impressions and amount spent).

Built for : Small to medium-sized companies (SMBs) with less than 250 employees.

Available benchmark metrics : clicks, impressions, followers, likes, reactions, and comments.

Built for : Both B2B and B2C companies; company size 1-100,000+

Available benchmark metrics : Sessions, users, events, engagement rate, and other related metrics for Google Analytics 4.

Available benchmark metrics : Reach, impressions, profile visits, new posts, new followers, new following, website clicks, email clicks, and other Instagram-related metrics.

Built for : B2C companies with 1-50 employees and $0 – $10 million in revenue

Available benchmark metrics : Benchmark Google My Business (GMB) metrics such as searches, total reviews, phone calls, and average ratings. Plus, Google Analytics metrics such as sessions, pageviews, average session duration, and bounce rate.

Built for : Ecommerce businesses 

Available benchmark metrics : Clicks, impressions, CPC, conversions, CTR, conversion value, and more.

Built for : B2B companies 

Available benchmark metrics : Emails sent, emails delivered, emails opened, emails clicked, bounce rate, new leads, and more.

YouTube Engagement Benchmarks

Built for : Both B2B and B2C companies.  

Available benchmark metrics : Views, watch time, average view duration, subscribers gained, likes, and comments.

Built for : All companies that have a Youtube channel  

Available benchmark metrics : Clicks, conversions, CPA, CPC, CPM, impressions, total cost, and more TikTok-related metrics.

Built for : Ecommerce and marketplace businesses.

Available benchmark metrics : Opened email, clicked email, subscribed to list, received email, marked as spam, dropped email, bounced email, and more.

Built for : Companies in the real estate industry

Available benchmark metrics : Sessions, users, bounce rate, average session duration, and others.

Benchmarking your company’s performance against industry competitors is one of the best ways to ensure your business is on the right track.

It helps you identify the best and worst performing areas, see what needs to be improved, gain insight into some best industry practices, and set realistic goals and performance targets.

However, while these benefits sound remarkable on paper, you can only get them through proper benchmarking.

And proper benchmarking is tough .

You need to spend a lot of hours on it, manage and direct a team of employees, allocate sufficient resources, analyze industry trends, check if competitor data is publicly available, go through your own organization’s metrics… things just add up.

Plus, you’re doing everything manually for the most part. Benchmark reports and features from certain tools you are already using are helpful to some extent, but they don’t eliminate the major part of the process.

But Databox’s Benchmark Groups product does.

With our product, you can quickly see how you stack up against your industry competitors or companies that are similar in size.

There are 1,000+ metrics you can benchmark, from 50+ of the most popular marketing, financial software, sales, and SEO tools.

All of this is completely free, there’s no catch.

To join our groups, we only ask you to share your data for the metrics that you want to see and benchmark. Your data is completely anonymous and so is your competitor’s. You can also opt out of the groups at any moment.

Hundreds of valuable insights are just a few clicks away!

Join Databox Benchmark Groups today to eliminate the hassle of manual benchmarking once and for all.

• Databox Benchmarks
• Future Value Calculator
• ROI Calculator
• Return On Ads Calculator
• Percentage Growth Rate Calculator
• Report Automation
• Client Reporting
• What is a KPI?
• Google Sheets KPIs
• Sales Analysis Report
• Shopify Reports
• Data Analysis Report
• Google Sheets Dashboard
• Best Dashboard Examples
• Analysing Data
• Marketing Agency KPIs
• Automate Agency Google Ads Report
• Marketing Research Report
• Social Media Dashboard Examples
• Ecom Dashboard Examples

Does Your Performance Stack Up?

Are you maximizing your business potential? Stop guessing and start comparing with companies like yours.

A Message From Our CEO

At Databox, we’re obsessed with helping companies more easily monitor, analyze, and report their results. Whether it’s the resources we put into building and maintaining integrations with 100+ popular marketing tools, enabling customizability of charts, dashboards, and reports, or building functionality to make analysis, benchmarking, and forecasting easier, we’re constantly trying to find ways to help our customers save time and deliver better results.

Do you want an All-in-One Analytics Platform?

Hey, we’re Databox. Our mission is to help businesses save time and grow faster. Click here to see our platform in action. 

Filip Stojanovic is a content writer who studies Business and Political Sciences. Also, I am a huge tennis enthusiast. Although my dream is to win a Grand Slam, working as a content writer is also interesting.

Get practical strategies that drive consistent growth

12 Tips for Developing a Successful Data Analytics Strategy

What Is Data Reporting and How to Create Data Reports for Your Business

What Is KPI Reporting? KPI Report Examples, Tips, and Best Practices

Build your first dashboard in 5 minutes or less

Latest from our blog

• 5 Strategies for Call-Based Lead Generation & Management (Based on 110+ Expert Respondents) June 27, 2024
• SaaS Growth Marketing Challenges and Wins in 2024 June 20, 2024
• Metrics & KPIs
• vs. Tableau
• vs. Looker Studio
• vs. Klipfolio
• vs. Power BI
• vs. Whatagraph
• vs. AgencyAnalytics
• Product & Engineering
• Inside Databox
• Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy
• Talent Resources
• We're Hiring!
• Help Center
• API Documentation

To read this content please select one of the options below:

Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, framework and determinants of benchmarking: a theoretical analysis and case study in vietnam.

International Journal of Emerging Markets

ISSN : 1746-8809

Article publication date: 26 January 2022

Issue publication date: 21 November 2023

This study aims to develop a benchmarking model with productivity, management, and sustainability indicators (PMS), measure the performance of furniture firms in Vietnam, explore the causes of performance gaps, and identify the barriers and factors of benchmarking practice.

Design/methodology/approach

The article uses both qualitative and quantitative methods. Literature review, exploratory interviews and a grounded-theory process are employed to develop a benchmarking framework and identify performance gaps, barriers and factors of benchmarking practice. The PMS benchmarking model and quantitative analysis are utilized to assess performance indicators.

The study proposes the PMS benchmarking model and measures performance indicators of furniture firms. The sources of performance gaps are explored as design, material supply, the economy of scale, market, management systems and openness. Benchmarking practice encounters barriers of difficult indicators, unsuitable firms, insufficient benchmarking knowledge, reluctance to share data, unavailable and unreliable data, and weak engagement. Benchmarking practice is determined by core factors: leader; internal factors: systems, engagement, strategy, scope, culture; external factors: customers, suppliers, associations, support, competition.

Practical implications

Firms could learn benchmarking indicators and the causes of these gaps to improve their performance. When implementing a benchmarking study, scholars and practitioners need to pay attention to barriers and factors of the benchmarking practice to ensure effective results.

Originality/value

This study develops the PMS benchmarking model and estimates performance indicators in an emerging country with the performance gap justification. It provides readers with benchmarking barriers with solutions and success factors of benchmarking practice.

• Benchmarking
• Improvement
• Sustainability
• Theoretical analysis

Acknowledgements

This research is funded by the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City. The authors thank the ILO officers, HAWA, BIFA, VCCI and enterprises for their generous support and data to complete this research. The authors would like to express their deep gratitude to the Editors and Reviewers for their kind comments to improve the article.

Hoang, V. , Nguyen, K.-D. and Nguyen, H.-L. (2023), "Framework and determinants of benchmarking: a theoretical analysis and case study in Vietnam", International Journal of Emerging Markets , Vol. 18 No. 10, pp. 4651-4668. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOEM-04-2021-0553

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles

All feedback is valuable.

Please share your general feedback

Report an issue or find answers to frequently asked questions

Contact Customer Support

• Shopping Cart

CASE Insights Benchmarking Cohorts

• Justify overall advancement investments.
• Build collaboration within your team and with other key leaders from member institutions
• Collective problem solving for your key issues, such as defining and capturing meaningful engagement (Alumni Engagement Cohort).
• Follow best practices established by CASE volunteers when you benchmark using CASE member-defined data points.
• Shape content of future sessions and cohort-specific research, as a result of member needs and industry changes.
• Build a repository of peer-to-peer quantitative and qualitative benchmarking data.

Upcoming Benchmarking Cohorts:

Insights on Alumni Engagement

• Limited to 15 to 20 institutions/schools
• 2 attendees per institution/school
• University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
• June 10-11, 2024 (with CASE-hosted dinner to follow)

The goal of the session is to use benchmarking data to spur conversations on meaningful engagement, share successful strategies, and help build industry best practices.  Open to a global audience.  

You might be also interested in:

CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement Key Findings Fiscal Year 2022 Webinar

CASE Insights summary benchmarking reports

The summary benchmarking report provides a visual representation of year-over-year trends in comparison data.

• Advancement Services
• Data Mining
• Fundraising

Other resources in Resource Series: CASE Insights

CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement Key Findings 2023

In 2023, 375 institutions from 20 countries, grouped into seven regions, participated in the CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement survey. Respondents submitted data for their most recently completed fiscal year. This report presents findings by region, type of institution, and whether the institution is public or private.

• Research and Data

CASE Insights on Voluntary Support of Education, 2023 Report

Order the CASE Insights on Voluntary Support of Education (VSE), 2023 Report

CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement Key Findings, 2022

In 2022, 350 institutions from 17 countries, grouped into five regions, participated in the CASE Global Alumni Engagement Metrics (AEM) survey. Respondents submitted data for their most recently completed fiscal year. This report presents findings by region, type of institution, and whether the institution is public or private.

Popular Searches

Advisory boards aren’t only for executives. Join the LogRocket Content Advisory Board today →

• Product Management
• Solve User-Reported Issues
• Find Issues Faster
• Optimize Conversion and Adoption

Conducting a UX benchmarking study step by step

UX benchmarking is the process of evaluating the performance of a company or website based on criteria accepted by stakeholders or universal standards. The process is usually generalized to UX benchmarking research, a type of summative evaluation, that deals with the analysis of relative performance within a company to measure its success.

If you’re here, you’re probably looking for help conducting your own study. I will explain UX benchmarking in detail to understand when a company needs it and break down this complex process, outlining the steps needed for its successful adaptation.

Table of contents

Benchmarking research, what does benchmarking mean in a ux context, when is benchmarking used in ux, step 0: necessary ux data to start benchmarking, step 1: identify behavioral and attitudinal issues using a ux audit, step 2: define standards you will look up to.

• Step 3: Analyse comparative results and propose solutions

Step 4: Implement changes

Step 5: gather post-change results on the ux metrics of interest, step 6: visualize and report the findings, step 7: record lessons learned, step 8: restart the cycle.

Benchmarking research focuses on these points:

• Applying specific data you gather from a comparative analysis to the standard
• This data’s usability for your specific website and product
• Its relevance considering the constantly changing environment
• Your target audience
• Your technical abilities to deliver what is needed based on this data
• Your company’s goals

Generally, benchmarking focuses on comparative evaluation to reasonable standards. I’ve used the word “reasonable” on purpose because the company might deal with data that has no universal standards but can identify patterns and trends within the industry to use as a guide for evaluation.

UX benchmarking research is a complex task that you should address from various perspectives.

In the UX context, we evaluate the company’s or product’s performance based on qualitative and quantitative data. Considering the fact that qualitative data is subjective, we’d need to investigate any behavioral patterns we observe with the company’s end goals in mind. We do this to conclude the success or failure of the company or changes within it.

Benchmarking is necessary when:

• Return on investment (ROI) is below the stakeholders’ target
• UX metrics are indicating a poor user experience
• Measuring the company’s or UX team’s performance after specific changes in the product
• Market shifts changed the nature of competition
• A new paradigm appeared in industry standards due to innovations, law changes, average industry performance, etc.

In other words, if the company wants to display its strength or understand its weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, it should conduct UX benchmarking.

Benchmarking is always a part of a bigger process for a company’s performance optimization and improvement. Businesses operate in a volatile environment with innovations and new competitors continuously appearing on the market; therefore, a developing company will always have an active team of UX specialists that work full-time to update the company’s design and keep track of customers’ shifting behavioral patterns.

UX benchmarking study: A step-by-step guide

The complexity of the UX benchmarking process should not discourage you from conducting it on a regular basis. The larger company is, the harder it is to spot weak spots because more variables are involved in a company’s performance.

However, the first step toward better UX performance relies on extensive background research on the qualitative and quantitative variables involved.

For a successful start, the UX team should identify what they are dealing with by gathering all relevant UX data available for your company. You can break this down into qualitative and quantitative:

• Time-on-task — average time of the user’s involvement with the website, completing the particular task
• Conversion rates — the percentage of conversions compared to the total number of website visitors
• Error rate — misled users or technical barriers that led to website interaction failure
• Completion rate — the percentage of completed tasks by users to the total number of attempts
• Engagement — set of actions made by the user on a site (views, clicks, shares, etc.)
• Retention — the percentage of returning users after the first interaction with the company
• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) — a loyalty metric based on the level of user satisfaction
• System usability scale (SUS) — customer’s evaluation of the usability of the website
• Net promotor score (NPS) — users’ readiness to refer others to share the experience they got from the company
• Customer effort score (CES) — measures the amount of effort users had to put in while interacting with the product
• Any other behavioral data that is not measured in numbers but can be used in the UX context

Gathering all the data is generally called a UX audit and is not limited to the variables I’ve mentioned. All of the measurements are a part of understanding the bigger picture: what the audience experiences when they interact with the website. You can further interpret the raw data to spot issues and threats and create opportunities for growth by targeting the weak spots.

How can professionals gather data?

The quantitative data I’ve mentioned is usually measured by professionals using tools like Google Analytics or LogRocket . Such tools provide statistics on everything when it comes to the behavior of the users on the website, as well as a user behavioral roadmap. The roadmap means that tools display the exact movement of the customers on the website.

You should support some data further with statistics on the company’s sales; the total number of clients; the percentage of clients ordering compared to all users coming to the payment page; the number of customers ordering multiple times compared to one-time users, etc.

Over 200k developers and product managers use LogRocket to create better digital experiences

The only weakness of such data is that it does not show the reason why customers leave specific pages, spend less time on different pages, do not convert, and so on. Answering those questions is the task for UX and UI teams as they analyze the correlation between the numbers they’ve acquired.

The qualitative data mentioned above is always measured by directly contacting the clients using questionnaires or user interviews . While CSAT, SUS, NPS, and CES are usually measured with questionnaire forms, interviews are meant to gather some behavioral data that is deeper and more detailed in explanation. For example, customer feedback forms can clarify if the users like the service or not and give it a score from 1 to 5. Interviews, in such cases, will help you understand exactly why they like the service or not and see at which step of the customer journey users could have an unsatisfactory experience.

Using the data gathered during the UX audit mentioned above, UX professionals should work on finding patterns that explain the customers’ behavior and discovering ways to improve their experience. Possible behavioral and attitudinal patterns that may become a threat to the company’s performance can be summed up as follows:

• Technical problems within the website
• The interpreted quantitative data with deeper analysis if conversions, satisfaction rate, traffic, and retention are below benchmarking standards
• Outdated materials
• Problems with accessibility and usability
• Building a roadmap of the customers’ actions might reveal barriers that could impact their choices
• Qualitative data gathered through questionnaires and interviews could provoke concerns and identify weaknesses

Hence, the results of the UX audit may be more specific but usually fall under some of the categories identified. Your UX team should outline all your findings before taking your next steps. Such an outline serves as a basis for the next benchmarking step.

By definition, the benchmarking process relies on a comparison to predefined standards. However, there might not be universal standards that everyone at your company follow, which means that the company has to find reliable standards on its own. There are four types of standards that you can use for UX benchmarking:

• Product performance data — qualitative and quantitative UX metrics that the company had before launching the new product or implementing changes. For example, before the latest changes to the product, the satisfaction rate was 3.5/5, while after the update, the rate increased to 3.75/5
• Competitors’ performance — available industry best practices and their results. For example, your current conversion rate is 1 percent, while your main competitor has 5 percent
• Company’s goals — standards set by stakeholders. For example, your average retention rate is 10 percent, while investors want to achieve 20 percent
• Industry performance — average rates between a set number of competitors. For example, your SUS rate is 2.7/5, while the average rate among the ten main competitors is 4.1/5

Step 3: Analyze comparative results and propose solutions

After identifying the standards, the next step is to compare your current UX metrics and find a solution to improve your performance. Depending on the standard, try asking yourself these questions:

• Are there technical issues that lead to problems?
• Did the change in product lead to problems?
• Did the product change solve the issue it was meant to tackle?
• What can be done to fix the underperformance/perform even better?
• What do they do better, and how?
• How is their input data different (for example, target audience)?
• What can be done to reach their results/increase the gap between your results if your results are better?
• What is our target, and why?
• Is this achievable based on competitors’ performance?
• Will changes lead to higher returns?
• What can be done to satisfy stakeholders?
• Is the data acquired reliable?
• What patterns can be found in the performance of others that led to better results?
• What can be done to enhance your website?

Answering why others are performing better or worse than your business is key to understanding what can be done for the company’s development. If standards are lower than your metrics, work on increasing the gap between results and aim for perfection. If others are doing better — analyze why that happened, spot the weaknesses to address, and find opportunities to outperform them.

Your company must always test new things because the market is shifting fast, and staying updated is instrumental to becoming or staying number one in the industry.

Positive changes in results are inevitable if the benchmarking is done correctly. Your proposed solutions will benefit the company after implementation, but only if the design team did the cause-effect analysis and user testing correctly.

To confirm whether the actions taken performed well, conduct a post-change UX audit and find fluctuations in results. After the implementation process, the design team checks the primary UX metrics, tracks if they have improved, and compares them with benchmarking standards.

We do benchmarking research to achieve a particular purpose. The data acquired has to be structured and further analyzed; that’s why it’s important to visualize data using charts and infographics to appeal to stakeholders. Such practice is especially relevant if your standards are based on stakeholders’ expectations. The final report must contain the following:

• Achieved vs. previous results vs. set standards
• Evaluation of the underperforming results (if there are any) based on post-implementation data
• Additional adjustments to achieve better results in the future
• References and data proofs that stakeholders can check to confirm the presented data

Any outcome based on proper benchmarking is a valuable lesson. Analyzing your cases and saving them for future reference is key to successful performance.

If a change did not provide the desired results, the case might prevent similar mistakes in the future. If the project is successful, the company may elaborate on the findings and investigate possible ways to benefit even more.

Benchmarking is not only about measuring success, because negative outcomes can also be used to find opportunities in other areas and prevent future overspending on failing projects.

There is no limit to perfection. Considering the ever-changing environment and even the fact that a customer profile, as well as user behavior, changes over time, it is always important to target evolving needs. Therefore, the UX design team should always work on new solutions to increase user satisfaction, react to customers’ feedback, and keep track of their behavior to update the company based on shifted data.

LogRocket : Analytics that give you UX insights without the need for interviews

LogRocket lets you replay users' product experiences to visualize struggle, see issues affecting adoption, and combine qualitative and quantitative data so you can create amazing digital experiences.

See how design choices, interactions, and issues affect your users — get a demo of LogRocket today .

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• #ux research

Stop guessing about your digital experience with LogRocket

Recent posts:.

How to vectorize an image in Figma: A complete guide

Learn to convert and edit images in vector formats like PDF, EPS, or SVG using Figma, its many handy plugins, and other tools.

Generating video captions with AI

Explore the advantages of using AI for video captions. We’ll also review the best AI video caption generators and discuss their features.

Automating the mundane: 4 AI tools to improve UX research

We discuss common bottlenecks in UX research, examines the role of AI, and explores the best AI tools to improve UX research.

Using AI for no-code design: Introducing Fronty

Let’s explore no-code designing with AI. We’ll discuss Fronty, its features, and using them by converting Figma design frames to webpages.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

• competitive benchmarking

Case Study: Best Practice and Benchmark Analysis

Intervention: They recognized that existing faculty expertise, the ability to serve as a convener and their geographic location could form a foundation to build upon…but they needed to know how they compared to others already in the space. Members of the leadership team decided to explore the viability of creating a CoE on this topic by completing a fact-based review and determine if there was a business case to support this hypothesis.

Impact: Wes completed a benchmark analysis that included a review of the current landscape, an evaluation of the characteristics of best-in-class institutions and measured the client against these criteria to identify areas of strength and gaps that could impact success. The holistic approach created a framework that defined what success would look like in today’s shifting social and political environment. The evaluation also looked at how proposed options had the capability to positively impact attracting students, faculty and staff as well as serve as a catalyst to increase donations. This comprehensive assessment demonstrated the client was well positioned to make valuable contributions to study of diversity and inclusion. It also provided a high-level implementation plan designed to deliver quick wins as well as achieve sustainable long term impact.

•   Email Us

• Channels ►
• Transactions & Valuation
• GI & Endoscopy
• Coding, Billing, and Collections
• Accreditation & Quality
• New ASC Development
• Total Joint Replacements
• Outpatient Spine
• Private Equity
• Supply Chain
• Ophthalmology
• Specialties ►
• Orthopedics
• Dental / DSO
• Becker's Healthcare Websites ►
• Dental + DSO
• Behavioral Health
• Physician Leadership
• Newsletters ►
• Clinical Leadership
• Orthopedic Review
• Spine Review
• Events ►
• Upcoming Conferences and Events
• 9th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Annual Meeting: The Future of Business and Clinical Technologies
• Becker's ASC 30th Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs
• Fall Future of Dentistry Roundtable
• Fall Payer Issues Roundtable
• 12th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable
• Chief Pharmacy Officer Summit
• 15th Annual Meeting
• Spring Payer Issues Roundtable
• Call for Speakers
• Exhibiting & Sponsoring
• Virtual Events ►
• Upcoming Virtual Events
• Oncology Virtual Forum
• AI + Digital Health Virtual Event
• Digital Innovation + Patient Experience and Marketing Virtual Event
• Dental + DSO Virtual Event
• Human Resources + Talent Virtual Event
• 9th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Virtual Event
• 12th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable Virtual Event
• Oncology Virtual Summit
• Past Virtual Events
• Webinars ►
• Upcoming Webinars
• Past Webinars
• Partner Content ►
• Current Partner Content
• Lists ►
• 580+ ASCs with total joint replacements | 2023
• 180+ ASCs with spine surgery | 2023
• State-by state breakdown of 2022's 183 new ASCs
• 10 GI power players
• 510 of America's 'Best' ASCs in 2023: Newsweek
• Nominations
• Print ►
• Current Issue
• Past Issues
• Multimedia ►
• ASC Speaker Series
• Roundtables
• Career Center
• Arrowhead's Journey with Stryker
• Insights ►
• Spine Surgeon
• About Us ►
• About Becker's ASC Review
• Careers at Becker's
• Request Media Kit
• Most Read ►
• 76 physicians charged in $2.7B fraud schemes
• United Digestive's 5-year recap: 20+ moves
• How physician assistant pay stacks up against inflation
• Medicare Advantage scrutinized in Congress amid 'strong desire' to attack the problem
• 6 more hospitals shuttering services
• Real estate firms to break ground on 4 medical office buildings in Florida
• 11 new ASCs in June
• Where anesthesia reimbursements are falling short
• 342 cardiology clinics acquired by private equity in 10 years
• PA satisfaction in 2024: 8 things to know
• Top 40 Articles ►
• Alabama cardiology practice officially closes following monthslong rumor
• Texas anesthesiologist has license suspended, barred from treating female patients
• Former Pennsylvania physician sentenced to 22 years for drug distribution resulting in 1 death
• What NPs earn per hour in all 50 states
• Louisiana physician sentenced to prison for prescription drug fraud
• Florida physician found guilty of selling prescriptions for cash 
• Jefferson cardiologist dies in car accident
• Florida physician sentenced to 10 years for running pill mill
• Illinois physician sentenced to 8 years for $1.2M Medicare fraud scheme
• 15 sentenced in $40M fraud, physician kickback scheme 
• Texas physician convicted in $70M Medicare scheme
• States with the lowest, highest property tax rate
• Maryland physician indicted for illegally distributing controlled substances
• The lowest-paid physician specialties
• RN vs. NP vs. PA pay: Key comparisons to know
• Oregon becomes 1st state to change 'PA' title
• Arizona physician admits to $3.7M in billing fraud
• Wisconsin physician sentenced to prison for selling prescriptions 
• Patient wins $3.2M in suit against Cleveland Clinic physician 
• New York physician sentenced for illegally prescribing opioids
• Michigan physician accused of assault 
• Arkansas ophthalmologist has license suspended for alleged patient assault
• The US' 10 best medical schools
• New Jersey cardiologist loses license for allegedly groping female patients
• Florida physician sentenced for drug distribution, fraud
• Kentucky physician pleads guilty to $14M fraud scheme
• 10 most overweight cities in the US
• Good news, bad news for physicians in 2024
• Tylock-George Eye Care and Laser Center chief surgeon dies
• The anesthesia conundrum
• The lowest-paying physician specialties in the last 5 years
• Indiana nurse charged in narcotics theft at outpatient surgery center
• Bad news for private practice physicians
• Michigan physician pleads guilty to practicing without a license 
• Stark law violators facing massive penalties 
• Montana physician convicted in $39M fraud scheme
• The race to acquire physicians
• Cleveland Clinic hospital, lead anesthesiologist face negligence suit
• Louisiana physician gets prison for tax evasion
• Kaiser Permanente surgeon suing fellow physician for defamation

4 Case Studies: How You Can Use Benchmarking to Improve Practice

You know you have to track quality and patient satisfaction indicators. Your accreditation agency requires it; increasingly, your third-party insurers may require reporting of data; and, soon, CMS will ask you to track and report selected indicators. But how much of your benchmarking practice is about analyzing numbers and enacting change, rather than just doing? “Everyone knows they need to benchmark and track quality data; every January, we get an influx of calls,” says Jennifer Greene, RHIT, of Surgical Outcomes Information Exchange. “We’ve seen a shift toward more ASCs understanding the value of benchmarking, but a lot of people are still taking the data, putting it in and not knowing what to do with the results.” It’s increasingly important: Accreditation surveyors are now looking not just to see that you have a quality improvement process, but also what the process entails and how you’re using it, says Ms. Green. In addition, embracing benchmarking is simply a good business practice. “People get scared off by the jargon, but benchmarking is simply a matter of knowing the measurement, how it measures up, finding the problems and determining solutions,” says Ms. Green. “Time is money; you can cost-justify those things that you want to do but might not otherwise have the evidence for. Maybe you always thought Dr. A was slow, that you weren’t processing patients fast enough. When you see numbers outside the range, you can now do a QI process and determine where the system is breaking down. “Then you can think about solutions: Do you need staff training? Do you need to fire someone? Hire someone? Sit down with a doc and have a discussion?” Here are four case studies of centers that have been able to make practical and tangible changes thanks to benchmarking. 1. Enhancing efficiency When Blake Woods Medical Park Surgery Center in Jackson, Mich., started using the services of a national benchmarking service, the staff found that “in a lot of respects, we were doing better than we thought,” says Margaret Acker, RN, MSN, Blake Woods’ CEO. That’s not to say she didn’t find room for improvement. Here are several areas where Ms. Acker has been able to put benchmarking to use at her ASC. • Extended downtime. Blake Woods started as a single-specialty ophthalmology center, and when it looked at downtime between cataract cases, it found it was slow compared with similar centers. “At the time, we admitted one patient every 10 minutes to three pre-op bays,” says Ms. Acker. “The benchmarking tipped us off, so we did a time study, and we found that we needed to pre-op more than three patients at a time to open up more beds.” The result: Blake Woods started using six pre-op beds at a time, admitting three to the right eye room and three for the left eye room every 10 minutes. This method decreased downtime because “we always had a patient ready,” says Ms. Acker. • Long discharge times. “When we looked at our discharge times, they were far longer than the industry standard,” says Ms. Acker. “We thought our nurses were just being especially nice, taking time to make sure patients were ready. But on our patient satisfaction surveys (which Blake Woods also benchmarks), patients were complaining that they were at the center too long after surgery and that they forgot discharge instructions.” So the center incorporated explanation of discharge instructions into the pre-op process and began discharging patients as soon as they were comfortable. “We use topical anesthesia for the most part, so if they’re stable, anesthesia discharges them in the OR,” says Ms. Acker. “We get them a drink, get the IV out and reaffirm that they’re stable in the post-op area, then we send them home. Patient satisfaction scores went up immediately after we implemented this change and remain in the 99th percentile.” • Help with adding specialties. Blake Woods recently opened a third OR and added orthopedics and general surgery, and Ms. Acker used available benchmarking information — especially with regard to supply costs — to help guide all parts of the process, from planning to setting expectations to purchasing. “For scheduling purposes, we looked at the time frame we should expect a knee or a shoulder to take,” she says. “We looked at cost-comparison benchmarking, so when surgeons said, ‘We need this $300 anchor,’ we were able to say no. We also looked at case volumes and average reimbursements” to determine the number of cases needed for profitability and to guide negotiations with insurers. “I think with any project you want to start or any area you want to grow, you really need to look at the data that’s out there,” says Ms. Acker. “When I want to do something, I pay for the benchmarking report; I’ve used something from every one I’ve ever received.” 2. Cost-justifying equipment purchases “We had a facility that was finding its recovery times were five minutes longer than the national average,” says Ms. Green. “So we helped them devise a formula to understand how much that five minutes was costing — and how much trimming that excess could save them.” Here is Ms. Green’s formula: Charge per procedure / OR minutes per proce- dure = OR cost per minute Procedures per month x OR minutes = Current OR time Procedures per month x Target OR Minutes = Target OR Time Current OR Time – Target OR Time = Wasted Minutes Wasted minutes / Procedures per month = Average time wasted per case Average time wasted per case x OR cost per minute = Wasted Dollars “This let us show not only how much they stood to save by becoming more efficient, but how much income they could add by streamlining and using formerly wasted time to perform procedures,” says Ms. Green. “One facility we work with was able to cost-justify purchasing eye stretcher chairs that the patients never leave from pre- to post-op using this formula. The chairs save time because the patients don’t have to get out of them, and the saved time meant more procedures.” Because the chairs are a one-time cost, the facility has continued to reap the efficiency benefits long after purchase. Further, they enhance safety by preventing patient falls and protecting the skin integrity of older patients because you eliminate having to move them. “You can adapt the formula to determine the charge per minute of the entire procedure, through discharge,” adds Ms. Green. “Then, when you look at complication rates, you can figure out how much a complication costs you. If patients are staying two to four hours instead of 30 minutes, you can see how that would eat up all your profit on the case; you might even have to do more cases in order to make up for the hit from that one complication.” 3. Making patients more comfortable In addition to tracking various clinical indicators, Digestive Health Specialists—Puyallup keeps close watch on patient satisfaction scores. “If we see complaints consistently, we take them to the standards of practice committee to develop a plan of action to correct the issue,” says Chalene Wilson, RN, the center’s director of nursing. An example: “One of the things we ask on our patient satisfaction surveys is whether patients had any swelling, redness or tenderness at their IV sites. A lot were coming back with reports of these symptoms.” To address this, a product rep from the supply company in-serviced the staff on proper technique. “Our phlebitis rates decreased quickly,” says Ms. Wilson. Rarely do we have an IV site problem. The in-service was an easy fix for something that had been a discomfort for patients, but that we might not have spotted otherwise.” 4. Meeting best-practice standards Sometimes, when quality tracking reveals inefficiencies, you may find that you aren’t fully utilizing national best practices. Central Bucks Specialists in Doylestown, Pa., for example, was suffering from inconsistent room turnover that caused scheduling problems and resultant frustration on all sides. “When we tried to get to the bottom of the problem we got myriad answers,” says Zvi Weinman, MBA, the administrator of Central Bucks, which performs 8,000 GI procedures annually. “The staff thought it was caused by the physicians, the physicians thought it was caused by the staff, and occasionally, everyone thought it was caused by the anesthesiologists.” Mr. Weinman was able to have hard data in hand that allowed him to analyze the problem objectively by tracking quality indicators: arrival to patient in room; patient in room to time-out; time-out to scope in; scope in to scope-out; scope-out to recovery start; recovery start to discharge; and polypectomy rate. Two areas stood out. • Time-out to scope-in time. Five of six practicing physicians, were averaging within minutes of one another; the sixth was averaging close to 20 minutes longer than the others per procedure. The discrepancy was due to his conscious sedation practice: Rather than giving a big bolus up front, he was doing a little at a time, and onset of the anesthetic took markedly longer as a result. When the surgeon was able to see the difference his conscious sedation practices were having on his procedure times, and that what his peers were doing wasn’t affecting outcomes adversely, he changed practice. • Scope-in time to scope-out time. Four of six doctors averaged within minutes of one another for scope time. One took markedly longer, and another was significantly shorter. It was not a matter of quality, but rather a matter of practice preference. For the physician who took longer, Central Bucks started scheduling his procedures for an extra 15 minutes each, and built it into the schedule, eliminating backups for his patients. And the faster physician was able to slow his scope withdrawal to ensure greater consistency and better adhere to identified GI best practices. Contact Stephanie Wasek at [email protected]. Key Statistics for Cataracts, Colonoscopy and Knee Arthroscopy Cataract surgery Here are selected national averages for cataract surgery times and an interesting practice statistic, courtesy of Surgical Outcomes Information Exchange. The numbers represent the average for 27,000 cases submitted to SOIX from 2006 to March 2008. • OR time — 25 to 30 minutes • Recovery time — 25 to 30 minutes • Surgical time — 15 to 20 minutes • 76 percent of facilities use MAC anesthesia for cataracts. The 2007 AAAHC Institute report “Cataract Extraction with Lens Insertion” offers data from 70 organizations that perform more than 131,000 cataract surgeries each year. Here are some of the data from the report, the latest of seven conducted since 1999 on cataract and lens operations: • Intraoperative anesthetic techniques included topical (42 percent), peribulbar block (24 percent), retrobulbar block (26 percent).  • Individuals insured by Medicare were less likely to receive high-tech replacement lenses that also correct presbyopia (15 percent) compared to non-Medicare eligible patients who received the corrective reading lens (28 percent). • Two weeks after surgery, 95 percent of patients said their vision had changed for the better. Ninety-nine percent said they would recommend the procedure to friends or family members with cataracts.   Colonoscopy The AAAHC Institute report gathered data from 107 organizations that perform nearly 500,000 colonoscopies each year. Here are some findings from the report, also the seventh in the series of colonoscopy best practices studies conducted by the AAAHC Institute:  • In 94 percent of cases, a time was given for visualization of the cecum. • In 80 percent (1,871) of the cases, the time from cecum visualization to the end of the procedure was six minutes or more. • The average time from the visualization of the cecum to the end of the procedure (by organization) ranged from four to 18 minutes, with a median of nine minutes. Knee arthroscopy with meniscectomy This AAAHC Institute study gathered data from 31 organizations performing more than 17,800 procedures a year participated. Among the findings: • Forty-five percent of procedures were performed due to traumatic injury and 55 percent due to degenerative disease. • Average discharge time ranged from about 94 minutes for patients receiving epidural/spinal anesthesia to 66 minutes with local anesthesia and IV sedation.  • All but 35 patients (5 percent) indicated they had begun walking within seven days of the procedure. — Stephanie Wasek

Copyright © 2024 Becker's Healthcare. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy . Cookie Policy . Linking and Reprinting Policy .

Featured Learning Opportunities

• ASC/Spine Whitepapers  
• ASC/Spine Webinars  
• Clinical Whitepapers  
• Clinical Webinars  
• Process Improvement Whitepapers  
• Process Improvement Webinars  
• Hospital Review Virtual Events  
• ASC/Spine Virtual Events  

Featured Webinars

Featured whitepapers, featured podcast.

Becker's Websites

Virtual Learning

• Whitepapers

Conferences

• 9th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + RCM Meeting: The Future of Business and Clinical Technologies
• 1.800.417.2035
• [email protected]

Markets for Diversifying Agriculture: Case Studies of the U.S Midwest

Agricultural diversification stands out as a critical strategy for addressing challenges and seizing opportunities within the agricultural landscape, especially in regions like the Midwest of the U.S. This research delves into the dynamics, opportunities, challenges, and key success drivers associated with agricultural diversification in the Midwest, focusing on three primary crops: oats, peas, and wheat. Employing a case study methodology grounded in empirical and contextual inquiry principles, the research aims to grasp the nuances of diversified agriculture. Data collection integrates primary and secondary sources, including semi-structured interviews and participation in field days. The data collection period spanned from October 2022 to February 2024. Interviews with 29 stakeholders, including farmers, industry representatives, agricultural cooperatives, and non-profits, provided insights into diversified agriculture practices.

Each case study provides in-depth insights into the opportunities, challenges, and key drivers of success associated with promoting diversified agriculture initiatives. These case studies underscore the significance of innovation, market access, sustainability, and collaboration in driving success within the industry. The cross-case analysis offers a comprehensive examination of the potential for agricultural diversification in the US Midwest. Through a comparative analysis of the three case studies, commonalities and key themes emerge, shedding light on stakeholder dynamics, business strategies, operational aspects, and scalability factors.

In summary, this research significantly contributes to the body of knowledge on agricultural diversification, offering insights that can guide future decisions, agricultural practices, and research endeavors aimed at promoting sustainability and resilience in the agricultural sector in the US Midwest.

Degree Type

• Master of Science
• Horticulture

Campus location

• West Lafayette

Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair

Additional committee member 2, additional committee member 3, usage metrics.

• Sustainable agricultural development
• Agricultural land planning

Information

• Author Services

Initiatives

You are accessing a machine-readable page. In order to be human-readable, please install an RSS reader.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess .

Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications.

Feature papers are submitted upon individual invitation or recommendation by the scientific editors and must receive positive feedback from the reviewers.

Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to readers, or important in the respective research area. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal.

Original Submission Date Received: .

• Active Journals
• Find a Journal
• Proceedings Series
• For Authors
• For Reviewers
• For Editors
• For Librarians
• For Publishers
• For Societies
• For Conference Organizers
• Open Access Policy
• Institutional Open Access Program
• Special Issues Guidelines
• Editorial Process
• Research and Publication Ethics
• Article Processing Charges
• Testimonials
• Preprints.org
• SciProfiles
• Encyclopedia

Article Menu

• Subscribe SciFeed
• Recommended Articles
• Google Scholar
• on Google Scholar
• Table of Contents

Find support for a specific problem in the support section of our website.

Please let us know what you think of our products and services.

Visit our dedicated information section to learn more about MDPI.

JSmol Viewer

Adaptability analysis of integrated project delivery method in large- and medium-sized engineering projects: a fahp-based modeling solution.

1. Introduction

2. development of the ipd method, 2.1. research trends of project management, 2.2. development of the ipd method, 2.2.1. introduction of the ipd method.

• The EPC method.
• The OCM method.
• The OR method.
• The IPD method.

2.2.2. Benefits of the IPD Method Compared to Other Methods

2.2.3. integration of ipd and other methods, 2.2.4. research necessity of the ipd method in engineering projects, 3. modeling methods, 3.1. fahp-based evaluation indicators, 3.1.1. a brief description of fahp theory, 3.1.2. fahp-based indicators.

• Cost control .
• Risk control .
• Management control .
• Schedule control .

3.2. FAHP-Based Modeling Process

3.3. decision-making score evaluation method, 4. results and case application, 4.1. mathematical expressions for ipd adaptability, 4.2. case application, 4.2.1. description of the case project, 4.2.2. application of the ipd method, 4.2.3. comprehensive benefit analysis between the ipd method and or method, 4.3. limitations and future directions, 4.3.1. contributions, 4.3.2. limitations, 4.3.3. future directions, 5. conclusions, author contributions, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest, abbreviations.

Click here to enlarge figure

• Locatelli, G.; Ika, L.; Drouin, N.; Müller, R.; Huemann, M.; Söderlund, J.; Geraldi, J.; Clegg, S. A Manifesto for project management research. Eur. Manag. Rev. 2023 , 20 , 3–17. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Guo, K.; Zhang, L. Multi-objective optimization for improved project management: Current status and future directions. Autom. Constr. 2022 , 139 , 104256. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kadenic, M.D.; Tambo, T. Resilience of operating models: Exploring the potential of agile project management as enabler. Int. J. Manag. Proj. Bus. 2023 , 16 , 521–542. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Pan, Y.; Zhang, L. A BIM-data mining integrated digital twin framework for advanced project management. Autom. Constr. 2021 , 124 , 103564. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Mavi, R.K.; Standing, C. Critical success factors of sustainable project management in construction: A fuzzy DEMATEL-ANP approach. J. Clean. Prod. 2018 , 194 , 751–765. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Müller, R. Exploring the future of research in project management. Rev. Gestão Proj. 2023 , 14 , 14–26. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hallowell, M.; Toole, T.M. Contemporary Design-Bid-Build Model. J. Constr. Eng. Manag. 2009 , 135 , 540–549. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Chen, Y.; Zhu, X.; Zhang, N. Comparison of Project Objectives and Critical Factors between DBB and DB in China ; IEEE: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2009; Volume 12, pp. 583–587. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Carpenter, N.; Bausman, D.C. Project Delivery Method Performance for Public School Construction: Design-Bid-Build versus CM at Risk. J. Constr. Eng. Manag. 2016 , 142 , 05016009. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Huang, Y.L.; Pi, C.C. Real-Option Valuation of Build-Operate-Transfer Infrastructure Projects under Performance Bonding. J. Constr. Eng. Manag. 2014 , 140 , 04013068. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sholeh, M.N.; Fauziyah, S. Current state mapping of the supply chain in engineering procurement construction (EPC) project: A case study. MATEC Web Conf. 2018 , 195 , 06015. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Shen, Z.; Zhao, J.; Guo, M. Evaluating the Engineering-Procurement-Construction Approach and Whole Process Engineering Consulting Mode in Construction Projects. Iran. J. Sci. Technol. Trans. Civ. Eng. 2023 , 47 , 2533–2547. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Abe, R.; Saito, Y.; Shide, K. Research on each actor’s awareness of procurement methods involving contractors and consultants in the design phase: Based on interviews with persons in charge. Jpn. Archit. Rev. 2023 , 6 , e12384. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Vasilenko, M.A.; Drozdov, N.A.; Tagiltseva, J.A.; Kuzina, E.L.; Kuzina, M.A. Systematic Approach and Advanced Marketing in Public-Private Partnerships ; IEEE: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2017; Volume 9, pp. 27–31. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Santolini, M.; Ellinas, C.; Nicolaides, C. Uncovering the fragility of large-scale engineering projects. EPJ Data Sci. 2021 , 10 , 36. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Jadidoleslami, S.; Saghatforoush, E.; Heravi, A.; Preece, C. A practical framework to facilitate constructability implementation using the integrated project delivery approach: A case study. Int. J. Constr. Manag. 2022 , 22 , 1225–1239. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Trach, R.; Polonski, M.; Hrytsiuk, P. Modelling of Efficiency Evaluation of Traditional Project Delivery Methods and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). IOP Conf. Ser. Mater. Sci. Eng. 2019 , 471 , 112043. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Choi, J.; Yun, S.; Leite, F.; Mulva, S.P. Team Integration and Owner Satisfaction: Comparing Integrated Project Delivery with Construction Management at Risk in Health Care Projects. J. Manag. Eng. 2019 , 35 . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Demirel, T.; Çetin Demirel, N.; Kahraman, C. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process and its Application. In Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making ; Springer: Boston, MA, USA, 2008; pp. 53–83. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Chih, Y.Y.; Hsiao, C.Y.L.; Zolghadr, A.; Naderpajouh, N. Resilience of Organizations in the Construction Industry in the Face of COVID-19 Disturbances: Dynamic Capabilities Perspective. J. Manag. Eng. 2022 , 38 , 04022002. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Bypaneni, S.P.K.; Tran, D.Q. Empirical Identification and Evaluation of Risk in Highway Project Delivery Methods. J. Manag. Eng. 2018 , 34 . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Koolwijk, J.S.J.; van Oel, C.J.; Wamelink, J.W.F.; Vrijhoef, R. Collaboration and Integration in Project-Based Supply Chains in the Construction Industry. J. Manag. Eng. 2018 , 34 , 04018001. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Han, J.; Lee, S.H.; Kim, J.K. A process integrated engineering knowledge acquisition and management model for a project based manufacturing. Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. 2017 , 18 , 175–185. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kabirifar, K.; Mojtahedi, M. The impact of Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) Phases on Project Performance: A Case of Large-scale Residential Construction Project. Buildings 2019 , 9 , 15. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Wang, Q.; Wang, J. Research on Key Risk Factors and Risk Transmission Path of Procurement in International Engineering Procurement Construction Project. Buildings 2022 , 12 , 534. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Institute, P.M. Construction Extension to the PMBOK Guide ; Project Management Institute, Inc.: Newtown Square, PA, USA, 2016. [ Google Scholar ]
• Council, F.F. Federal Facilities Council Technical Report, Number 149: Reducing Construction Costs: Uses of Best Dispute Resolution Practices by Project Owners: Proceedings Report ; National Academies Press: Washington, DC, USA, 2007. [ Google Scholar ]
• Forcael, E.; Rodríguez, C.; Vargas, S.; Álvarez, P.; Ponce, L. Role of the Owner’s Representative Within the Construction Industry: Case Study of Chile. Iran. J. Sci. Technol. Trans. Civ. Eng. 2020 , 44 , 197–208. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Mesa, H.A.; Molenaar, K.R.; Alarcón, L.F. Exploring performance of the integrated project delivery process on complex building projects. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 2016 , 34 , 1089–1101. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sherif, M.; Abotaleb, I.; Alqahtani, F.K. Application of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) in the Middle East: Implementation and Challenges. Buildings 2022 , 12 , 467. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kahvandi, Z.; Melhado, S.; Viana, M.L. Solutions to Overcome Integrated Project Delivery Implementation Barriers: A Meta-Synthesis Approach. J. Constr. Dev. Ctries 2023 , 28 , 63–89. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hall, D.M.; Scott, W.R. Early Stages in the Institutionalization of Integrated Project Delivery. Proj. Manag. J. 2019 , 50 , 128–143. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Barutha, P.J.; Jeong, H.D.; Gransberg, D.D.; Touran, A. Evaluation of the Impact of Collaboration and Integration on Performance of Industrial Projects. J. Manag. Eng. 2021 , 37 , 04021037. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Salleh, R.M.; Mustaffa, N.E.; Rahiman, N.A.; Ariffin, H.L.T.; Othman, N. The Propensity of Building Information Modelling and Integrated Project Delivery in Building Construction Project. Int. J. Built Environ. Sustain. 2019 , 6 , 83–90. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Jünger, H.C.; Hofmann, A.; Schneebecke, J.; Scharpf, S.; Auch, N. Die Erweiterung der Integrierten Projektabwicklung auf den Lebenszyklusansatz/The expansion of Integrated Project Delivery to the life cycle approach. Bauingenieur 2022 , 97 , 298–305. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Mesa, H.A.; Molenaar, K.R.; Alarcón, L.F. Comparative analysis between integrated project delivery and lean project delivery. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 2019 , 37 , 395–409. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Dzhusupova, R.; Bosch, J.; Olsson, H.H. Challenges in Developing and Deploying AI in the Engineering, Procurement and Construction Industry ; IEEE: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2022; Volume 6, pp. 1070–1075. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sangroungrai, S.; Sukchareonpong, P.; Witchakul, S. Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) Project Management for Reducing Cost and Time: A Case Study of Petrochemical Plant ; IEEE: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2018; Volume 5, pp. 402–406. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Pishdad-Bozorgi, P.; Austin, R.; Garza, J.M.D.L. Flash Track Practices Distilled via Structured Interviews from EPC Projects. Am. Soc. Civ. Eng. 2016 , 5 , 168–178. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kahvandi, Z.; Saghatforoush, E.; ZareRavasan, A.; Viana, M.L. A Review and Classification of Integrated Project Delivery Implementation Enablers. J. Constr. Dev. Ctries 2020 , 25 , 219–236. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ling, F.Y.Y.; Teo, P.X.; Li, S.; Zhang, Z.; Ma, Q. Adoption of Integrated Project Delivery Practices for Superior Project Performance. J. Leg. Aff. Disput. Resolut. Eng. Constr. 2020 , 12 , 05020014. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Zhang, Y.; Hu, H. Utilization of a cognitive task analysis for integrated project delivery application: Case study of constructing a campus underground parking facility. Cogn. Syst. Res. 2018 , 52 , 579–590. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ashcraft, H. Transforming project delivery: Integrated project delivery. Oxf. Rev. Econ. Policy 2022 , 38 , 369–384. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Saaty, R. The analytic hierarchy process—What it is and how it is used. Math. Model. 1987 , 9 , 161–176. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Saaty, T. The negotiation and resolution of the conflict in South Africa: The AHP. ORiON 2003 , 4 . [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Huang, G.; Sun, S.; Zhang, D. Safety Evaluation of Construction Based on the Improved AHP-Grey Model. Wirel. Pers. Commun. 2018 , 103 , 209–219. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Lyu, H.M.; Sun, W.J.; Shen, S.L.; Zhou, A.N. Risk Assessment Using a New Consulting Process in Fuzzy AHP. J. Constr. Eng. Manag. 2020 , 146 , 04019112. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Saaty, T.L.; Tran, L.T. Fuzzy Judgments and Fuzzy Sets. Int. J. Strateg. Decis. Sci. 2010 , 1 , 23–40. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Zhang, X.L.; Wang, L.H. Choosing an Appropriate Construction Project Delivery Method Using FAHP in China ; IEEE: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2009; Volume 10, pp. 78–82. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kerzner, H. Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling , 12th ed.; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, USA, 2017. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sears, S.K. Construction Project Management: A Practical Guide to Field Construction Management , 6th ed.; Wiley: Hoboken, NJ, USA, 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• Liu, L.; Lin, Y.; Xiao, Y.; Xue, P.; Shi, L.; Chen, X.; Liu, J. Quantitative effects of urban spatial characteristics on outdoor thermal comfort based on the LCZ scheme. Build. Environ. 2018 , 143 , 443–460. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Benson, C.; Obasi, I.C.; Akinwande, D.V.; Ile, C. The impact of interventions on health, safety and environment in the process industry. Heliyon 2024 , 10 , e23604. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Saaty, T.L. Correction to: Some mathematical concepts of the analytic hierarchy process. Behaviormetrika 2021 , 48 , 193–194. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hand, D.J. Statistical Concepts: A Second Course, Fourth Edition by Richard G. Lomax, Debbie L. Hahs-Vaughn. Int. Stat. Rev. 2012 , 80 , 491. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Song, D. Analysis and Discussion on Management Modes of Large-scale Petrochemical Engineering Projects. Pet. Petrochem. Today 2018 , 26 , 48–52. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]

Share and Cite

He, H.; Gan, X.; Liu, L.; Zhang, X. Adaptability Analysis of Integrated Project Delivery Method in Large- and Medium-Sized Engineering Projects: A FAHP-Based Modeling Solution. Buildings 2024 , 14 , 1999. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14071999

He H, Gan X, Liu L, Zhang X. Adaptability Analysis of Integrated Project Delivery Method in Large- and Medium-Sized Engineering Projects: A FAHP-Based Modeling Solution. Buildings . 2024; 14(7):1999. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14071999

He, Huiyu, Xiwei Gan, Lin Liu, and Xing Zhang. 2024. "Adaptability Analysis of Integrated Project Delivery Method in Large- and Medium-Sized Engineering Projects: A FAHP-Based Modeling Solution" Buildings 14, no. 7: 1999. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14071999

Article Metrics

Further information, mdpi initiatives, follow mdpi.

Subscribe to receive issue release notifications and newsletters from MDPI journals