Intro To Benchmarking
The ultimate success of your business can be measured differently depending on your goals and industry. Despite the different challenges and objectives that each company faces, there are some questions that each business needs to ask themselves to move forward and grow. Benchmarking is a strategy that anyone can use to help you assess where you stand and reach your goals.
What Is Benchmarking?
Benchmarking is a process that allows you to measure your company’s performance against the best businesses in your industry. The point of this is to pinpoint what the top companies do to make them so successful, and what you can do within your own company to see significant results. When starting this process, it is important to ask yourself several questions: Where are we now, where do we want to be, and how do we get there? This will help you map out your road to success, and guide you to highlight your strengths and weaknesses.
Why Should I Benchmark?
Benchmarking can benefit you in so many ways! Since this process is flexible, you can choose to target certain areas of your business or look at your business as a whole. Benchmarking helps give you a clear idea of where you stand in your industry, helps you set attainable goals, tracks your progress, and prioritizes areas that need some extra work.
How To Benchmark:
Benchmarking is meant to be tailored to your business, so there are many ways you can go about it! However, this is a standard process you can try. First, choose what you want to analyze and compare. As long as you have quantifiable data, you can use the benchmarking process. Next, you’ll create a long-term goal related to this data. Go through what key performance indicators (or KPI’s) you can use to help you measure your progress. Once you have your KPI’s, determine what actions will impact them- optimizing pages, producing certain content, or anything else that could affect them. Set up a reasonable timeline to accomplish these goals, and check on them frequently to make sure that you are progressing. Measuring your goals consistently allows you to adjust anything that might not be performing as well as you had hoped, so it is important to check your KPI’s frequently!
How Often To Benchmark:
This really depends on your company and your goals. Each company’s needs are different, and nobody knows your needs better than you. Talk to your team about what your goals are, how to want to break up your benchmarking, and the results you see. Find a balance between benchmarking too little or too often for maximum success.
Even if your business is doing well, you can still benchmark to improve even more! Benchmarking helps keep you on track and growing towards the best version of yourself. Have you ever tried benchmarking? How were your results?
