Benchmarking – What It Is And How It Is Applied
Table of Contents
Benchmarking
Benchmarking is to compare products, services, and work processes to improve our company.It can be done internally, within the company or outside to compare with the competition or with other sectors. It is a constant improvement aimed at customer satisfaction. We learn from others, and we adapt it to our project.
benchmarking is very useful to improve at all levels, making changes. From these, we can create new ideas by evolving from the starting point of the comparison. Another great advantage of Benchmarking is cost savings. It is easier to compare and adapt than not to innovate from scratch, it involves more effort in the development of creativity, leading to the economic sphere.
It is based on transmitting knowledge by looking at the best. Collecting information does not mean spying to create new ideas and be able to innovate compared to the competition, therefore, it would be a learning method to adapt it to our project.
Benchmarking types
Internal: it is done internally by our own company. An example would be a multinational with many departments to copy the work routine from one department to another
External: the comparison is carried out outside the company, we have three actions:
Competitive: we compare our competition in the same sector
Non-competitive or functional: it uses the same comparative technique but looking at other sectors. The advantage is the ease of obtaining the data since it does not pose a threat to the analyzed company
Comprehensive: it would be to do the above as a final objective but it would be the most expensive as is evident.
Benchmarking process
Planning: initially, we decided on the choice of companies to compare and agreed on the sources we will use to obtain the data and to be able to identify the competition
Analysis of information: internal and the rest of the companies in the comparison. You must have secondary sources to get to evaluate all data in a set. After this process, we set the goals to be able to implement them in our company, highlighting the aspects to improve after analyzing the competitors, having interpreted the information adapted to our business.
Implementation: development of the actions to be carried out, setting objectives, dividing the work, and agreeing the time limits in our work team to make the improvements and apply them.
Integration: having finished the whole process, adapting the changes to the business work, becoming a regular activity among our team, the Benchmarking will have finished
With this, we can improve the productivity and quality of our company, always trying to create new ideas from the comparison of the Benchmarking.
Benchmarking benefits
In a global, they are informative, knowing the competition and the target audience perfectly, so it will be very practical to decide the best strategies.
Applying it to the online environment, it would be a good ally for SEO Positioning knowing the keywords of our competition.
conclusion
I think that Benchmarking is a necessity when we start collaborating with a client in a new sector to be able to document ourselves, advise by giving an external point of view to the company to set a starting point and find an adequate commercial strategy based on the strengths of the company to make us more competitive concerning the competition.
