Benchmarking: The 5 Steps

When you use benchmarking to simply see how you stand side by side with your competitors, you are just doing a research project. Nothing more. When you use benchmarking to improve your business continually… now that’s Benchmarking!

Benchmarking is a continuous process of measuring yourself against the best in order to improve. Author, Larry Kahaner best describes Benchmarking in 5 steps:

• Step 1: Identify what needs improvement in your company.
• Step 2: Identify best-in-class companies.
• Step 3: Measure your Company’s performance.
• Step 4: Measure the performance of other companies.
• Step 5: Use the information you learn to improve yourself.

Step 1: Identify what needs improvement in your company.

If you base it from a book, you would go out and get a picture of how things work within the company. Then get the thoughts of all the people involved on ways to maybe improve the operation.

From experience however, Competitive Intelligence should take into account that humbleness is an uncommon characteristic on most managers. Thoughts of, “I taught him everything he knows.” are human nature. While it is true that a manager trained or continuous to train the people under him, the manager and the trainee are two very different people so the insights they can arrive at are going to be different. While most insights maybe covered by the manager on account of his experience. It never hurts to get the insights of everyone under the manager as well.

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