Benchmark | Habefast
The benchmark is an essential technique in marketing. It was created in 1980 by Xerox.
Benchmark: definition
Its objective is to allow a company to list the performances of other companies, to compare them and to analyze them in order to draw good practices and then to think about how to take them into account for its own strategy.
The benchmark is not a simple competitive intelligence. It can be done between all types of companies even if they are not in the same sector of activity. It can also be done on a specific practice.
The different types of benchmark
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The internal benchmark:
it is about comparing the different departments within the company to evaluate their performances and to realize its potential.
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The external benchmark:
it is about comparing the company with its direct competitors in order to evaluate the position of the company on its market. It is also called competitive benchmark.
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The generic benchmark:
it consists in listing the strategies of the leaders of a given sector to identify the trends.
How to do a benchmark?
Making a benchmark is a process that can be more or less long depending on the level of detail expected and the subject of the benchmark in question.
The first step is to evaluate yourself: you must first analyze yourself, make an inventory of your company to know its weaknesses and its points of improvement. The way to make an efficient benchmark is to have a precise idea of what you want to improve in order to frame the object of the benchmark.
Thanks to these researches, it will be necessary to detail the different criteria to be analyzed in the competitors.
The 2nd step is to choose the companies to analyze: this step allows to identify the companies that are the best in the field to analyze.
The 3rd step is to collect information: the most important thing is to find reliable data. For this, it is possible to collaborate with companies if they are not competitors. If they are competitors, you have to search on sites such as Linkedin, the press, customer reviews…
The 4th step is the analysis of these data: the best thing to do is to transpose all these data into a table and compare them with the internal data.
The last step is to communicate the results of this benchmark: the company’s employees must have access to the conclusions drawn and the recommendations in order to have a clear vision of the market and the competitors as well as the company’s weaknesses.
