Research clearly shows successful businesses aren’t afraid to compare themselves to their competitors and ask the hard questions. Businesses that do not make competitive comparison, furthermore, tend to be over optimistic about their relative position, preventing them from making realistic and fruitful changes.
Hard data provided by benchmarking.com.au takes the guess work out of assessing a business’ relative performance in over 140 Australian industries.
Further support for the benefits of benchmarking can be found in the literature. A study of 660 European manufacturers conducted by the London Business School (Voss, Ahlstom & Blackmon, 1997) reveals that high levels of benchmarking is associated with superior performance.
In particular, this research with the use of powerful regression analyses shows that the use of benchmarking is linked strongly to both business performance and operational performance.
Companies who take benchmarking seriously are found to have better business performance, including:
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higher levels of customer satisfaction;
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increasing market share;
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positive cash flow;
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better return on assets;
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lower product costs; and
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higher productivity growth.
The same companies also have better operational performance, including:
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low product failure, defects and warranty claims;
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faster equipment changeover and processing of orders
Large scale independent studies like this one provide concrete data on the effectiveness of benchmarking tools such as those offered by benchmarking.com.au.
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