Market Research Benchmarking – In today’s rapidly changing business world, to maintain its position and promote its business, every manager, owner and investor need to know the current situation of the enterprise, business environment and competitors.
Market Research Benchmarking
Benchmarking describes a continuous process of measuring systems, processes and products within the enterprise and its comparison with enterprise that is doing best practice. The aim of such measuring is to learn new practices and procedures and to obtain information to improve business performance.
Benchmarking procedures improve constantly, because they are influenced by the development of management systems, statistical methods and information technology.
There are various identifiable trends in the theory of knowledge of benchmarking and several ways to classify types of benchmarking, depending on the focus of the benchmarking process.
Benchmarking phases and steps.
Planning – the subject, depth and objectives defining
Data Collection – internal data collection, external data collection, finding a benchmarking partner, consent and cooperation of partner, gathering detailed data from benchmarking partner, aggregate data about the partner from other sources
Analysis – converting data to information, sorting, organizing and monitoring the information and data, removal of irregular factors, detection performance difference with proven best practices, identification of processes which can be improved, formulation of new goals, identification of plans for changes
Adaptation – create plan, implementation of best practices, connecting new plan with current plan
The following figure shows proposed model and its specific benchmarking cycle. It exhibits four phases of benchmarking – planning, data collection, analysis and adaptation. These phases fade into one another.
The left side of the image shows what happens within the own enterprise – where the benchmarking study is provided.
The right side shows the steps happening within the competitor ‘s enterprise which is doing best practices.
Types of Benchmarking
Internal benchmarking – in which comparisons are made against another area within one\’s organisation
Competitive benchmarking – in which comparisons are made with direct competitors
Industry benchmarking – in which the benchmarking partner is not a direct competitor, but does share the same industry as one’s organisation
Generic benchmarking – which involves comparisons of processes and practices regardless of the industry or field of the partner
A second broad method of categorization contemplates the practices or processes which are bench-marked. This results in three types of benchmarking:
Process benchmarking – which focuses on discrete work processes and operating practices
Performance benchmarking – which compares products and services
Strategic benchmarking – which examines how companies compete
Benchmarking matrix – Adapted from Leibfried & Mcnair
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