Being in consulting business I see how a lot of consultants are merely benchmark geeks – they relentlessly read best practices reports and are trying to find benchmarks for every little business indicator. I personally have doubts in regards to how useful it is. In Russia we have a joke the rough translation is something like this: “The average patient’s temperature around the hospital is in the norm, so we are fine.” Same with benchmarking, every company’s situation is different so I don’t understand how comparing its performance to the average will give any meaningful results. Now, I don’t say don’t use benchmarks at all. What I advocate is two things: 1) analyze immediate competition instead of looking at benchmark that summarizes thousands of businesses across the country 2) spend less time looking for benchmarks, and more time on making sure your company is the one that brings that benchmark up.
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