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Comparing your body image or your accomplishments and failures with those of your friends, your colleagues or members of your family can often be psychologically harmful, as it might lower your self-esteem. However, comparing your business with your competitors can be extremely profitable.

That is what was concluded by several studies on business process improvement. Benchmarking is a technique that consists of analyzing and studying other companies’ way of doing things in order to derive the maximum possible benefit. According to the experts, this would allow you to greatly improve your company’s productivity.

Analyzing why and how

As opposite to marketing research and competitive assessment – two methods that only focus on outcome – benchmarking is geared towards analyzing business processes, i.e. why and how your competitors achieve good results.

Rather than just see the results without properly understanding them, benchmarking analyzes and highlights the different reasons why a process is a success or a failure. Ultimately, this marketing strategy forces business owners to question their current processes, as well as open their minds and be creative.

As seen in a previous blog post, this means that they will likely come up with creative solutions that will allow them to increase their company’s productivity and performance.

Why is benchmarking so important?

Clients are more and more demanding, competition is harsh, and things change at an alarming rate, so it is now very important to keep a close eye on what your competitors are doing.

Sometimes, some companies can lose significant market shares to their competitors who use methods that are more appealing to their customer base.

Benchmarking is a great way to avoid such losses. Indeed, you can compare yourself to your rivals while following the latest business process trends in your area of expertise.

Furthermore, you do not have to focus only on companies who offer similar services to yours. You can analyze the processes in completely different areas, and take advantage of anything relevant that could optimize your business’ performance.

Using new technologies

 During the past few years, benchmarking has evolved quite a lot. New technologies, such as e-commerce, mean that businesses using this specific marketing strategy not only have to analyze the traditional performance indicators in order to assess the overall success of a company. They also have to take into account the new technological tools they have at their disposition that can greatly influence their performance.

New technologies evolve rapidly. Accordingly, it is recommended that businesses compare their practices to others at least once a year, in order to be able to include the use of new technologies in redefining their business strategies.

This is exactly what we can help you achieve. Do you have questions regarding benchmarking and business process improvement? Contact us today, in order to find out more about these marketing strategies.