Benchmarking concept
What is Benchmarking?
The Benchmarking is a tool through which information is collected from leading companies to compare them with those of your own company, analyze them and add improvements. Furthermore, Benchmarking can be defined as a way to keep track of the competition, examine your products or services and what your working procedures are.
There are three types of benchmarking: the competitive, the internal and the functional. The competitive is the one that seeks to measure the characteristics of the main competitors to compare them with our company. The internal is the one that occurs in large companies, which are usually divided by departments and make comparisons according to their results. And the functional is the one that compares the other companies that do not belong to the same niche.
In digital marketing, Benchmarking is used as a usual and recurring procedure of the analysis of digital works and communication systems of the competition. It can be used to review complete digital strategies, brand image or content marketing, among others.
There are some tools that apply various competitive analysis methods, among them is UberMetrics. There are also many others that use Benchmarking to review SEO and loading speed, among other digital practices, such as Semrush, Pingdom Tools and Google Page Insight.
What is Benchmarking for?
Benchmarking serves to get to know your competition better, learn from them and create some improvements in your working methods. They do not exist to be confused with “copy” of the competition. Basically it is analyzed and new alternatives are proposed according to the circumstances and characteristics.
Applying Benchmarking implies carrying out a continuous monitoring of the leading companies in the sector, with the aim of identifying its best aspects. Even though it also serves to promote certain aspects of the company and take the competition as a reference or role model. There are many other benefits of applying Benchmarking in your business, so we suggest viewing this infographic to learn more about it.
Benchmarking examples
One of the most famous examples of benchmarking is that of Starbucks. This company conducted an analysis of different coffee sales companies, noting that most of the workers spent a lot of time bending over while looking for the ingredients to prepare the coffee.
In this circumstance, Starbucks has decided to make the most of the preparation time of the product by redesigning the furniture and placing the ingredients in strategic places. At the time of the Benchmarking, they focused on reviewing the Japanese company Toyota, considering it one of the most efficient companies in its production model.
More information about Benchmarking
If you need to know more about Benchmarking to review the competition and improve your company, we suggest reading the following posts that give advice and extended information about how to apply Benchmarking and its following benefits.
