5 Reasons Why You Should Be Benchmarking Your Organization

The term ‘benchmarking’ in a business context can be applied to any quantifiable process or operation that is an ongoing practice companies use for continuous improvement purposes. It is a way of discovering what is the best performance being achieved in a company, by a competitor or by an entirely different industry.

Benchmarking is not just a matter of making inquiries and documenting the information other companies hold and should not be limited to your own industry nor be a one-time event.

So, why benchmark your organization?

1. Benchmarks develop a standardized set of processes and metrics

The process of integrating benchmarking projects can encourage enterprises to invest in standardizing calculations of metrics and KPIs. Having a solid baseline for comparison is one of the key aspects to a successful metrics program as well as benchmarking projects, regardless of type.

2. Benchmarks promote a race to the top

To improve internal performance, it is vital and beneficial to understand current industry averages. One or two percent could be the difference between process success and failure, and could warrant investments into and the relocation of resources.

Metrics and data derived from benchmarks leverages the forces of competition to improve corporate performance, thus leaders will be motivated to do more while those falling behind will be motivated to catch up.

The results of benchmarking can be used as a source of competitive advantage for top performers, whilst low rankings act as a ‘wakeup call’, providing powerful incentives to improve their sustainability performance and promote alignment with their long-term agendas.

3. Benchmarks help discover and track progress gaps to identify areas for improvement

Many companies such as large and distributed one's benchmark performance of facilities and products having similar processes as well as metrics and KPIs. This analysis can lead to deeper investigations as to why particular products, facilities or business units are underperforming.

By having metric performance visibility from the lowest floor of a business, all the way to the top floor, this increases understanding of how certain actions and processes impact particular areas of the business. Adding additional layers to KPIs can be an incentive to drive productivity and innovation needed to exceed current industry and internal targets.

Without internal and external benchmarking for performance comparison, it can be a challenge to set precedents each year. Benchmarking projects and reports gives you the perspective on what is considered as ‘good’ performance and could be instrumental in measuring the effectiveness of facilities, product lines, business units and personnel.

4. Benchmarks are a proven and effective engagement tool

Benchmarking builds on extensive multi-stakeholder dialogues. Both investors and civil society frequently use benchmarks and league tables to engage companies and promote corporate change.

By encouraging a more standardized approach to workforce reporting, investors will be able to access the data they need to engage effectively with the business on how to manage your workforce.

5. Benchmarks clarify societal expectations from industries and enterprises

Through extensive multi-stakeholder consultation processes, benchmarks can identify common ground and build consensus around these expectations.

Benchmarking can help enterprises understand where the gaps are in their market and what stakeholders want them to focus on long-term by translating stakeholder expectations into clear metrics, providing your business with a path forward.

How Can We Help?

With all of the above highlighting how benchmarking is essential to Shared Services, SSON Analytics offers a benchmarking tool of its own: the Metric Benchmarker.

The Metric Benchmarker allows you to benchmark your shared services centre (SSC) across 121 unique metrics against two different datasets: 

The Metric Intelligence Hub™ houses country, regional and industry-specific benchmarking datasets generated in-house using a productivity efficient benchmark model (CICI-PEB) which is unique and proprietary to SSON Analytics. This aggregated global model was created using detailed technological and industry information from 122 countries and 22 industry verticals globally. Filter by location (country/region) and by industry to access accurate, proven benchmarking data across 103 Finance & Accounting, HR, Procurement, IT and RPA metrics.

The Top 20 Most Admired SSOs aggregated data allows you to compare your SSC(s) against in-depth, aggregated benchmarking datasets from the Top 20 Most Admired SSOs of 2017, 2018, 2019 & 2020 across Finance & Accounting and HR metrics. Coming Soon: The Top 20 Most Admired SSOs 2021 Benchmarking Results with be out in September 2021, do stay tuned!

The Metric Benchmarker also has the Report Wizard where you can generate your own personalized benchmark reports and download them either in a pdf or csv format – great for your presentations or meetings!

For more information on how to gain access to SSON Analytics and the benchmarking data, visit the Metric Benchmarker or contact us at info@sson-analytics.com