Learn the Secret to Benchmarking
Does it feel like your business is not improving? Are you trapped in the same old business rut? Perhaps it’s time to look for new way to woo in customers and maintain old clients. It’s time to reinvigorate your business.
But this doesn’t mean that you do away with your old products, leave your old marketing strategies, and create an entirely new business. That would be absurd, financially speaking. What we mean hear is trying out new business practices.
Ever heard of benchmarking? Benchmarking in business is actually the practice of identifying successful strategies from other companies and altering them to suit your business. For instance, the customized brochure printing of a certain company creates such a market buzz. What makes the brochure inviting? What did the company included in the brochure that attracted people to buy from them? Identify those successful practices and determine if they can be applicable to your business.
Large companies have been using benchmarking for years now. They have long been reaping the rewards of this practice both in operations and sales. Among the advantages of benchmarking includes:
1. Avoiding mistakes. In business, saving up and acquiring large profit means committing less mistakes as possible. To avoid committing the same mistake other businesses have made, it’s best to learn from their mistakes. For instance, a certain company failed to attract new customers despite the massive brochure campaign it launched. These brochures have gift certificates in them to entice people to visit the store. Upon assessment it was found out that the gift certificates did not have a validity period within which people can redeem the promo, so customers simply assumed that the promo is valid for a long time. This simply mistake can make the difference between failure and success.
2. Enhance performance. When you observe the performance of other companies, you are setting a bar for your own business. This allows you to develop a better standard of performance for your company.
3. Save on expenses. Benchmarking actually allows you to find ways to save money. For instance, a company used a certain software that reduces production and operation cost, you can adopt the same strategy or look for a better software to further increase your savings.
So, how do you go about benchmarking? Here’s how:
• Identify companies to survey. Observe their customers, their processes, and marketing strategies.
• Collect necessary information. You can call the company, do online research, and talk to customers. Make sure to dig deep to gather all pertinent information.
• Identify the practices best fit to your business. If you think you’ll be able to draw in greater number of customers through brochure, then by all mean print brochures. If using certain software will save you a lot on operational cost, then adopt that software.
• Measure. Assess the result of the changes you adopted. This will allow you to make the necessary changes to achieve greater and better result.
• Improve. After getting the end result of the improvements you’ve made, fine-tune those that need improvement. This will allow you to get the right formula to getting good business practices.
It doesn’t really take a lot to learn benchmarking. Just lean the process and it’ll be easy for you to get good ideas on how to improve your business in no time.
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