Benchmarking is a constant analysis of the best competitors' practices, a comparison of a company with an "ideal" model within specified business. Benchmarking helps to find out and to use in one's business everything that others do better. Experience shows that looking at one's company through the prism of the best world companies' or industry leaders' experience helps to find new guidelines for management practice improvement and to solve many practical issues such as:

• Whether the number of employees in one or another department is optimal?
• Whether it is worth reducing unit costs and if it is, to which extent?
• Why is work performance of a competitor five or even ten times greater then one in my company?
• What kinds of promotion methods did our competitor use to increase the share of the market by 5%?
• WHAT IS THE RIGHT WAY OF ORGANIZING THE INTERACTION BETWEEN MARKETING, R&D, and production departments? How do the best companies do this?
• What are the most effective patterns of business model in our branch?
• How to adapt the best experience to our specific situation?

There are various types of benchmarking:

• Internal benchmarking compares the company's departments with each other.
• Competitive benchmarking compares the company with competitors.
• General benchmarking compares the company with any successful companies.
• Functional benchmarking compares the company's functions (such as sales, supply, etc.) with corresponding functions in other enterprises.
  

Benchmarking is a critical step in the Planning and Strategy process. Without it, there is no objective way to know if your strategy is actually working because you have nothing to measure it against. We use a wide variety of objective Quantitative methods to insure that your company's current performance is measured properly. Looking forward, we use the same statistical methods to evaluate any improvements that have been implemented.