Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost.

Benchmarking also shows employees the rationale for workplace expectations and goals. It gives you data to demonstrate why your team's daily tasks are important, so everyone knows what they're working for and why. Joint benchmarking is, in fact, a social activity, and social media provide many new and effective ways for social interaction. You can benchmark your performance against drastically bigger or smaller organizations as well, but that won’t provide you with as many actionable insights as you get from studying similar-sized competitors. By following these eight simple steps, you can use benchmarking to make continuous improvements to your workflows and processes.Information provided to practices by the survey provides high-quality business intelligence to inform practice management. Plus, you’re doing everything manually for the most part. Benchmark reports and features from certain tools you are already using are helpful to some extent, but they don’t eliminate the major part of the process.

The benchmark’s top tier comprises two food retailers and two food producers – Marks and Spencer, Waitrose, Noble Foods, and Premier Foods. BBFAW – the leading global measure of policy commitment, performance and disclosure on animal welfare in food companies – is supported by founding partner, Compassion in World Farming and supporting partner, FOUR PAWS and is designed to help drive higher farm animal welfare standards in the world’s leading food businesses and provide a benchmark to inform investor choices.

Theme summaries

Identify gaps. Benchmarking reveals gaps as compared to your competition. For example, it’s hard to stay competitive if you’re producing three new product features in the same timeframe your competitors are producing eight. Business Benchmark Second edition is the official Cambridge English preparation course for Cambridge English: Business Preliminary, Vantage and Higher (also known as BEC), and BULATS. Survey companies for measures and practices: Companies target specific business processes using detailed surveys of measures and practices used to identify business process alternatives and leading companies. Surveys are typically masked to protect confidential data by neutral associations and consultants. You’ll know which best practices are currently being used in your industry and what strategies are working for your competitors.