Business Plans and Benchmarking

Benchmarking can be an important concept in business plans. Benchmarking comparisons can be used to compare your business goals to the domestic or foreign competition. The comparisons can show how your business idea is viable in comparison to other successful businesses. The benchmarking can make your business plan more credible and prove that you have identified the best practices for marketing products and services.

The benchmarking process has one ultimate goal which is to evaluate your current competitive position. It is a method for taking your focus on the internal business to the external environment. How does your business fit in the industry? Are you competing locally, nationally or internationally? How have other businesses achieved success, and what will you do the same or differently to achieve excellent performance? If performance gaps are apparent between your business and the competition, what are the plans to close the gap? How will you measure success?

There are different ways to perform benchmarking analysis. You can review the marketing strategies other companies have used to succeed, compare products or services, complete a functional analysis to identify where you are innovative, and so on. In reality, you can benchmark in any way that makes sense for your particular business in terms of market performance.  Business success requires serving a niche market more efficiently and innovatively than the competition. If you don’t understand how successful competitors have performed, then you have no comparative information for competitive assessment.

Benchmarking is an important step in business plans. Before starting the analysis, the first step is to identify the most logical type of benchmarking. From that point on, it’s a matter of research and then identifying the best practices that suit your business.

More detailed information and useful advice can be found at www.funded.com Created by Mark Favre, it offers expertise and assistance with developing and funding your concept, including a private forum for queries and discussions. If you need access to investors and funding providers, please do check our website.