Benchmarking as an activity can be aptly fit into a business scenario, which involves evaluating a unit’s performance and setting targets to enhance the performance further. An inexpensive mode of improving business operations and productivity, benchmarking can help SMEs uplift its product quality and brand image in the competitive business market.

“Ideally, benchmarking can involve both, looking for best practices in other successful firms as well as looking into the unit’s own productivity and setting a target to boost it further, with the latter being more common among SMEs. The process of benchmarking is best suited for SMEs as it helps fight competition and encourages these small business units to be innovative in their product/service offerings to consumers,” says Anand Deora, business consultant at Noesis Strategic Consulting Services, a strategic consulting services providing company in New Delhi.

The process essentially requires an SME to determine which processes to benchmark, identify the standard to be benchmarked, specify actions required to bridge the gap between standards being followed and those that have to be benchmarked and strive towards reaching the goal.

In this context, Gagan Sood, owner of Adman Technologies, a small-sized unit in New Delhi, which manufactures and supplies safety and surveillance systems, says, “We mostly believe in internal benchmarking because it is not always possible for us to implement a competitor’s best practice. In our unit, we target to achieve 20-25% growth every year. Benchmarking helps us to gradually grow as a business unit.”

For SMEs that look outwards to identify best practices, some of the most accessible and reliable corners to seek benchmarking advice are customers/buyers, financial analysts, trade associations and distributors.

Sreemita Bhattacharya