BENCHMARKING - WHY IT IS IMPERATIVE NO MATTER HOW DIFFERENTIATED YOU ARE

BENCHMARKING - WHY IT IS IMPERATIVE NO MATTER HOW DIFFERENTIATED YOU ARE

We all strive to be differentiated as organisations and individuals, to stand apart and ahead of the pack in order to achieve recognition, positioning and build a following based on the uniqueness of our offering.

 However as important as it is to achieve differentiation there is need to realise that everything we do in our lines of work and business emanates from basic common fundamentals.

The common fundamentals combine to form the basis of industrial and professional benchmarks. In our context here and consistent with the New Oxford American dictionary we define the term "benchmark" as
"A standard or point of reference against which things may be measured or assessed."

Therefore in the process of ascertaining our own level and state of differentiation we discover that it is imperative to benchmark success or direction for improvement.
At the present  rate of technological advancement, innovation and disruption the benchmarks are getting more refined and fine tuned frequently. What stood as a standard bearer yesterday can easily be overtaken today through exceptional innovation or downright disruption. There is no room for complacency and there certainly are no guarantees for continued success even if one possessed the ultimate winning formula or trump-card.

We must always beware of developing and refined benchmarks in order to respond timeously to these changes and stay competitive, not only that but relevant as well.

If we are as good as we deem ourselves to be and the benchmarks agree we must strive to reach consistency to a point where delivering unrivaled quality and service becomes our signature trait as an organisation or individual.

Consistency will therefore cement our place in the deliberation forums
for industrial and professional bodies where the official benchmarks are set, ratified and passed.

Benchmarking means you are not afraid to set yourself up for practical and realistic comparison with your nearest competition, we may or may not be our industry's most venerated practitioner or organisation but knowing where we stand relative to others helps inform our strategic decisions and action plans,

Benchmarks are the typical lodestars in our respective areas of work and specialty, they guide our course all the time although they don't force us to meet the standard
or follow a particular direction they inform our decision making and ignoring them is detrimental to our own growth and development.

Socio-economic spaces become homogeneous where benchmarking is fully exploited with best practices being established and actually executed as we all seek to deliver our best offerings be they goods or services.

The differentiation comes into play now to help us stand out in terms of presentation nuances and cosmetic features like the branding of offerings that are based on common fundamentals.

An example that comes to mind is the smartphone industry, two of the biggest rival smartphone manufacturers in the world each with millions of followers across the word despite their different geographical origins of Korea and America.
They can each go on and on explaining how different and better their offering is over the rival smartphone, those would mostly be nuances and branding skills at work because a real compare and contrast scenario brings them head-to-head based on fundamental common features which they each must have for example; battery life, processing speed, camera picture quality,internal memory size, signal type used among others.
These are actually measurable, explicit parameters which are purely matters of fact and not opinion as would mainly be the case with differentiation arguments.

So this is the beauty, reality and value of benchmarking. Even the strongest rivals competing for market share find themselves sitting around the same table discussing the benchmarks and acceptable industrial best practices for level playing fields and delivering value and consumer utility. Well differentiated offerings go on to deliver consumer surplus becoming  market favourites, standard bearers  and flagships of their organisations.

Industrial and professional regulatory bodies, authorities and associations of standards and quality management are the construction vehicles of benchmarking which bring together all the stakeholders even arch rivals around the same tables to level the playing fields by establishing universally acceptable  best practices whilst also working as unbiased watchdogs within respective industries and business spaces.

Do we all know our benchmarks? Where do we stand relative to them? Are we ahead or behind of the competition? What will we do today and going forward to ensure we are ahead and stay on top of our game? Let's never lose sight of the benchmarks.

THE GOLDEN WORD FOUNTAIN - (TGWF)