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OUR TEAM IS HERE TO HELP
With more than a decade of experience assisting associations with designing and launching their benchmarking studies, our team has the expertise to assist with planning and executing a successful benchmarking mission.
WHY PLANNING IS IMPORTANT
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Developing your first benchmarking study can be daunting, but the end result is a benefit you can’t afford to ignore.
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A good benchmarking study provides benefits to both the user and the study owner by yielding meaningful information that can be used for comparing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with peers; better business decision making, strategic planning for the future and industry and company trend analysis. But with so many possible directions to go and so many different data points to measure, where do you begin?
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If you already have a study, ideas here might help you update it or Dynamic Benchmarking can transition your existing questions to our platform.
WHO SHOULD BENCHMARK?
Any company looking to tap into the wisdom of the crowd to make informed decisions based on real data can benefit from benchmarking studies. Professional and trade associations have long used benchmarking studies to collect and disseminate important statistics, trends and analysis to their members. Private industry can reap the same benefits by providing their customers or clients with access to valuable data that they are already collecting.
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Benchmarking Studies can be of great value to any organization
seeking to indentify, measure and compare:
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Best Practices
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Financial and Operational Performance
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Professional Development
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Compensation and Benefits
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Any complex data that you need to measure and compare
WHERE TO START
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One of the best places to start is to have a frank discussion with your target audience. Find out what their concerns are... is it business operations, compensation strategies, policies and procedures? What information would they find valuable? Do they have any informal groups with whom they share information?
Depending on the size of your study audience, one-on-one conversations may be enough. For larger groups you may want to conduct some focus groups or even develop a task force to help define your study.
As you start these discussions with your membership you’ll likely find some common themes in the information they need. Common themes include:
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How does their financial situation compare to their peers?
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How do their compensation practices and pay rates compare?
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What are some of the common best practices being used in their industry?
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What promotional or marketing tactics are common and/or successful for their peers?
HOW TO CREATE A USEFUL STUDY
There are many approaches to creating a benchmarking study that will produce meaningful data and comparisons for your audience. At the end of the day, a successful benchmarking study will gather the information needed to provide meaningful results that participants can understand. It's all about the results.... many surveys try to collect too much information and are a burden to the participant.
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One way to accomplish this is to incorporate existing data to augment the information you collect for even greater insight into trends and best practices.
Some great sources of existing data include:
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Public databases such as government, municipal and foundations
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Private databases such as corporate collected data and customer and/or member data
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Study results from prior years of data from prior studies