Business Benchmarking

What is benchmarking?

Business benchmarking lets you compare your business with other businesses in the same industry.

There are many ways to compare one business to another, but benchmarking for business looks at financial performance. This usually means that the basis for comparison focuses on the numbers – the business metrics.

How to use benchmarking

Once you begin to look at how your business is performing against the benchmarks, you can start to look at what key performance indicators (KPIs) are most important for your business.

You can set quantifiable goals and measure your performance this way over time. When you’re looking for financial support from investors or banks, benchmarking data can help you explain your business clearly and support your funding proposal with hard data.

What do we do?

We will help you benchmark your business against similar businesses by using a University of Waikato resource designed specifically for New Zealand businesses. We can produce a range of reports for you to compare various financial ratios in your business with those of others in your industry.

We will provide you with a written report highlighting the areas we consider need attention, and also the areas where your business is performing well. You’ll be able to see exactly where you fit into the range of performances. This will allow you to focus on those areas of your business that need improvement.

We can follow up with you to discuss the results and we may be able to assist you with specific business improvement strategies.

What do you have to do?

If you are already a client at CMK, then we should already have most of the information that we require in your financial statements. In addition, we’ll need the following information:

• The number of employees you have in the business (full time equivalents)
• How many owner operators work in the business (once again, calculated on a full time equivalent basis)
• In some cases we may need the area of your business premises