Brush up on Benchmarking with Reports from Best Practices
Jinfo Blog

By Yulia Aspinall

Abstract

Benchmarking reports can offer valuable insights into the way your organisation operates versus your competitors. Yulia Aspinall finds Best Practices LLC offers competitive intelligence specialists and researchers a wealth of information on metrics from services to staffing and quality in this database focusing on the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and healthcare technology industries.

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During my career in competitive intelligence, I've been fortunate to be able to set up and head competitive intelligence (CI) functions. Each of these opportunities has been both fascinating and challenging, but often you can find yourself operating in isolation from colleagues elsewhere.

This could make it difficult to know how what I was doing compared to that of my CI colleagues in other organisations. Was I as effective as them? Were there differences in what I was doing - and was the impact of what I was trying to deliver different to that of other CI professionals?

One way of finding out was through CI benchmarking reports. Most of these were quite expensive, and I wasn't convinced before seeing them that the money would be well spent. One solution I came across was the www.best-in-class.com website.

Benchmarking for Future Growth

Best Practices LLC is a database of benchmarking studies focusing on the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and healthcare technology industries. Many organisations are turning to benchmarking products to help them minimise risk and prepare for the future and using Best Practices LLC can help identify company-specific competitive advantages and winning strategies to differentiate, survive and thrive in today's tough economic environment.

Figure 1: Variety of benchmarks developed by Best Practices

The website allows you to look at samples of reports for free so that you can decide whether they are sufficiently useful and then invest in the full report. There are over 25 types of benchmarks developed by the company.

Even from the samples, I was able to get a good feel for how similar functions operated in different companies, together with how they were structured, budgeted and so on. This “sneak preview” meant that the full reports, when purchased, didn't disappoint - and hence the detailed content and case studies were extremely useful in helping to shape my own firm's CI function and strategy.

Tailored benchmarking reports are created in response to customer requests; they typically contain:

• Detailed analysis
• Findings and insights from primary research studies
• Critical performance metrics
• Process insights
• Best practices from leading companies and government agencies.

Reports can also include:

• Process maps
• Infographics
• Case studies covering topics across different functions such as Sales and Marketing, Customer Service, Human Resources, Business Operations, New Product Development and Launch and Knowledge Management.

Having access to the Best Practices LLC database of benchmarking studies can give the information professional a tool to become not just an information supplier, but a strategic partner to their customers.

FreePint Subscribers can log in now to view the full Mini Review: Best Practices LLC.

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