When it comes to planning and budgeting, do you know how to benchmark your business? Benchmarking provides a means to compare your firm against other businesses, and identify areas where you can improve your performance.

Today and tomorrow, Promotional Consultant Today shares these 10 tips on how to benchmark your business.

1. Focus on your key business drivers. These are the processes that underpin the success of your firm, and will vary from sector to sector and business to business. If you provide a service, customer care is likely to be a key business driver; if you are a high-volume manufacturer, production-line speed will be a key business driver.

2. Decide who to benchmark against. Pick firms of a similar size and with similar objectives to help work out industry yardsticks, but also compare with firms outside your sector who excel in areas you want to measure. Importing their approach could help you leapfrog competitors.

3. Compare strategic objectives. Can you learn strategic lessons from benchmarking partners? Does a focus on quality standards give them an edge, for instance? Are they developing online sales channels? Think about what other firms' strategic objectives would bring to your business, if anything.

4. Assess the efficiency of your processes. Look at the mechanics of your business-the production techniques, quality controls, stock management and so on. How effective are they? How well are you using your technology? Are other businesses benefiting from new ways of doing things?

5. Analyze your allocation of resources. Are you putting resources into the same areas as your benchmarking partners? Do they have more employees, or fewer? In which parts of the business? Have they invested more in IT, manufacturing or other areas of the business?

Benchmarking provides guardrails and guidelines for how to build your business. Want more benchmarking tips? Read PCT again tomorrow.

Source: Atom Content Marketing, founded in 1991, was created to give clients a way to communicate effectively with the hard-to-reach small-business market. Atom is run by CEO Rory MccGwire, MD Lisa Williams and a dedicated team of digital, project management, content and marketing specialists, based in the heart of Bristol, England. They're supported by a UK-wide network of subject experts, business writers and advisers.