What are the Differences between External and Internal Benchmarking?

CH Consulting Group is always looking for more ways to ensure a call center or company is achieving its highest potential. Benchmarking is one of our preferred methods of finding best practices and creating a set of standard operating practices to help you succeed. 

Discover the differences in types of benchmarking, as well as how to incorporate this into your daily business practice to find success over time with our guide on differences between external and internal benchmarking

Benchmarking Process in Action

When beginning the benchmarking process for your business, determine what you are looking for, or benchmarking, and begin to find where there is success. Benchmarking metrics are usually categorized into productivity, quality, time, and cost-effectiveness. The goal of benchmarking is to gauge where ever part of your company falls within these parameters. 

Once you identify the best practice, see how each department or location is keeping up with this standard. For those that are not keeping up with the practices your company has set, determine why there is a difference in performances and help them adjust to find success. Repeat this process throughout your company to find success in every area of business. 

Internal Benchmarking

Internal Benchmarking requires you to compare data of your company against itself. This can mean taking a look at the success of different locations or departments to get an accurate idea of what is working and what is not. Gathering this data can help you determine the best operating practices to create a standard for your business across the board. Keeping this data up to date also allows you to see how your company is doing over time, tracking progress on current and past performances. 

This hard internal look into your company practices will help your business function within different departments and help to communicate to see better results. Once you have gained a good sense of your internal data and operations, you can begin to look outward and compare your business to others. 

External Benchmarking

External benchmarking goes broader than internal benchmarking with data by comparing yourself to the outside world. Keeping your departments or locations competitive against each other is a good practice for continuous improvement, but comparing your data to a comparative industry or business really allows you to gauge your own success and find areas for growth. 

Acquiring this outside information can be tedious and time-consuming, but it is more than valuable when planning for strategy and growth in your company. Consider sourcing a third-party company to provide the information in a way that suits your business best if you do not have data readily available. 

Differences in Internal and External Benchmarking

Benchmarking has proven to be valuable for your company, but what’s the difference and how can each type help you achieve a different goal? 

Internal benchmarking is typically easier to accomplish than external. As it is easier to acquire all of your own internal data, you have access to numbers that you may never see from another company. 

External benchmarking can help you identify trending actions or practices that are becoming popular within your industry, while focusing on internal benchmarking can keep your blinders on to outside influences. It’s important to continuously look inward and outward to ensure you are always growing and staying strategic as a company. 

 

 

Benchmarking is a tried and true practice for keeping up with your industry and finding areas for improvement. See where your company can get with the help of CH Consulting Group and understand the uses and differences between external and internal benchmarking.