Strategic Benchmarking may be called as quintessence of benchmarking – as it targets the measuring of the top-level indicators and thus may cover almost all other types of benchmarking techniques.

Doing Strategic Benchmarking for our clients we measure a) corporate strategies in total, and b) strategy’s particular elements.

Doing top-level strategic benchmarking we compare long-term approaches such as goals, core competencies, alliance and partnership policies, product development policy, product portfolio, technology use, etc. Such type of benchmarking shows the company’s total market position – vs. its competitors as well as along the industry in general; another benefit is that it’s also possible to compare the strategy elements with those at the side of the companies working in non-competing markets (like machinery vs. food) – that may bring valuable management insights from the companies you never took into account before.

After measuring the top-level of corporate strategies it’s possible to make the comparison of the strategy’s particular elements (with use of other types of benchmarking):

• Benchmarking for price strategy (that measures approaches for price level, price flexibility, etc.; it also may include Price Benchmarking techniques – to understand your position if the market “price field”)
• Benchmarking for expenses strategy (expense management strategy, cost reduction strategies, raw material and parts/components self-supply, etc.; to see your cost position vs. competitors it’s possible to make Expense Benchmarking)
• Benchmarking for product strategy (product portfolio and its development, investments in new products, utilization of new technologies for product development, etc.; usually it’s useful to make Product Benchmarking – especially its marketing type – to compare your product strategy with the rivals’ ones)
• Benchmarking for financial strategy (cash flow policies, shareholders’ equities policy, investing in new products and/or materials/parts self-supply, etc.; Financial Benchmarking may show the strong and weak points of your financial position vs. rivals)
• Benchmarking for management strategy (corporate governance models, staff’s involvement into decision-making, etc.; Performance Benchmarking is a good way to see if your corporate strategy generates remarkable performance metrics – comparing them with the rivals’ results)