Benchmarking in project management helps take the guesswork out of projects by enabling a clearer understanding of success and progress. You can achieve this deeper level of understanding by using benchmarking to create a strategic plan and thorough research process for each project you undertake.
Of course, to properly execute benchmarking, you must understand how it works and why it’s so important. Today, we’ll thoroughly explain benchmarking and introduce helpful project management tools by monday.com that can help as you implement this process for your team.
What is benchmarking, and why does it matter in project management?
When benchmarking a project, you’re developing a strategic planning and thorough research process. The goal of the benchmarking process is to:
- Identify the most valuable data about a set objective
- Measure the identified data
- Compare these results with other projects, competitors, or well-defined industry standards
The primary benefit of benchmarking in project management is that it allows you to define and measure project performance at any stage accurately. You can use the identified data to measure performance at any project’s beginning, middle, or end. Internal and external benchmarking can help you begin an improvement process that helps your current project and provides critical insight into future endeavors that let you apply lessons learned effectively.
Project benchmarking is developing a strategic planning and research process that can help accurately define and measure project performance at every stage.
Hearing how and why project benchmarking can help improve business processes and performance metrics is one thing. But, it helps to see a real-life example of how benchmarking in project management functions and achieves results.
A real-life example of benchmarking in project management
Let’s say you run a chain of retail stores that are moderately successful overall. However, you notice one store, in particular, is underperforming in several key areas, leading to a decrease in profits and productivity. You might create a project team to analyze and assess the store from local senior management down. The project data primarily consists of internal benchmarking, meaning comparing this specific store’s processes with those of your highest-performing locations.
You would also use management benchmarking to compare how this store’s leaders operate with those from better-performing locations. Once you’ve gathered all data, you use these benchmarks to identify the weak spots or pain points within that specific location. Once those details are identified, you can use this project to create — and then implement — a strategic process that gets your under-performing store back on par with others.
This is an example of internal benchmarking. There are multiple types of benchmarking you can use in project management.
Types of benchmarking to use in project management
The way you apply various benchmarking types can vary by industry, the primary purpose of each remains the same regardless of whether you’re working in the fashion or construction industries or anywhere else.
There are three crucial types of benchmarking in project management: internal, external, and competitive.Internal
Internal benchmarking in project management helps to establish company-wide standards. You can use these standards to compare and evaluate internally-based projects that are comparative in size and scope. Once you’ve set benchmarking standards, you can use these to make recommendations for future projects and accurately determine success. And to be effective it may require to update the team’s standard operating procedures (SOPs).
To be effective, internal benchmarking relies on selecting the appropriate metrics. Choose what most aligns with your company’s goals before collecting data. Project managers require the proper tools, training, and techniques to use internal benchmarking to improve future project performance.
External
External benchmarking in project management is a method of collecting and analyzing performance metrics from external sources with internal progress. Doing this can help you set reasonable objectives and offer transparent metrics for decision-making and performance improvement. To find external data that you can compare internal processes against you’ll need to work with a partner or third-party consultants.
Competitive
Competitive project benchmarking uses data from direct competitors or industry standards to determine how well your projects meet objectives. You can use this data to assess project progress effectively, identify weak points, and create new processes.
Information for competitive benchmarking can come from a range of sources, including:
- Market trends
- Independently created competitor analyses
- Publicly available competitor information (e.g., pricing, customer reviews, etc.)
- Published profits, stock information, market shares, etc.
You can make all types of benchmarking easier and more efficient when using monday.com’s project management software.
How monday.com helps project teams exceed benchmark goals
Meeting and exceeding benchmark goals is more manageable when project management stays organized, transparent, and time-efficient. monday.com’s robust project management platform can help by:
- Centralizing all projects: Our platform lets you view the progress of multiple projects at once. This can be especially helpful when using internal benchmarking.
- Enabling customized dashboards: You can customize project dashboards to show the information you deem most valuable to successfully meeting your objectives. From these dashboards, you can begin identifying risks, bottlenecks, and pain points in individual projects or across multiple ones.
- Increasing collaboration: Our platform increases collaboration abilities by allowing team members to work together on projects or tasks, even when they’re miles apart. Team members can also leave notes or share documents as needed.
- Monitoring performance: Monitoring performance is crucial in project benchmarking. Our platform provides the ability to view and analyze key performance metrics so you can make more informed decisions based on your benchmarking objectives.
Project management efficiency is even simpler when you combine monday.com’s platform with templates that take the guesswork out of planning, organizing, and measuring your success.
Single Project Template
Our Single Project Template helps you effectively plan and monitor one project in-depth. With all your details in one place, you can apply benchmarking objectives to ensure success or monitor project goals to establish benchmarking standards.
This template can help you set appropriate deadlines and keep all relevant stakeholders on the same page with progress or new information. You’ll also be able to track whether you’re on the right path to meet deadlines and objectives, providing the information to confidently make adjustments and relocate resources as necessary.
You should have a clear understanding of benchmarking in project management now. But, in case you still have questions, we’ve answered a few FAQs to help.
FAQs about benchmarking in project management
What are benchmarking tools?
Benchmarking tools are anything that helps you gather, analyze, or apply the data necessary to create benchmarking goals. Most companies use varied benchmarking tools based on the type of benchmarking.
What is the key to successful benchmarking?
Successful benchmarking follows the same steps for maximum efficiency. These include:
- Identify: Find realistic areas within your project or organization that you could improve.
- Collect: Collect data relevant to the identified objective.
- Analyze: Carefully analyze all data to create a plan to improve pain points.
- Implement: Carry out your plan.
- Evaluate: Evaluate if your measures are working and, if not, restart the process to identify issues.
What are some times you should benchmark?
Benchmarking is most effective when you apply it to all projects and retain detailed data. This way, you can adjust benchmarking as necessary when you find new processes, tools, and more that can help you better achieve company objectives or industry standards.
Implement effective benchmarking in project management with monday.com
Implementing benchmarking in project management means having an effective way to track processes and performance. Having a clear understanding of what success looks like in your project can give your organization a competitive advantage and allow for continuous improvement. You can use monday.com to help implement effective project benchmarking to begin reaping the benefits today.
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