Quick MBA

Entrepreneurial CEOs tend to not be “book people.” We are more School of Hard Knocks and Real World people. One of the best ways to learn from the real world is to benchmark. Effectively benchmarking your key performance indicators against your competition can be a powerful exercise.

Unfortunately, a perfect library of KPIs does not exist. Your accountant may be able to help. Many accountants have access to industry standards for financial benchmarking. For benchmarking data outside of the financial realm, you will need to get more creative. Some place to get other benchmarking data are:

• Industry Associations
• Trade Groups
• Internet (see links below)
• Non-competitive vertical business group

The most interesting of these options is the non-competitive business group. This option not only gives you access to benchmarking data, it gives you access to the business people that created the data. Business peer groups can assist you in uncovering the data as well as implementing strategies to improve your business using the data. Here is a list of vertical business groups:

CEO Focus Vertical

CEO Focus offers peer groups for 21 different industries. Groups meet virtually each quarter plus an annual in-person conference. All members are non-competitive geographically but in the same business.

Women’s Automotive Dealers: http://www.advisorylink-dfw.com/index.html

Automotive Remarketers: http://www.iaraonline.org/

Construction Industry: www.cirt.org

Wine Industry: www.winebusiness.com

Food Industry: http://www.fibr.info/