Benchmarking Can Help Point the Way to High Performance

Benchmarking plays an important role in helping executives ascertain the contribution—positive or negative—a specific corporate function makes to the organization’s overall ability to compete successfully. Accenture High Performance Business research has shown that the excellence of the finance function is particularly closely related to an organization’s ability to achieve high performance.

In fact, the recent Accenture High Performance Finance Study showed that finance executives are in general poorly informed about how their finance organizations measure up to those of their competitors. The research also showed that those companies that had conducted a formal benchmarking initiative within the past two years were more likely to be “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the performance of finance function than those who had not (75 percent as against 62 percent).

Benchmarking helps finance executives gain a deep understanding of how well the function is performing and its true costs. It will assist in helping identify specific improvement targets and create a detailed business case. Specific metrics will give the business case a solid baseline against which to measure future improvement.

An additional benefit of benchmarking is the identification of leaders within the organization, and makes the dissemination of proven practices easier. Most important of all, benchmarking must be carried out regularly. Only through continual measurement will allow a company to monitor progress.

Find out how Accenture can help your organization conduct a benchmarking exercise that will enable high performance.