Benchmarks

In the current book we are reading for my social media class, Measure What Matters, the latest chapter talked about the seven steps to the perfect measurement program.

The most interesting step to me was step 4: Determine Your Benchmark. I think this step was the most interesting to me because it explained some things that I hadn't heard of before. All the other steps were relatively familiar to me, especially the step about knowing your audience. But the benchmark step had some new terms that I didn't know before. The three terms used in this section of the book were stretch goal, peer company and underdog. Stretch goal refers to the companies or products that are are more popular or produce a better product than you. In class we discussed the terms in reference to colleges. So Harvard would be a stretch group to ONU because it is an Ivy League school and provides a better reputation and education that ONU does. Then there is your companies peer company. Your peer company would be a company that produces a similar product or service to yours. So for ONU our peer company would be Ohio State or University of Toledo. The underdog is a company that is inferior to yours. In reference to ONU our underdog would be communities colleges.

Not only do you have to track the success of your competitors but your company also has to compare themselves to themselves. It seems obvious to me that you wouldn't know how well you were doing unless you knew if your company was doing better or worse than the year before. Katie Paine reminds readers that it's important to be tracking your companies successes and failures. In order to know where your company is headed you have to know where your company has been. We hear it over and over again, but that's what makes it important. Don't forget to measure your company's programs!