Benchmarking against competitors is crucial for strategy, enabling you to pinpoint performance gaps, adopt best practices, and stay competitive. In this webinar masterclass, Catherine Marks and Kevin Appleby discussed how finance professionals can use benchmarking and competitive analysis tools to gain strategic insights about competitors, inform strategic decision making around opportunities for growth, and translate those insights into choices about what activities a business should stop, start or continue.
Here are the highlights:
– The importance of benchmarking competitors to understand competitive advantages, gaps, opportunities and threats in order to inform strategic decision making.
– Using frameworks like Porter’s Five Forces and ANSOFF matrix to think creatively about potential competitors beyond just existing rivals.
– Analyzing competitors’ assets, resources, leadership and public communications to predict future actions using a “Ted Lasso” approach.
– Translating benchmarking insights into strategic choices around what activities to stop, start or continue through tools like SWOT analysis.
– The role of finance in providing a unique investor perspective and bridging executive teams with investors through benchmarking analysis.
– Benchmarking competitors’ prices, costs and strategies to inform decisions around portfolio management, margins and capital allocation.
