USING BENCHMARKING TO FACILITATE EFFECTIVE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT

Abstract

The article seeks to explore the need for benchmarking as a management tool to facilitate effective doing business and its further development in the context of increased dynamism of the market environment in Ukraine while ensuring sustainable competitive market positions and entry of domestic products and companies into world markets, which in turn, fosters continuous product improvement, promotes business development and assumes a range of strategic actions to enhance competitiveness in the future. It is argued that to achieve long-term business success, stakeholders should obtain reliable information on their major competitors to gain business development efficiency and select an optimal management framework. From this perspective, benchmarking is viewed as a good method to gain a competitive edge. Within the scope of the study, benchmarking is a process of multifaceted comparison and evaluation of a particular company against others, the ones that have achieved better success, or have become leaders in the same industry or in other sectors. Today, benchmarking has evolved into an integral element in a management paradigm of effective business development and part of its strategic management practice to enhance the activity outcomes of any enterprise wishing to outperform their competitors and to be resistant to changes in external and internal environment. In modern realia of small and medium-sized business development, it is rather challenging to maintain their competitive positions in the market which makes businesses consistently search for new effective methods to increase their profitability, competitiveness, as well as work out better management policies and more efficient development scenarios. Undoubtedly, top managers, businessmen, business owners and other stakeholders are keen to have information on the methodology and tools of running and managing their businesses and forecast the performance outcomes. Nowadays, it is critical that benchmarking analysis is congruent with the overall business strategy aimed at effective company development and management, which ultimately will help to pin down and use the key success factors. Benchmarking technology is a promising tool to boost business opportunities as well as to track the latest trends and innovations in the production of goods and services raising the product quality subject to international standards requirements. Thus, driving the focus towards better business management and its effective development, the study suggests the following action plan to be implemented: to evaluate the internal potential; to forecast future development in the selected business areas; to provide a comparative assessment against the reference benchmarks; to substantiate target values of the desired business performance parameters taking into account the available potential and the key competitors’ achievements; to structure business goals according to the functional elements in business operational areas; to elaborate a range of measures to ensure gaining a leading position including the design of new innovative approaches and the current business process improvement plan.