What is public benchmarking?

Benchmarking is the process of comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and/or best practices from other industries. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time, and cost. Improvements from learning mean doing things better, faster, and cheaper. Benchmarking involves management identifying the best firms in their industry, or any other industry where similar processes exist, and comparing the results and processes of those studied (the "targets") to one's own results and processes to learn how well the targets perform and, more importantly, how they do it.

How do I setup public benchmarking surveys?

Public Benchmarking Surveys can be setup using the system. Our benchmarking platform is fairly new (April 2010) - we're in the process of making a lot of updates and changes. So please bear with us.

Before you setup the benchmarking survey, you need a unique identifier. We need a unique identifier to identify the "source" of each of the benchmarking data. You may be the administrator of the survey - you also need to create a "benchmarked" version of the survey.

1. To update the survey click on the survey status link (you can take any survey in your account and make it into a Benchmark Survey)

1. Screenshot

2. Now select radio button Benchmark-Public Syndication

3. Enter the required details and click on the Update Survey Status button.

2. Screenshot

OK - I set that up - what next?

As with any survey, you should distribute your "Benchmark Version" of the survey. NOTE - do not distribute the "Master URL" to the survey. Each benchmark has its own URL. You'll see it in the "Edit Survey" screen - see screenshot below:

3. Screenshot

How does the "benchmark" propogate - go viral?

One of the features of the benchmarking platform is that anyone taking the survey can create a customized link to the survey and poll their own users. This is a very powerful and enabling concept. At the end of the survey all survey takers are presented with a screen like this below:

4. Screenshot

Wait a minute - What about data ownership?

Yes - This is tricky. Here is our position and thought on the matter. As the administrator and designer of the survey, you obviously have access to all the data. You can go to the reports tab and have access to the entire data-set. This gets tricky, since other benchmark owners also need access to "their slice" of the data. We are still in the process of working the implications of data-ownership on benchmarking surveys. Comments welcome!

Will each of the benchmark users have access to the raw data?

At this point - No. When a user signes up for a benchmark survey, a SurveyAnalytics account is also created.

What happens when someone "Joins" my benchmark survey?

Based on their email address : a new SurveyAnalytics account is created.

A new URL is generated - for tracking purposes

They are then encouraged to advertise their own benchmark URL