During webinars this year, professionals at Forvis Mazars discussed how leaders at U.S. manufacturing, consumer, and logistics organizations can leverage benchmarking as a strategic tool to help drive performance improvement, efficiency, and quality. We polled webinar attendees to capture their perspectives directly and shared the results below, along with our context and insights.
Is Your Organization Currently Leveraging Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Measure Performance Against Industry Best Practices?
More than half of the responding participants indicated their organizations are using KPIs for benchmarking. This confirms the growing trend of making data-driven decisions, which requires having good data and comparing those metrics to high-performing peers.
In our data set, we also observed that large companies (more than 5,000 employees) and organizations in industries that use equipment and machinery whose performance can be tracked consistently (manufacturing, distribution, construction, logistics, and distribution) had a higher percentage currently using KPIs for benchmarking. This is not surprising given that widespread outsourcing of production activities over the last couple of decades has put tremendous pressure on manufacturing managers to be cost competitive while offering unique customer value. This has only increased their focus on improving manufacturing processes.
Large organizations have the scale and resources to collect and maintain reliable data that can be used for comparison against industry standards. But with recent technological development with artificial intelligence (AI), the divergence in outperformance of data-driven organizations will get amplified as companies that use KPIs and benchmarking will be able to remain agile and pivot quickly in response to changes in economic policy and market dynamics. Small and midsize businesses (fewer than 500 employees) should work with their finance teams, trusted advisors, and reliable external data sources to build the capability to perform operational benchmarking.
What Is Your Biggest Challenge When Implementing Benchmarking?
Forty-two percent of the responding participants cited data quality and consistency issues as their biggest challenge. That is a reasonable result since less-reliable data can lead to the other challenges of using benchmarks such as misinterpretation of results or limited access to comparable benchmarks.
Our panelists noted the old adage of “garbage in, garbage out.” They highlighted the relative changes in the technological landscape that can allow low or no-code solutions to data cleansing, cataloging, and contextualizing that help small businesses establish the infrastructure to have clean, meaningful data from ongoing operations and transactions. One no longer needs to use complex enterprise resource planning with lengthy implementations to develop high-quality and consistent data.
The panelists observed that our respondents who responded “Yes” to poll 1 question about current use of KPIs were much less likely to indicate “Resistance to change” as their challenge relative to those who responded “No.” This indicates the importance of company culture and tone from the top regarding change agility as a driver of the ability to objectively track performance. We encourage companies large or small to work with change management professionals to develop a road map for implementing a data-driven culture if the organization is not used to leveraging data for planning and strategizing. Once the issues underlying the resistance to change are effectively addressed, most employees get on board and are even excited to have the benefit of benchmarking to guide their tactical maneuvers.
Which Stages of Your Process Are You Most Keen to Benchmark Against Industry Standards Within Your Organization?
More than half of the responding participants said they would like to pursue benchmarking for all areas that were provided (“All of the above”). We also observed that respondents in nonmanagement roles (as indicated when registering for the webinar) responded with “All of the above” as their choice more frequently than respondents in middle and senior management.
Benchmarking requires an investment of time and consistent processes and, therefore, having a strategy that focuses on specific areas at a time is likely to be more successful. The panelists said organizations that want to embark on a benchmarking exercise will benefit from defining focus areas and helping ensure the data and the interpretation are set up to add value. There are low cost but effective ways to use operational benchmarking to evaluate opportunities to harness the benefits of quick wins to build momentum for expanding benchmarking initiatives for a broader set of KPIs within the company.
What Is Your Organization’s Next Step in Leveraging Benchmarking for Performance Improvement?
Sixty-four percent of the responding participants said they want to pursue benchmarking in some manner (on-demand benchmarking, developing a strategy, etc.), while 36% are not sure yet and are looking for guidance.
Within the 64% who plan to do something to get started with benchmarking, small and midsize businesses (fewer than 500 employees) had a higher percentage than large and very large companies. This indicates that while larger companies have already taken steps to do some level of benchmarking, smaller businesses see the value of benchmarking and realize the need to prioritize such initiatives.
Our panelists noted that any positive step in the direction of benchmarking is the right step. There is no wrong answer except to not do anything. Inactive companies in our fast-changing environment will likely see an ever-expanding gap in performance versus their data-driven competitors. These companies will lose the optionality to adopt a crawl, walk, run strategy on benchmarking and will be forced to go straight to running to catch up.
So, What Now?
The polling question results show most organizations know the importance of industry benchmarking. Manufacturing, distribution, construction, and other companies that work with machinery and equipment whose output and efficiency can be easily tracked in terms of output per hour or downtime are already using benchmarking. Financial service organizations have also adopted benchmarking as they are in a highly regulated sector. Smaller businesses in less-regulated service industries are now interested in benchmarking and certain challenges such as data quality and a lower prevalence of consistent processes are challenges they seek to overcome.
There are many low-investment options to get started with benchmarking, and at least initially, the process need not be a heavy lift. Developing a road map and highlighting the benefits of low-hanging fruits can help gain consensus and reduce resistance to change while enabling the company to learn from its benchmarking missteps.
*Data was collected from nearly 500 individuals who attended the Forvis Mazars Raising the Bar: Benchmarking Best Practices in Modern Manufacturing webinar on July 17, 2025 and the Operational Excellence in Motion: Consumer & Logistics Benchmarking webinar on August 6, 2025 and answered several of the same poll questions. The majority of attendees represent middle-market and larger enterprise manufacturing and consumer and logistics companies, while others span a range of industries with an interest in the state of these specific sectors. Most participants listed themselves as managers/supervisors or at the associate level at their organizations, as well as attendees in the controller role. (Only people who responded were included in the results shown.)
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