The purpose of benchmarking is to provide valid information as a basis for helping you to set and achieve your own business objectives. These should be financial, production, market and process objectives.

Benchmarking is very important feature of agriculture. It has some essential characteristics, which must be in place to enable the principles to be used properly.

Amongst these are:

• A proper statistical base;
• Active compact networked groups;
• Comparisons are made between industry groups and some external, wide and independent base;
• Compared information uses “warts and all” approach;
• The information gained is built into business plans;

The services we offer include a questionnaire approach that identifies the following information:

• Are you as profitable as benchmarking information indicates you could be?
• Is your operational expense profile comparable to similar properties?
• Is your rate of return acceptable?
• What is your capital investment compared to farms with similar revenues?
• Are your rewarding your key people adequately?

We can assist with the formation and operation of benchmarking groups. The purpose of such groups is to provide localised information that will contribute to the establishment of objectives. These, coupled with national databases, give information that has integrity.