Levels and Dimensions of Goals —— Basic Methods of Identifying Things (3)

Contrast is the basic method to identify things-horizontal, vertical and multi-dimensional contrast, the logic of logical indicators behind the ratio ratio and the power of management indicators on the level and dimension of the target, benchmarking management and example.

4.5 Levels and dimensions of benchmarks

When the management indicators are determined, the rest is the comparison work. Through comparison, we can find all kinds of changes, trace the track of things' changes from changes, find the root of problems and find the law of things' development. This process is called benchmarking.

There are two basic forms of benchmarking: (1) comparing with oneself; (2) Compared with others.

1. Compare with yourself

Compared with yourself is the same indicator, compared with your own history, compared with the best level of history, compared with your own goals. Most enterprises that implement MBO will set three goals:

(1) Basic goal: the bottom line goal that an enterprise must achieve according to the needs of its development strategy.

(2) Challenge goal: Give full play to the maximum ability of employees at all levels of the enterprise and achieve the goal that all employees strive to achieve after overfulfilling the task.

(3) Moving targets: During the implementation of strategic targets, re-examine and adjust the targets according to the industry, market, external environment and enterprise conditions. This goal is feasible, which is the basis of assessment and refers to the basic goal and challenge goal.

With these three objectives, enterprises will inevitably form an objective-based evaluation, reflect on the problems in the process of strategic implementation, and find ways to improve.

Compare with others

Comparison with others includes comparison with competitors, industry, upstream and downstream industries, better cross-industry enterprises and potential substitutes or entrants.

Compared with the industry, it means that an enterprise must surpass the growth rate of the industry if it wants to develop and lead. If even the growth rate of the industry can't keep up, even the basic indicators of the industry can't be reached, then this enterprise must be going downhill in the industry. If you can't even reach the ability of a rising tide, how can you become a leading enterprise in the industry? Companies that can't actively lead in the industry are often washed away by big waves.

Traditional industries have duality. What is dualism? Even in an industry, there are often two companies with similar scale in fierce competition. The two are similar in scale, but far from the third place. For example, there are Coca-Cola and Pepsi in the coke industry, both of which are changing, and no one can do it; There are Apple and Samsung in the smart phone industry.

In internet companies, there is only the first one, but there is no second one. For example, there is only one QQ as an instant messaging tool, and even Microsoft's MSN and Google's Gtalk have to make concessions. This is why the first and second places in many emerging Internet industries have to merge after reaching a certain level, such as the merger of Jiji.com and 58 cities, the merger of Meituan and Mushroom Street, and the merger of Qunar and Ctrip ... A large number of M&A cases tell us that in emerging Internet industries, only the first place can survive.

An enterprise must strive to catch up with the growth rate of the industry, so as to gradually stand out in the process of big waves and sand scouring, otherwise it will be silent in the industry, especially in the stage of rapid improvement of industry concentration. We must seize the opportunity to expand rapidly and surpass the growth rate of the industry. For example, in order to keep up with the development of the real estate industry, Vanke put forward the strategic development speed target of doubling the industry growth rate in 20 14 years.

It is necessary to compare with competitors. Shopping malls are like battlefields. If you can't kill your competitors, you will be killed by them. This is a life-and-death battle for the enterprise, so you must surpass the development of your competitors. Although in game theory, the first one tends to follow strategies, while the second one has greater enthusiasm for innovation [1]. However, in the new era of "internet plus" and big data convergence, "cross-border robbery" has become the new normal, and enterprises need to be alert to the participation of other competitors at any time, so the first place must also be sharp enough to surpass competitors with innovation. If the enterprise is the first in the industry, it can adopt the strategy of "follow+innovation", that is, follow the innovation of the second or main competitor to ensure that the enterprise will not lose any industry trend, ensure that it always stays ahead and keep innovating at any time in the process.

Compared with the upstream and downstream of the industry, many enterprises are easy to ignore. Why compare with upstream and downstream industries? The reason is actually very simple. Being in the same industrial chain, if you run fast, upstream and downstream customers will definitely hold you back. If the upstream and downstream customers run faster than you, you will be abandoned by them. Enterprises in an industrial chain must cooperate and develop together. With the arrival of the "internet plus" era, the whole industrial chain will become more and more transparent and more closely connected. If enterprises do not attach importance to the development of upstream and downstream industries, the linkage effect of the industrial chain will not appear. Enterprises must always pay attention to the development indicators of upstream and downstream industries, including the growth rate, profit level, scale and concentration of enterprises, and not only track and compare the relevant indicators of enterprises with which they have business dealings, but also compare them with various indicators in upstream and downstream industries to ensure that enterprises can keep up with the development pace of upstream and downstream industries.

Some enterprises maintain a leading position in this industry or its sub-industries. At this time, in addition to the above benchmarking, we also need to learn from the advanced experience of other industries to find new breakthroughs or development jumps for enterprises. A good enterprise will constantly absorb advanced models from inside and outside the industry. Experience in the industry helps to improve the operation and management of enterprises, while experience outside the industry can often bring more innovative ideas to enterprises and lead enterprises to innovate in the industry.

After selecting a clear target object, you need to define the target size. Where do you benchmark? You can refer to the following five dimensions.

(1) scaling index

Scale index is a very important index. The scale of an enterprise represents a kind of strength, the right to speak in the market, the trust of users and the inclination of resources such as the government and society. The same investment capital of 6,543,800,000 yuan, for an enterprise with an annual revenue of only 50 million yuan and a profit of only 5 million yuan, the pressure will be very great; For an enterprise with an annual revenue of 5 billion yuan, the investment quota of 65.438+million yuan does not need to use its own profits, and the problem of capital investment in the early stage can be solved by bank loans. The scale of an enterprise represents its strength, and banks are more willing to cooperate with powerful enterprises. Even if the investment in this project is unsuccessful, the loss of 65.438+million yuan is easy to digest for an enterprise with a scale of more than 5 billion yuan. For an enterprise with a scale of 50 million yuan, the loss of 6.5438+million yuan may be fatal.

The scale of the enterprise also means the recognition of customers and the influence of the market. Only after the scale of the enterprise grows, will more people have heard of you and trust you.

The scale of an enterprise also represents a kind of credit. If a new product is introduced on the market, consumers will be suspicious and afraid to buy it at first sight. If it is produced by a well-known manufacturer, the endorsement of the manufacturer will improve the credit of the product and consumers will be willing to try this new product. The scale of an enterprise directly affects the influence of its brand, the trust of consumers and customers, and it will also have more credibility in purchasing and sales orders.

The scale of enterprises also directly affects the relationship between the government and enterprises, and whether enterprises can get more preferential conditions from relevant government policies. If the government has a piece of land for sale, and both an unknown enterprise and a well-known enterprise want to buy it, then the government definitely wants it to be bought by a well-known enterprise, because in the future, well-known enterprises can use this land to build factories to make more money. Or the government thinks that well-known enterprises will develop more stably than unknown enterprises. As long as enterprises can develop steadily, they can contribute more achievements to local governments and create more employment opportunities for local governments, thus better developing the local economy.

When we benchmark from the perspective of enterprise scale, the first thing to measure is turnover, and the e-commerce platform may measure GMV(gross sales volume), that is, the transaction volume of the platform; Secondly, it can measure the number of users, user activity, the number of goods, the number of employees and so on. Different industries have different scale measurement indicators. The scale of a hospital can be measured by the number of medical staff, the number of beds, the number of consultations and the annual operating income. The size of a restaurant can be measured by the size of the restaurant, the number of visitors and the sales volume. Enterprises need to choose specific scale indicators according to their own industry characteristics, and formulate a tracking and benchmarking system according to the indicators.

② Velocity index

The speed index represents the comprehensive vitality and future development potential of an enterprise. The existing scale foundation and development speed of an enterprise determine its future scale. The speed indicators here include not only the growth rate of scale, but also various speed indicators of management. In different industries and enterprises of different sizes, the evaluation criteria of growth rate are different. If it is a very small enterprise in the industry, then it needs a larger growth rate to stand out in the industry; If it is already the leader in the industry, then the growth rate of the enterprise only needs to exceed the average growth rate of the industry and the growth rate of its main competitors to maintain its position as a leader. An enterprise with a scale of 100 billion yuan has a growth rate of 10%, which is already a very large growth. An enterprise with a scale of tens of millions of yuan, the growth rate 100%, is not necessarily rapid growth.

In addition to scale growth, the speed of enterprise operation and management also directly reflects the vitality of enterprises. If an enterprise's report approval takes several weeks to complete, then such an enterprise is slow; If it takes only a few days for an enterprise to approve a major project, then such an enterprise is fast.

JD.COM is famous for its fast delivery speed. Since JD.COM launched "2 1 1 distribution system", it has won a large number of Tmall users. Their products have the same price. JD.COM can deliver the goods on the same day, while Tmall needs third-party delivery, which basically takes 2-3 days to deliver. Speed makes JD. Therefore, it can stand out in a single business environment and transform an e-commerce company into a logistics company. In essence, Tmall is an e-commerce company, while JD.COM is a logistics company.

Speed determines the future of an enterprise. Without speed, many problems will be exposed. Thirdly, when the enterprise is developing, no matter how big the problem is, it is a small problem; But when the enterprise does not develop, no matter how small the problem is, it is a big problem. Therefore, speed is very important. If an enterprise has problems, it can be solved by rapid expansion, and it can also solve management problems quickly in development. If we don't solve the problem at the speed of development, it is often difficult to solve the problem. The management level of enterprises in China is generally poor. If the development speed of enterprises decreases, many problems will be exposed, so many enterprises are looking for development solutions instead of management solutions.

(3) Efficiency index

Efficiency index refers to the comparative relationship between enterprise input and output. If time is invested, it is called time efficiency, and the denominator is time. For example, monthly output value, monthly sales volume, monthly profit, etc. It's a month's efficiency.

If other resources (such as capital, number of people and capital) are used as denominator, there will be more efficiency indicators. For example, the number of people invested has indicators such as per capita output value, per capita sales, per capita profit, per capita output and per capita sales; If the input is personnel salary, there are indicators such as labor yuan equivalent sales, labor yuan equivalent output value, labor yuan equivalent sales, labor yuan equivalent profit and so on. If you invest in net assets, there are indicators such as net asset turnover rate and net asset return rate.

Target indicators need to be designed flexibly, and different business characteristics need to use different indicators. If we compare the working hours and non-working hours of service employees, one indicator is the employee idle rate. In some service industries, the employee idle rate is high. When you go to a restaurant during non-meal time, you will find a large number of "surplus labor", which is the normal state of catering enterprises, because consumers have fixed meal time. Smart catering business owners will come up with better methods, such as letting employees engage in other jobs, marketing and searching all kinds of data and information online when employees have lunch breaks or when there are not many guests; You can also ask employees to process moon cakes, cakes or other products that can be sold in the name of the company.

It doesn't seem difficult for a person to wear several hats in the future, but it's more important to have a complete business plan, find the way to achieve it, and then implement it efficiently.

In the process of benchmarking efficiency indicators, we need to carry out experiments, which can help us greatly improve efficiency. When we study the efficiency of enterprise management, we need to make some adjustments according to the influence degree of some variables and track the adjustment effect, and then compare the improved effect with the adjusted resource input to see which scheme is more effective and efficient, so as to continuously optimize the efficiency of the whole company.

For example, enterprises can conduct advertising investment experiments in different months or quarters, invest more advertising expenses in a certain field and less advertising expenses in a certain field, then analyze its impact on the overall sales performance and output, make another adjustment in the next month or quarter, then track the performance data, and verify the output efficiency of various resources under the formula conditions according to experiments, so as to optimize the investment and obtain the maximum output.

Efficiency is the core weapon of enterprise competition. In the end, who can become the boss of two companies depends on who is the most efficient. Efficiency represents the best use of resources and who can produce more products under the same output conditions; Under the same output quantity and quality, who consumes the least resources; At the same market price, who has the highest profit? For example, it costs 80 yuan for a company to produce a product; Company B only needs to produce the product at the cost of 70 yuan. As long as Company B sets the price of this product as 75 yuan, Company A will soon disappear from the market, because every product sold by Company B has profits from 75 yuan and 5 yuan, while every product sold by Company A will start to lose money from 5 yuan. In a short time, Company A can compete with Company B for losses, but it won't last long, because Company B won't lose money when making profits and will continue to grow and develop, but Company A won't last long.

It is not an exaggeration to say that efficiency determines the life and death of an enterprise. Now the market competition has gradually entered a white-hot stage, the product homogeneity is serious, and the customer relationship is not so close. Especially in the market environment of China, the difference of a penny can completely split the previous cooperative relationship, and it can definitely drain the so-called "loyal customers", especially in the B2B field. Although price is not the most important competitive factor, when the quality, design and service of products are the same, price will become the key factor of competition. Only by controlling the cost can the price have an advantage or flexibility, and the company can win more customers while making profits.

(4) Benefit index

The so-called benefit index refers to the evaluation standard of making money. Although interest is usually considered as profit, the definition of interest may be different for companies at different stages of development. In the initial stage of the company's business, the benefit index is the growth rate, which is rapid development, not profit. If the company regards profit as the first priority in the initial stage, the opportunity for development will be very small; When the company develops at a high speed, the benefit index is no longer the growth rate, but the quality, including product quality, management quality, system quality, process quality, supply chain quality, factory quality, R&D team quality and overall management team quality. If the quality index is not established, when the company grows, the bigger the company, the weaker the strength of the enterprise, the more empty and dangerous it is, just like a balloon, the bigger it blows, the higher the risk of rupture; When the company develops to a mature stage, the company's benefit indicators truly return to the ultimate goal of profitability.

As a rational data analyst, we should not simply understand the meaning of indicators, but define the concept of word meaning according to the actual situation of enterprises, and find the key elements of healthy and stable development of enterprises at different stages of the company. It is very dangerous to always put the profit index at the top of the company's operation. In fact, there are many such examples in real life.

The price of a product of an enterprise in the market is 100 yuan, and the product cost is 80 yuan. Sell 1 products to earn 20 yuan gross profit. Through internal improvement and product process innovation, enterprises can reduce their costs to 70 yuan. Enterprises are very satisfied with 30 yuan's gross profit. The market price of this product continues to be 65.438 million yuan, and the total market size is 654.38 billion yuan. The market share of this enterprise is very low, with annual sales of about 300 million to 400 million yuan. When the competition in the whole industry became more and more fierce, other enterprises also improved efficiency and reduced costs through efficiency optimization and innovation. The development of this enterprise began to be threatened, so the price of each product was reduced to 70 yuan. When making money, enterprises are unwilling to sacrifice profits to gain market scale. When the market competition is fierce, there is no room for price decline, and enterprises lose a good opportunity to develop their scale. If an enterprise reduces its cost to 70 yuan through innovation at the beginning, it will reduce the price of its products to 75 yuan, which will greatly increase the market size of the company and eliminate some small competitors or enterprises that can't afford the price war, and the scale of the enterprise will expand rapidly. Once you miss this opportunity, you will have to face painful market competition and even be expelled from the market by newcomers.

Therefore, enterprises should have different strategies and different efficiency indexes in different development periods, and it is very unfavorable to take profit as the index of enterprise efficiency completely.

Efficiency and effectiveness are innate. Only by improving efficiency will there be higher benefits, but with higher benefits, it will affect efficiency. Why? When a company's products have very high profits, the motivation to save costs within the company will be insufficient, and the enthusiasm of employees for innovation will become worse. Since they have made money, why change them? This reason seems very reasonable. When the product still has a gross profit of 30%, enterprises will not spend a lot of energy to find innovative methods that may only save 1% resources. And those enterprises with low gross profit will scrimp and save every penny, and finally get greater efficiency improvement through saving. Too good enterprise benefit is sometimes not a good thing, it will only cover up the lack of management and efficiency, and cultivate the inertia of employees.

(5) Comprehensive indicators

The comprehensive index is an index obtained by comprehensively processing the first four indexes (see the figure below), and can also be regarded as an index obtained through a weighted relationship or a specific algorithm to measure a specific index. For example, CPI, PPI and PMI are all comprehensive indicators, although they only express the meaning of one dimension.

To evaluate whether an enterprise can develop healthily and sustainably, we can comprehensively consider the enterprise's scale, market share, ranking in the industry, growth rate, profit level, profit rate and debt level, set a weight for each dimension, and then get a comprehensive index through weighted calculation. If a company is large, it ranks high in the industry, but its profit level.

Low (profit rate), slow growth and heavy debt burden, so we can give different evaluations to such enterprises, namely: C=f (scale, market share, ranking, growth rate, profit rate and debt ratio). We can also evaluate the overall situation of an enterprise or the characteristics of the whole enterprise by synthesizing four indicators, so as to analyze and judge different enterprise development models.

According to different business purposes, enterprises can also be evaluated by setting different index models. For an enterprise, we can evaluate its operating conditions through various comprehensive indicators. For example, for a catering enterprise, we can easily find hundreds of evaluation indexes, each aiming at different production factors. For example, a catering enterprise generally has seven elements: dishes (dishes, drinks, packaged products, etc. ), shops (chairs, bars, etc. ), customers, employees, suppliers, addresses and funds. Each factor can set various management indicators from four dimensions (scale, speed, efficiency and benefit). If the indicators in each dimension are comprehensive, then by weighting the seven production factors, we can get the comprehensive evaluation scores of the enterprise in these seven aspects, from which we can judge where the management shortcomings and long boards of this catering enterprise are, and deeply study the future improvement path of this enterprise (see the figure below).

For the chain service industry, based on the business model of its stores, we can formulate a "store opening model", that is, through the positioning of products and services, the gross profit space of products, the passenger flow around the stores, the number of target customers and the control of operating expenses, we can calculate how big the stores should be. If the passenger flow is insufficient and you can only open a restaurant of 700 square meters or less, you should not consider a store of 1000 square meters or more, which will lead to losses due to excessive rent burden and unsaturated operation. Many enterprises open their stores by feeling. Experienced people can clearly estimate how big the store should be, how to locate it, how to market it and how to manage it, so as to ensure that they can make a profit after opening the store. And inexperienced people can only do it through trial and error. Now the cost of trial and error is getting higher and higher, and a good mathematical model can actually replace such professionals. Of course, this data model needs this enterprise to continuously enrich and improve in data accumulation and monitoring of various management indicators.

4.6 Benchmarking Management and the Power of Example

Learning from the practices of benchmark enterprises and the experience of advanced enterprises can improve enterprises and greatly improve the management effect of enterprises, with a high probability of success. Therefore, when we study the data, we should study the data of the benchmark enterprise and use the data to provide suggestions and opinions for the improvement measures of the enterprise to ensure that our scheme is more feasible and easier to succeed.

A standard can be established from data indicators by using data quantization benchmark, just like a high jumper, if there is no benchmark across the sky, then the jumping height often cannot reach his own limit. By constantly adjusting the height of the pole, athletes can constantly refresh the jumping height. The same is true of enterprise management. If an enterprise can take an excellent enterprise as a benchmark and constantly challenge itself, it will definitely surpass this benchmark enterprise.

The data itself will also become the benchmark. Everyone who likes running has an experience: every time you measure the steps of running, you want to surpass the previous record every time, so some friends will run farther and farther and enjoy running more and more. In enterprise management, you can also set data indicators, such as the number of calls per day. First, set 80 calls a day, and then let the team members constantly exceed this number. You will find that on the first day, the team members basically completed the task easily, and some people will continue to sprint for new records in order to get a good ranking. If we set a weekly sales target and write down this target and the actual weekly sales, when the target cannot be achieved, team members will think about how to achieve the target and how to exceed it. In fact, this is the result of inner comparison, the result of comparing actual goals with virtual goals, and this is the power of benchmarking. Enterprises should set a benchmark and let the team constantly surpass it.

In order to make the benchmarking more scientific and find ways to achieve it, we need to study benchmarking enterprises, learn from others' practices, and keep discussing in the process: why can't we do it and others can? The most basic function of benchmarking is to motivate goals and find the way to achieve them.

Benchmarking can make the daily work and management of enterprises become a kind of competition, a process that requires hard work to achieve better results. The benchmark of digitalization is to quantify the performance of enterprises through data indicators, find gaps and make up for them through comparison, and explore ways to optimize company management, business processes and business structure in the process, thus greatly improving performance. Without benchmarking, enterprises will only feel good about themselves and fall far behind their competitors without knowing it, which is very dangerous.

In 2004, when the author provided Vanke with long-term strategic planning consulting services for the third 10 year, it was by studying the practices of outstanding benchmark enterprises that Vanke, as the leader of the domestic real estate industry, could see further and see how the world's advanced enterprises managed their companies, built houses and made decisions, so as to find the gap with them. Vanke's benchmark enterprise, named PulteHomes, has not lost money in the turbulent real estate market for 50 consecutive years. This is a company worthy of serious and open-minded study by Vanke. Vanke may surpass this enterprise in scale, but in China, a market with natural scale advantage, big doesn't mean strong. We should learn with an open mind, establish a goal that can be achieved through hard work, and constantly look at what world-class enterprises are doing with an open eye, instead of just being satisfied with our own profits, so as to constantly surpass ourselves.

In the process of serving domestic enterprises, the author finds that the bigger the enterprise, the stronger the pride of employees, and they think they are awesome. Any excellent enterprise has management problems, and a well-developed enterprise has management problems that are not exposed or exposed to the point of injury; When the development of enterprises is not good, all kinds of problems come. If you always think you are great, it's hard to find a benchmark for learning. In fact, every enterprise has its own characteristics, even small enterprises have their own specialties.

When serving a local energy enterprise, the author suggested that it learn from an American energy enterprise. When the author put forward this suggestion, more than half of the senior management team of the enterprise almost said in unison: "We are bigger than this enterprise!" This makes me feel that some large domestic enterprises have almost reached the point of arrogance with the help of various monopoly resources (including natural resources, government resources and relationship resources). In fact, the business of this foreign enterprise is very similar to that of this domestic enterprise, but the per capita output value of this domestic enterprise is less than one million yuan, while the scale of this foreign enterprise is 3/4, and the number of employees is less than110. Just looking at this indicator is worth learning from other people's experience. Of course, this kind of suggestion cannot be popularized in such enterprises, because I know that if we want to achieve the same per capita output value, then a large number of people in this domestic enterprise will be "laid off", which is unbearable for the managers of this enterprise. At least most executives will reject my suggestion because they are worried that they will lose their jobs.

The full text is taken from Business Data Analysis-Concept, Method, Application and Tools written by Zhao Xingfeng.

Contents of the last issue:

Common analysis ideas in data analysis-comparative analysis (1),

Contrast is the basic method to identify things.

② Contrast-horizontal, vertical and multidimensional contrast

Analysis Thought Commonly Used in Data Analysis —— Comparative Analysis (Ⅱ)

① The logic behind the ratio

② Logic of indicators and management indicators

The next issue is more practical!