Countries – Bechmarking for Performance

B4P sources best practice from everywhere in the world

Markets in which we work

There is always a better way…and it may not necessarily be found or observed within your country.

Choosing the optimal group of companies to benchmark requires consideration of:

Companies that are both similar and different to your company.

If the sample only includes similar companies, you will not learn as much as you will from companies that go about sales and marketing processes differently. For example, a lean and mean company can often be more efficient in the way that it markets than a large resource-rich FMCG firm.

Often, best practice is not in the same country due to geographic, economic development, or the routes to market.

For example, the USA and South Africa are very advanced in the FMCG industry at managing brokers and third parties. The Australian modern trade is intensely concentrated, competitive and has some of the most ruthless retailers in the world. The million plus outlets in India and Indonesia of the traditional trade require best practice in cost-to-serve, and entrepreneurial ways to develop products at price points so that consumers in developing and emerging markets will buy, and can be served profitably.

Industry and category specific expertise.

The alcohol industry is good at global branding. The confectionary industry is good at high numbers of line extensions. The non-alcoholic beverages industry is good at distribution and reach. The tobacco industry is good at Below-the-Line and availability… and so on.

It is important to step out of a particular FMCG category to find best practice.

B4P typically benchmarks within one country, but its recommendations and Sales and Marketing analytics are drawn from 22 markets, which include the top nine big FMCG markets.

During the kick-off phase, B4P shares the rationale and makes recommendations for the correct sample group so that our clients learn from similar and different companies at different stages upon the best-practice continuum. Where B4P does an omnibus study, companies are carefully selected, approached and invited to participate based on their differences and similarities to the other prospective clients