The Power of Benchmarks

Written By Talon Rice

Did You Know that industry benchmarks are useful—but they’re not the whole story.

Industry numbers tell you where the median is; internal baselines tell you if you are actually getting better quarter over quarter. External benchmarks are great for context, but they can be noisy, lagging, and misaligned with your mix of customers, complexity, and constraints.

The teams we see winning in IT, banking, manufacturing, and healthcare don’t just ask, “Are we above average?” They ask, “Are we better than ourselves last year?” and “Where are we closing our own gaps?”

In 2026, pick three metrics that matter for your world—think:

  • Cycle time (how fast work moves),

  • Margin (what you keep),

  • NPS or a simple satisfaction/throughput measure (how people feel and how fast they get help),

…and obsess over your trendline, not your neighbor’s.

If you want help choosing the right 3 and wiring them into your revenue, ops, and access decisions, reach out at kaibanconsulting.com—we sit at that intersection for IT/SaaS, banking, manufacturing, and healthcare.

#ContinuousImprovement #RevOps #OperationsExcellence

Sources:

  • APQC on internal vs external benchmarking and why internal is a strong starting point.

  • Exposure Analytics and Coresignal on internal benchmarking across locations/teams vs. industry benchmarking.

  • Adobe and Axero guides on industry benchmarks and best practices.

  • Crewhu on types of benchmarking, including internal benchmarking.

  • Resolution and SafetyCulture on continuous improvement metrics and focusing on trends over time.

  • Survicate and Merren CX on 2025 NPS benchmarks and how industry medians behave.

  • Everafter and related NPS resources for how NPS is used alongside other metrics and in trend analysis.

  • SafetyCulture and TechClass on using trendlines and internal baselines for improvement decisions.

Talon Rice
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Revenue Ops, Not Random Acts