Financial Benchmarking

Financial Benchmarks to Evaluate Performance

Mid-market CEOs often have a good feel for how their company measures up against the businesses of their friends and peers, in terms of revenue, size, assets and sometimes profitability.

Sometimes, you’re left to guess based on the size of your peer’s house, yacht or vacation home.

Having access to the key financial metrics of comparable businesses by industry, sector, size, stage and market – across geographical barriers – is immensely helpful in understanding how well your company is performing against the mean.

Basic Mid-Market Financial Benchmarks

Public company CEOs can easily get a real time independent evaluation of their company’s performance by taking a look at their stock price. This tells them very clearly how well they’re performing, relative to their past performance, to their competition, to their peers, and to market expectations.

Mid-market companies are far more mysterious. Little financial data is available to the public, and most available benchmarks are for simple measurements such as revenue, assets or average profit margin by industry.

Deeper Indicators

The real value comes in understanding how well your company is performing against more detailed metrics such as receivables and payables percentage, inventory turns, operational cash percentage, and contribution margin. This data is challenging to find, and while it’s almost impossible to find it with accurate, real time information and company identification, having it can provide insights to how well you’re performing.

For a deeper look, check out our financial benchmarking of over 1,000 mid-market companies worldwide.