Enterprise Ireland have been the leading deliverer of the BenchmarkIndex, locally branded as Winning Measures, in the Republic of Ireland for many years. In that time, more than 1,500 SMEs have been benefitted from the service, delivered by a talented team of internal and external expert advisers.
The service has been used as the bedrock to a variety of different support interventions, highlighting the versatility of both Enterprise Ireland advisers and the Benchmark Index. These have included innovation healthchecks, as a way to help local businesses increase their competitiveness, and lean evaluations to help increase efficiency and productivity.
Benchmark Index is used to help identify areas of strength and weakness and from this, devise an action plan to help SMEs identify improvement capabilities across the business. Participating businesses are able to assess their performance against a defined peer group, whether this be by location, number of employees, business sector, or indeed a combination of these factors.
BenchmarkIndex is well received by the advisers and by the businesses that Enterprise Ireland supports and is an integral part of the support offer. The data captured through the process has regularly been aggregated into knowledge reports, helping policy makers to identify national priorities to develop strategy that will have greatest impact. Click on he link below to download an example of a published report 'Made in Ireland 4 - Benchmarking Ireland SMEs'.
As SMEs continue to provide the foundation of the Irish business base (as they do in many nations), the service is set to continue playing an important role in the success of many Irish businesses for years to come.
