04/27/19 ONLINE ORIGINAL: DOWNLOADING A BENCHMARKER FROM THE WEB

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DOWNLOADING A BENCHMARKER FROM THE WEB

While the national labor market remains tight, there appears to be no shortage of management consultants, those MBA-wielding repositories of corporate intelligence and strategy. Such consultants are really benchmarkers for hire, helping to standardize and upgrade companies' wayward business practices. For a few hundred thousand dollars, you could haul a consulting team into your company's conference room. Most likely, you're on the hunt for lower-cost benchmarking alternatives, two of which have recently been made available on the Web: Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group's PeerScape (www.peerscape.com) and Arthur Andersen Knowledge Enterprise's KnowledgeSpace (www.knowledgespace.com).
Both services offer interactive tools for evaluating and comparing companies' procedures but approach the problem in drastically different manners. Deloitte & Touche's PeerScape is entirely quantitative, letting users analyze financial performance in dozens of industries and 19,000 public companies from 49 countries. Andersen's approach is more qualitative, taking managers through a series of best-practices lessons using yes-or-no quizzes and brief case studies to drive a point home. By Web standards, neither service is cheap; PeerScape membership comes at four different levels, from gratis to $495 per month; KnowledgeSpace clocks in at $365 per year. Which, if any, of these electronic consultants should you invite up to the office?
PeerScape
(www.peerscape.com)

A sophisticated tool for sophisticated statistical analysis, PeerScape lets you mix and match 120 different financial measures and compare them against a customized group of other companies or stock indexes. Want to know how a competitor's accounts receivable measure up against that of a group of local peers? PeerScape will feed you the data along with a handy chart. You could also determine, say, the industries that carry the fewest receivables, and then investigate the practices that help them achieve high efficiency. Opening a branch in London? This service will compare U.S. industry averages against companies in Britain.
Of special use to small businesses: the service's customized financial reports, which let the user pick certain financial data that's then downloaded to an on-screen report. Chief financial officers tired of wading through massive balance statements to dig out a single nugget of information will find that helpful.
A monthly fee of $29 guarantees company screening and standardized (read: noncustomized) company financial reports. At $95 per month, users can toy with the criteria and also compare companies with industry benchmarks. And at the hefty $495 monthly level, users can download all that data directly into an Excel spreadsheet.
It's just that level of sophistication, however, that might place this service beyond the benchmarking needs of most small businesses. Unless you compete heavily against public companies or are convinced that economic data are the only measure of a company's soul, be careful about getting in over your head. At the very least, PeerScape is worth taking for an extended test drive. Luckily, the service lets you enjoy a free, 30-day trial at the so-called platinum level -- and you don't even have to supply your credit-card number.
One extra note: PeerScape is very data-heavy, which can result in long online downloads. If you're using a 14.4 or 28.8 kbps modem, keep a book handy to help pass that waiting time.
KnowledgeSpace
(www.knowledgespace.com)

If PeerScape is the Dr. Spock of benchmarking tools (cool and analytical), then this recently launched service is more akin to Ann Landers (chatty and sometimes oblique). Keying off news items (supplied by the Dow Jones News Services), KnowledgeSpace constructs daily didactic "Global Best Practices" lessons for the front-line manager. Apr. 15, for example, turned up a story on Gillette's new MACH3 razor, which was linked to an item on developing proper pricing strategy. That in turn takes the user to a dedicated area on pricing, which features a step-by-step guide to determining an item's true cost, valuing that price in the marketplace, and modifying it when necessary. The tone of this material is part-instructional, part-journalistic. Yet it never establishes real authority. This statement--"Companies that discount too much inevitably experience price erosion"--appeared as part of the pricing package. What small-business owner would disagree?
KnowledgeSpace is built around 13 "Management and Support Processes," each of which features an interactive yes-or-no test that measures how well a company meets Andersen's Global Best Practices. These tests are a mixed bag: Their crude phrasing sometimes makes them hard to understand, but they can help a business owner reflect on small, often overlooked, details of running a company.
Perhaps the area with the greatest potential is something called Business Radar, which allows a user to submit a customized news search through 75 different newspapers and magazines, including the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, and the Los Angeles Times. Instead of searching each site individually, KnowledgeSpace will deliver a full plate of relevant items directly to your browser.
The site also cobbles together a small section of book and journal references and Web-site links -- material that, frankly, is not worth paying for.
Beyond the basic $365 fee, KnowledgeSpace sells $2,500 premium subscriptions aimed at chief financial officers and at oil and gas companies that feature online simulations and industry statistics.
Most of the information in the basic subscription, however, is probably available via free sites on the Web. If you have no time to spare, the Business Radar function might be worth your while. Otherwise, you're better off keeping your space for now.

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