The National Private Truck Council (NPTC) recently released its Benchmarking Survey Report 2020. There is a lot of good data in the report, but one of the first things the report does is to define what benchmarking is and why it’s important.

The NPTC report defines benchmarking this way: “Benchmarking is the process of defining and searching for best practices that will lead to superior performance and recognition as an industry leader.” I like the sound of “superior performance;” it sets a high standard.

One good thing about benchmarking is that it forces businesses to look at how they are doing compared to similar business types. I think it can be too easy to rely solely on internal measurements and metrics to evaluate performance.

We can convince ourselves that if we are doing better than we did last year and meeting the goals we set, that everything is OK. The reality could be quite different. In addition, even if we might be doing well, there is always room for improvement and seeing what kinds of numbers others are achieving can motive us to reach further and do even better.

The NPTC report says that benchmarking enhances operational performance in a number of ways, including allowing a business to determine its true relative performance, uncovering competitive intelligence, revealing best practices, and resulting in superior performance.

Benchmarking can be a catalyst to help a fleet set new goals and make improvements that could then turn into a competitive advantage. If nothing else, benchmarked data from your industry should cause you to do a deep dive into your own operation; that is something many of us do not do often enough.

If you are a private fleet, I encourage you to look at the NPTC report and see how you measure up. If you are a for-hire carrier, I suggest you seek out other benchmark data. In either case, use the data to evaluate your operation. Set new goals and use key performance indicators to get you closer to being the best of the best — a company with superior performance.

Jane Clark focuses on managing the member services operation at NationaLease as vice president of member services. She works to strengthen member relationships, reduce member costs, and improve collaboration within the NationaLease supporting groups.