Benchmarking is the practice of comparing one business against a key competitor or group of competitors to look for opportunities to improve efficiencies, lower cost and improve profits.

"Benchmarking Practices Used by the Most Profitable Companies" was among the topics discussed earlier this week during the 2012 London Swine Conference.

Greg Bilbrey, the Director of Account Management with Agri Stats Inc. USA, says benchmarking helps identify areas where improvements can be made.

Greg Bilbrey-Agri Stats Inc. USA

Any business, comparing to others, you can learn where you are.

Are you at the top, are you at the bottom, are you in the middle so the value comes from being able to know how you compare against your competitors or your piers.

There's a term I've heard associated with benchmarking called paradigm blindness and what that means is you get so focused on your daily chores, your own internal operation that you lose sight of what's happening with other companies, what's happening in the industry.

If you benchmark you can really see that on a regular basis and you can compare.

Even if start at the bottom in a comparison, now you can compare, well maybe next month I'm better, so over time you can keep comparing your relationship to all the others and see if you're making progress.

That's the key thing, to see if you're making progress.

The value comes from being able to identify opportunities and then act on them.

One of our participants did a presentation at the Banff Swine Conference.

They showed up to 60 cents advantage per pig.

There's a great return on investment if you really focus on it and implement those things you find as opportunities.

Mr Bilbrey says we see a lot of variation between companies and you have to measure it to know where you stand but, once you have those measurements, you can look for opportunities to improve.