Benchmarking competitors is difficult due to a lack of actionable insights, slow adaptation to strategy and manual data collection. The performance across each brand’s social media presence, content strategy, and executive strategies may differ, which can complicate accurately comparing one company against another. To counter these difficulties, it is important that companies have a comprehensive understanding of their opponents’ approach along with leveraging data-driven evidence when making decisions about effectiveness regarding any given branding or strategic initiative. And fully understand that not all of the ways a competitor behaves will be reflected by financial data alone. This way, they can obtain accurate conclusions from benchmarking competing brands. The often encountered issue is with different formats when comparing different data sets. The typical issue is that I may call, for example, rates an occupancy expense and lump that in with Rent, but you may separate it out. Hence, there needs to be some uniformity in how data is entered into the benchmarking tool so that you are comparing oranges with oranges. Easy to overcome with your Chartered Accountant or advisor familiar with the process.