Interplay between budgets and benchmarks

Both are tools for management that have distinguished pedigrees. Every general counsel creates budgets and most should seek benchmarks from time to time.

Both offer more insights to those comfortable with mathematics. Percentage change, compound annual growth rates, correlations and other math methods fly in formation.

Both are attacked for definitions, consistency, and methodological purity. If people don’t like the message, they challenge the method.

Both serve better those who are adept with data visualization techniques. Where there are numbers, text lags charts and graphs for getting the message across.

Both add value as they continue over time. Patterns become more apparent and interpretations more reliable when there is a chronological set to examine.

Both can defend each other. Benchmarks can support a budget submission and benchmarks come from budgets.

Both are easier to assemble than to analyze, and analysis is easier than action.