Questions To Ask While Reviewing The Benchmarking Data

QUESTIONS TO ASK WHILE REVIEWING THE BENCHMARKING DATA By Larry Lapide, Ph.D. (This is an ongoing column in The Journal, which is intended to give a brief view on a potential topic of interest to practitioners of business forecasting. Suggestions on topics that you would like to see covered should be sent via email to llapide@ mit.edu). I’ve had a saying hanging on my office wall for many years. It was given to me by a business analyst I worked closely with during my days at Data General, a manufacturer of mini-computers. The saying simply says “Data drives out speculation” and was succinctly sourced to “No Nonsense Management.” It became my mantra for many years as a quantitative analyst, earning my living using numbers to solve business problems while in consulting, and leveraging numbers to help address market decision support issues. However, every once in a while someone (or should I say some “wise guy”) would come into my office and refute the saying, stating “data really drives speculation,” not the other way around. After reflecting on this over time, I think it does both. Every time I’ve used numbers, some questions were answered, at the same time some ...