You can either search for industry benchmarks that have been pre-calculated for you, or you can calculate your own industry benchmarks. You may have to calculate some for yourself, if they are not already available.
Industry benchmarks are basically just the averages of key financial numbers from a number of companies within the industry. So in choosing to use pre-calculated benchmarks, you are trusting the database’s determination on key companies in the industry. You could, alternatively, come up with your own list of the companies that you consider to be the key to compare your company to and calculate benchmarks from their financials.
Probably the easiest place to find industry financial ratios in the Libraries databases is IBISWorld, which has a section in each industry report for Key Statistics, which includes industry-wide financial ratios. You can also benchmark your company to other individual companies, in which case the NetAdvantage database and the Morningstar databases have the best financial ratios included in their company profiles.
For more guidance, please contact the Business Librarian.
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