Benchmark consulting
For more than 30 years, our team has been providing day-to-day support to industry leaders, innovative SMEs and start-ups, as well as institutional players, in setting benchmarks to identify best practices implemented by other players in a similar situation, or for comparative purposes to situate themselves in their market.
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How we support our clients in the creation of their benchmark studies
Founded in 1993, Alcimed is a consulting firm specialized in innovation and new business. Spread over our 8 offices in the world (in France, Europe, Singapore and the USA), our team of 220 high-level explorers supports everyday corporate management and operational decision-makers (heads of marketing, R&D, innovation, strategy, CSR, industrial operations, etc.) in their innovation and new business projects.
We support our clients in their exploration of uncharted territory, which often begs the question: have others already done this? And if so, how? Benchmarking is the answer! Beyond the exploratory aspect of drawing inspiration from other players (in your market or in other industries or geographies), our team also carries out benchmarks with the aim of comparative analysis, enabling our clients to situate themselves in their market environment compared to their competitors.
The diversity of our clients (manufacturers, ETIs, innovative start-ups, institutions, etc.), the subjects we deal with, and the geographical areas we explore, enable us to master a wide range of assignments and develop recognized expertise in our specialist sectors.
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Examples of benchmarking projects carried out for our clients
Competitive benchmark: reorganization of the medical affairs department of a pharmaceutical laboratory
For a leading pharmaceutical player who wanted to reorganize its medical affairs department by specialty, Alcimed carried out a benchmark of the organizational and operational models of medical affairs in the pharmaceutical industry.
Our team studied and analyzed existing models in others companies in terms of governance, structure, operational functioning, roles and responsibilities within their companies.
This benchmark exercise allowed us to identify the different possible models for our client, to understand the key success factors and the pitfalls and traps inherent to the evolution of medical affairs by therapeutic areas, and to recommend the best way to build the new medical affairs team of our client.
Benchmark analysis: study of innovative business models
We worked with a leading player in the animal health sector who wanted to imagine new business models in connection with new services to be developed. We organized an “inspiration” workshop bringing together players from different sectors such as Butagaz, Xerox, Samsung and Somfy.
This workshop comprised 2 steps: the first one consisted in better understanding the history, the good practices and the key success factors of these inspiring companies’ models, and the second one consisted in co-constructing with our client the most adapted model to their case.
Our approach enabled our client to draw inspiration from other non-competitive players to define an innovative business model that would differentiate themselves from existing models.
External benchmark: analysis of digital customer communities for an energy player
For a leading energy player, we assessed the feasibility of developing a virtual customer community to promote energy efficiency in French overseas territories.
To validate the feasibility and relevance of such a community, we carried out a benchmark of 30 existing virtual communities and 10 inspiring initiatives in different sectors, identifying the associated good practices, the pitfalls to avoid and transposing them to our client’s issues.
Finally, we recommended our client get started and also oriented him on the platform design and on the partners required to implement this initiative.
Benchmarking of market offers: transition from a product sales approach to a solution sales approach
We supported a manufacturer of building materials to move from selling products to selling solutions/services, by integrating a training offer for craftsmen. In a context of transformation of the sector (arrival of a new generation of craftsmen, development of e-commerce, …), our client wanted to rethink its current sales approach to modernize it and ensure its growth.
Through field research, including benchmarking existing offers and models on the market, our team was able to co-construct with our client a new service offering and a roadmap for the creation of these services.
In the end, our client was able to reach the targeted end-users and maintain its growth in a declining market on the traditional product-centric offer.
Benchmark analysis of business models for the transition to a new value proposition
A company in the pharmaceutical sector was looking to make the transition to a new value proposition, likely to induce profound changes in its sales functions.
We helped them broaden and challenge their current vision by exploring existing market models, notably through a competitive benchmark, and by analyzing their customers’ needs and expectations.
We organized several workshops with our client’s teams, resulting in a complete set of specifications for the future business and the associated roadmap for the upcoming transition.
Benchmark and competitive analysis of digital for a “Release by Exception” process for a biopharmaceutical player
In this project, we studied how digital (new sensors, algorithms, new professions) could support the “Release by Exception” (RBE) process, a more fluid and real-time vision of the release of batches.
Through interviews with experts and providers of digital solutions in this very specific sector, we drew up a panorama of the real maturity of RBE in biopharma and observed more closely the activities of 3 competitors over the last 10 years in this sector.
The project resulted in a better understanding of the topic and a clear vision of the steps and key success factors to implement an RBE digital transformation for our client.
Setting up an "innovation lab" to stimulate a culture of innovation
We assisted a leading pharmaceutical company that wanted to bring its teams together around innovation to develop new products, new services, new market access models and new ways of working; all in a special and unique place. We decided to generate this new momentum by imagining the creation of an “innovation laboratory”, a physical place “apart”.
Through an external benchmark and internal workshops with a dedicated project team, we defined its operational functioning and roadmap and then organized the first events taking place in this new laboratory with employees now ready to innovate!
Business case for a “smart production” activity in the aeronautics industry
We worked for a leader in the aerospace industry to evaluate possible business models and develop a business case for the deployment of CoBOTs (Collaborative Robots) in manufacturing sites.
We assisted our client in evaluating the possible uses of these robots working in the same areas as the teams, in analyzing the induced savings and in developing the roadmap for the deployment of these machines.
A complete business case was built to support the project with our client’s management committee.
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Founded in 1993, Alcimed is an innovation and new business consulting firm, specializing in innovation driven sectors: life sciences (healthcare, biotech, agrifood), energy, environment, mobility, chemicals, materials, cosmetics, aeronautics, space and defence.
Our purpose? Helping both private and public decision-makers explore and develop their uncharted territories: new technologies, new offers, new geographies, possible futures, and new ways to innovate.
Located across eight offices around the world (France, Europe, Singapore and the United States), our team is made up of 220 highly-qualified, multicultural and passionate explorers, with a blended science/technology and business culture.
A benchmark aims at identifying good practices implemented by other actors in a similar situation. It is a matter of analyzing successes but also failures, in order to draw useful lessons in terms of do’s and don’ts. It is therefore above all an inspirational approach, on subjects as varied as organizational models, tools, business models, transformations of all types, technologies, services, etc.
There are three main types of benchmark: internal, competitive and strategic.
- Internal benchmarking is carried out within the company itself, and mainly applies to large organizations. The aim is to compare performance and practices between different departments.
- Competitive benchmarking involves the collection of data on other companies from the same sector of activity. It is widely used by companies to fine-tune a brand strategy or the marketing positioning around an offer.
- Strategic benchmarking allows companies to identify the winning strategies used by successful companies in other sectors in order to apply these methods to their own strategic approach.