Improving business performance through goal setting or benchmarking

The intent of the WA Small Business Benchmarks (WASB²) project is to periodically collect a range of performance data on small businesses in WA. The data will be made available online in a manner that allows businesses to compare their performance across a range of financial and non-financial benchmarks. The data will also be used to establish a performance index referred to as the Small Business Success Benchmarks (SB²). This tool can be used only by participating small businesses, to track and compare success relative to other participants on selected criteria. This unique process will facilitate benchmarking your business against other similar businesses without risk of disclosure of sensitive commercial information.

How does it work?

Only participants will have access to the SB² tool.  A valid and pre-supplied email address will be required as the identifier for retrieving your SB² ranking. Businesses must complete the survey once (and only once) in any collection period to gain access to the SB² rankings. To preserve the anonymity of individual businesses, no SB² scores will be available for any business type until sufficient businesses of the same type have entered their data into the system. When sufficient responses are received for a particular business type to allow calculation of a benchmark, all participants of that type will receive an email confirming that an SB² score is available.

Other ways of using/reading the data

Aggregated results from the entire study will be published in a series of ‘Snapshots’ after the conclusion of each collection period. This data will be publicly available for use by WA small businesses and their advisors. It is also intended that data (at an aggregated level) will be reported in media and academic forums to raise the profile and understanding of small business performance. All data is collected and stored in a secure server with data protected by SSL encryption, this ensures your private information is safe.

What if you own more than one business?

If you own and operate multiple business types, we suggest you focus on the business from which you derive the greatest income. If you own multiple locations of the same type of business, you should answer this survey based upon the consolidated position of all outlets.

If you own multiple businesses that are entirely different in makeup and you wish to benchmark them both/all, then you will need to supply a different email address for each business that you provide data for.

Should you require further information, contact the researchers (click here to contact us)

This study has been approved by the Curtin University Human Research Ethics Committee (SR12-2007). If needed, verification of approval can be obtained either by writing to the Curtin University Human Research Ethics Committee, c/- Office of Research and Development, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth 6845 or by telephoning 9266 2784 or emailing us