Sustainable key-figure benchmarking for small and medium sized enterprises

Sustainability as a concept of long-term economical, ecological and social orientation has an increasing impact on decision making processes within today's industry. In order to catch up with this development, modern Benchmarking approaches need to cover more than economical aspects. Therefore, the Fraunhofer IPK has extended the scope of the BenchmarkIndex, which is the leading key-figure-based Benchmarking analysis for SMEs. The core element of this approach is the integration of an additional "sustainability perspective" to the underlying four perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), so that Benchmarking results will not only enhance companies' economical performances, but also take environmental requirements such as energy-efficiency and social responsibility into consideration. Due to the wide dissemination of the BenchmarkIndex, comprehensive sustainable indicators will be accessible to more than 100.000 SMEs worldwide, especially sensitising those that barely have paid attention to sustainability yet, in order to realise a targeted impact for the sustainable production worldwide.