Operations: Two industry veterans share their insights on using Benchmarks & Best Practices

Barry: The Internet is radically changing these benchmarks, so that has to be taken into consideration here, too. Say you have two companies with AOV of $100 and two-line orders, for a $100 million a year business. But one company gets 10 percent of orders via the Net, and the other gets 50 percent via the Net. Most of the ratios will be radically different, including cost per order, cost per contact, call-to-order ratio, etc.