IDEA: Ask your CPA firm to perform financial comparisons of you to others in your industry.

Your CPA firm has lots of information from other audited firms and from their own clients. Ask if they will prepare a comparison of your company to others in your or a similar industry. You are not interested in the names of the companies involved (privacy prevails), but you would like to know how you fare against others and where you can improve.  They may be able to tell you about some or most of the following attributes. Ask them to discuss a overall comparison of financial results, net profit %, return on assets, return on investment, sales per head, more costly expense items, items less efficient or obviously ineffective, comparable headcount in the industry, number of heads in sales, production or administration, average sales per facility, marketing dollars comparable, insurance costs reasonable to others’ costs, utility costs comparison for level of energy consumed, property taxes in line with others and other measurements.  Any comparison will help you focus on your company’s weak areas given there are many others that exceed your firm.