Benchmarking Platform User Guide 2025
This document is intended as a guide for new users to onboard, navigate and use the Benchmarking Platform.
Business Benchmarking
HTA members can take part in a variety of Business Benchmarking studies, submitting figures and comparing results to relevant peer businesses. This can help you identify areas of strength, weakness or opportunity and can provide you with evidence to use in conversations with stakeholders, banks or lenders.
The Benchmarking studies available include:
For Retailers:
Enter figures on your Sales by product department, transaction numbers and floor area, and access reports to compare your business’ performance in terms of sales, transactions, ATVs and sales per m2 to prior years and other members. Use the filters to drilldown the data to compare to businesses most similar to yours (i.e. in your region, with/without a café, of a certain size etc.).
We also run a sales benchmarking system which takes data directly from participating garden centres’ EPOS systems. This is called the Garden Retail Monitor (GRM). Click here to find out more about this.
For Growers:
Enter figures on your Sales by value, volume, crop type, market supplied to and production area, and access reports to compare your business’ performance to other growers. Use the filters to drilldown the data on sales performance, and sales per ha of production area to compare to businesses most similar to yours (i.e. your region, market supplied, crop type grown etc.).
Coming soon! We’re still building this module but expect this to be live in Summer 2025.
For retailers, growers and landscapers:
Benchmark your wages, staff benefits or HR metrics like employee retention and absence rates to make more informed business decisions.
This study will also help HTA to collect vital data on the workforce makeup of the industry.
Coming soon! We’re still building this module but expect this to be live in Summer 2025.
Enter data from your most recent financial accounts and receive a set of profitability and indebtedness ratios to compare against peer businesses.
Coming soon! We’re still building this module but expect this to be live in Autumn 2025.
For growers:
Enter data on energy use, water use, packaging waste, growing media and fertiliser use and compare inputs used to prior years and/or other businesses similar to yours. The idea is to produce more crops for less inputs, and to track progress to sustainable methods.
Who can access the Member Benchmarking platform?
By default, the person we have listed as the ‘Primary Contact’ at every member business has access to the Member Benchmarking platform, but any number of users can have access.
The first person to login from a given business will become the ‘Member Admin’ user responsible for ‘onboarding’ the business by completing a short set of questions on the business and managing the permissions of other users. They will also have access to all benchmarking. Therefore, we recommend that the first person who logs in and who onboards your business should be a suitably senior person within the business.
Once any other users have requested access (via the form below or by contacting [email protected]), the ‘Member Admin’ benchmarking user will need to assign them permissions to view/edit/access the different benchmarking studies. For instance, you may only want Senior leaders or an employee responsible for HR to view your Wages data.
To request access, please complete the form below.
Benchmarking Platform User Guide
Benchmarking Access Request Form
Please fill in all the necessary information to be provided access to the HTA Business Benchmarking Platform.
Should you require any additional information or support please contact a member of our market research team who will be happy to provide additional support.