The Arabic benchmark gap, and why it slows good decisions

Most teams reach for a benchmark when they want to know whether a number is good. The trouble is that many of the benchmarks in use here were built somewhere else, for a different market, in a different language.

Borrowed benchmarks are not neutral. They carry assumptions about supply chains, consumption, and behaviour that may not hold in the Kingdom. Read literally, they can flatter weak results or punish strong ones.

Building a benchmark in Arabic, on local data, is slower and less glamorous than importing one. It is also the only way to be sure the comparison means what people think it means.

We treat the benchmark as part of the deliverable, not a footnote to it. When the reference point is sound, the decision built on top of it can be trusted.