Competitive Intelligence & Benchmarking for Management and the Board

Investor Relations is uniquely positioned between corporate decision makers and an overabundance of data. How does one determine the appropriate benchmarking metrics in this sea of information? Are there common standards across industries, best practices for sharing intelligence, and in what format?  In the modern day there is no shortage of data providers, so the more difficult questions center on focusing and filtering. Who and what are we tracking and why?