| What is it? |
| The
pioneer of benchmarking, Xerox, defines benchmarking as the continuous process of
measuring products, services and practices against the toughest competitors or those
companies recognized as industry leaders (best in class). Benchmarking is the process of
identifying, understanding, and adapting outstanding practices from organizations anywhere
in the world to help your organization improve its performance. Benchmarking can be
applied to processes or process metrics. It is a methodology in striving to attain a
leap-ahead rather than gradual improvement and looks for the significant new aspect of a
process that will accelerate innovation and change, to yield a breakthrough improvement,
on the way to a world-class level of performance / customer satisfaction. Benchmarking is
not a way of getting someone off your case by proving that you have nothing to learn and
it is not a quick, easy, number crunching, spying, copying, espionage or gradual
improvement. |
| Why is it important? |
| Benchmarking
eliminates the guess work by looking at processes and enablers that lead to best
practices. Benchmarking doesn't limit itself to competitive information; it seeks
innovation by looking outside the industry paradigm. People often mistake benchmarking for
competitive analysis. Competitive analysis typically looks at intelligence data: facts and
figures, product breakdown (reverse engineering) strategic goals. It's a guessing game as
to how to achieve the competitive advantage. Companies benchmark in order to: develop and
implement strategic goals establish realistic actionable objectives provide a sense of
urgency encourage striving for perfection and innovative thinking create a better
understanding of the industry, and emphasize sensitivity to changing customer needs. |
| When to use it? |
| Benchmarking
can be done prior to embarking on a new process or reengineering an existing one. This
enables the organization to set a stake of objectivity in the ground and establish a
standard. By understanding the state of operations before one can define improvement goals
such as reducing unit costs by x percent a year, or improving service levels by y percent
a year. Once the agreement is in place, continued measurement can track progress over
time. Benchmarking can be a very useful management tool. |
|
|
| How to use it? |
Follow the Plan - Analyze - Integrate - Act /
Check cycle [which is parallel to the Plan - Do - Check - Act (PDCA) cycle].
| Plan: |
| 1 |
Develop a
team which represents all stakeholders. |
| 2 |
Provide
team with information and overall materials necessary. |
| 3 |
Identify
results you want to achieve through examining other similar processes and resources.
|
| 4 |
Develop a
vision of what doing the process better means. |
| 5 |
Determine
how information will be collected. |
| Analyze: |
| 1 |
Determine
strengths and weaknesses presented in the information. |
| 2 |
Identify
quantitative data that can help you measure performance and set future targets. |
| 3 |
Identify
qualitative data that explains success factors and how the process is best-in-class. |
| 4 |
Compare
data and determine what you can learn from it. |
| 5 |
Determine
how you can apply what you have learned. |
| Integrate: |
| 1 |
Modify any
of your original goals of the process based on results of analysis. |
| 2 |
Communicate
findings and gain acceptance among key stakeholders. |
| 3 |
Consider
the benefits of pursuing or not pursuing findings. |
| Act / Check: |
| 1 |
Develop
action plans to implement findings. |
| 2 |
Identify
any problem solving or continuous improvement opportunities. |
| 3 |
Develop a
process for monitoring and evaluating progress. |
| 4 |
Implement
plans. |
| 5 |
Assess
plans, resource objectives and process. |
|
|
| What's on the web? |
APQC Benchmarking/Best Practices
Presentation on Benchmarking
The Benchmarking Center [UK]
The Benchmarking Resource GuideSelf-Assessment
& Action Planning: Using the Baldridge Organizational Profile for Business
The Benchmarking Exchange [TBE]'s SelfAssessor program
has launched a new way for you to get a quick look on how your department, division or
entire organization measures up. The report will also show how you rated compared with
others across all industries as a whole.
Many organizations also
use this service to compare like departments within their own organization, anywhere in
the world, then by comparing the report cards for each department they can learn which
department needs assistance in certain processes and which department is the best choice
to get assistance from.
By completing a series
of questions on a simple form at http://66.124.245.170/
selfassess/bald1/bp.cfm you will automatically and instantaneously receive a
customized report showing how you rated.
This service is free to
anyone. Just another one of those wonderful business process improvement tools from the
makers of BenchNet and IndustryMetrics.com
Happy Networking!
TBE Technical Resources
http://www.benchnet.com |
| Food for Thought ! |
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