Chapter%208:%20Benchmarking

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Chapter 8Benchmarking

• Stacey Beavin
• Stacey Knight
• Carla Wesner

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Benchmarking

• Systematic search for best practices, innovative
  ideas, and highly effective business operating
  procedures
• A tool to achieve best business practices, NOT a
  strategy
• Makes a company look outside itself to determine
  if they are staying competitive in the market
• Often hard to identify best-in-class performers

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Benchmarking Process 6 Steps

• Decide what to benchmark
• Organizations need to decide where they want to
  be in the marketplace
• This is determined by use of vision and mission
  statements
• Critical success factors

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• Understand Current Performance
• Flow diagrams, cause-effect charts
• Quantify
• Plan - What type of benchmarking will be
  performed?
• Internal looking at similar processes in a
  different operating division of the same
  organization
• Product competitors Check out what your
  competitors are doing
• Process Look at similar processes in other
  industries

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• Study Others
• On-site visits
• Questionnaires, surveys
• Learning from the Data
• Negative gap (external processes better than
  internal
• Parity (process performances equal)
• Positive gap (internal process better than
  external)
• Description of a process must be detailed and
  quantifiable

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• Use the Findings
• Translate into goals and objectives
• Process owners and upper management must buy-in
• Execute the plan
• Specify tasks
• Sequence tasks
• Determine resource needs
• Establish a task schedule
• Assign responsibility for each task
• Describe expected results
• Specify methods for monitoring results

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• Discussion Questions
• What is the difference between a benchmark and a
  goal?
• What is breakthrough performance?
• Based on your current experiences, what areas do
  you feel are weak and could benefit from a
  benchmarking study?
• What product competitors do you think could be
  used?
• What other organizations could you use to
  establish process benchmarks?
• Which part of the benchmarking process do you
  think would be most likely to collapse?