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Benchmarking
2. Establish who will carry out the project and whether they need help.
3. Decide what will be the most useful comparisons - industry statistics, similar businesses, outstanding companies or a best-practice model.
4. Contact Business Link, your trade association or consultancies to identify any relevant benchmarking packages, models or industry studies.
5. If appropriate, identify and approach three to six partner businesses; decide what information you will exchange and how it may be used.
6. Draw up an agreement agreement agreement agreement with any partners, taking into account the need for confidentiality and any legal or ethical constraints.
7. Collect internal information on the processes and key performance indicators you will be benchmarking.
8. Get comparative statistical information from published sources, industry studies or partners using a questionnaire.
9. Use site visits to investigate partner organisations, their processes and strategies and the business environment they operate in.
10. Analyse key differences - in levels of performance indicators, in how you carry out processes, or in policies, objectives and other strategic issues.
11. Investigate why you differ, and to what extent differences reflect comparative weaknesses or different objectives and constraints.
12. Identify potential improvements and develop an action plan; consider how you will manage any change required.
13. Review how successful the benchmarking study was and the impact of any changes you made; plan your continuing benchmarking activities.
Do's & Don'ts
Do:
Focus your benchmarking on important activities.
Investigate why other companies’ processes and performance differ.
Use benchmarking to drive change.
Don’t:
Choose areas to benchmark just because data is easily available.
Over-complicate by trying to benchmark too many activities.
Collect data which will not help you make decisions.
