Benchmarking for Businesses E-Book

50MINUTES

• Herausgeber: 50Minutes.com
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Management & Marketing
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 32

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Measure and improve your company's performance

This book is a practical and accessible guide to understanding and implementing benchmarking, providing you with the essential information and saving time.

 In 50 minutes you will be able to: 

   • Understand the different types of benchmarking and choose the best one for your company 
   • Catch up with the competition by comparing their processes to your own and identifying the best practices 
   •  Use your results to make concrete improvements to your processes and procedures  

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Leseprobe

Benchmarking for businesses

Key information

Names: Benchmarking, standardisation, comparative analysis.Uses: It is mainly used in business, although it is increasingly observed in the hospital sector and public services. By its nature, benchmarking can be applied in all departments of a company, from IT to customer service to after-sales service.Why is it successful? This type of strategy helps to the risks associated with development and innovation, as an organisation can adopt the practices, developed by others, that are already successful.Key words:Benchmark: A standard or baseline against which a performance indicator can be measured.Benchmarking: Evaluation of a tool, procedure, or even a company for the purpose of comparing it with other evaluations.Best practices: Exemplary practices and procedures observed in a particular company.Competitor: A person or association that competes with others within the same sector.Market: Strictly speaking, all of the companies, customers and suppliers who carry out the same activity; in a broader sense, it includes the products, raw materials and third parties that interact with the market.Performance indicator: Measure resulting from an evaluation of a procedure.Positioning: Position occupied by a product or company (culture, value) in a market, defined in relation to other competitors.Re-engineering: Reorganisation of a procedure or product with the aim of improving it.Xerox: American company that manufactures copiers and printers, which used benchmarking to grow.

Introduction

Benchmarking is a performance analysis and re-engineering method. The major advantage of this kind of approach is that it discovers and studies the best practices of the best companies in terms of production, delivery, quality, choice of suppliers, etc., and then considers how they can be effectively applied in another organisation.

History

The origins of benchmarking date back to the 6th century BC, when the Chinese general Sun Tzu (544-496 BC) wrote in his book The Art of War: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Although the idea of analysing competitors’ strategies has been around for millennia, it was not until the 1980s that the concept of benchmarking, as we understand it today, caught on and became established in the modern economic universe. We owe its definition to the Xerox company, which, crushed by its competitors at the time, embarked on the strategy of studying the best practices – especially in terms of inventory management, which were proving to be very expensive – of one of its subsidiaries, in order to implement them within the company itself. This survey of external businesses eventually allowed Xerox to adjust its activities and finances and regain a strong position in the market, while improving its operating performance.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

The Art of War, one of the oldest known works on strategy in the world, sets out the best military tactics in the event of conflict between two kingdoms. Today these techniques can easily be transferred to the world of business, presenting general stratagems for taking power, knowing the enemy, and studying the field. Many authors have also adapted the teachings of The Art of War into guidelines that are directly applicable to business, in books geared towards executives who seek to control their organisation and market.

Definition of the model

Benchmarking is a tool for analysing procedures, statistics, products and services in a related environment, specifically that of a competitor, partner or another department of the same company. Its primary purpose is to provide avenues for improvement to companies which, after performing comparative analyses, would like to understand why some organisations are more efficient than others and, above all, how to successfully integrate the efficient strategies of competitors into their structure. Mainly used in business, it aims to observe, measure, compare and apply a sequence of operations that have already proven themselves in other companies in the past.