Benchmarking

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Who here thinks they are the best (or at least exceptional) at some aspect of running camp? Who thinks they could benefit from learning how someone else is doing some aspect of running camp better?

Benchmarking is the practice of being humble enough to admit that someone else is better at something, and being wise enough to learn how to match or even surpass them at it. Benchmarking is...

1. A systematic and disciplined process of examining your own processes

2. Finding who is better or best

3. Learning how they do it

4. Adapting it to your organization

5. Implementing it

6. Doing it continuously

Benchmarking definitions

1. Process of continuous improvement without reinventing the wheel

2. Process of identifying, understanding, and adapting outstanding practices from any organization to help your camp improve it’s performance and outcomes

3. Process of continuously comparing your camp against other organizations anywhere in the world to gain information on philosophies and policies, practices, and measures which will help your camp take action to improve its performance

4. Benchmarking is not Only competitive analysis and benchmark cataloging, Number crunching, Site briefings and tourism, Just copying or catching up, Spying,  Quick and easy

Types of Benchmarking

There are a number of different types of benchmarking, as rganizati below.

Si no	Type	Description	Most Appropriate for the Following Purposes
1	Strategic Benchmarking	Where businesses need to improve overall performance by examining the long-term strategies and general approaches that have enabled high-performers to succeed. It involves considering high level aspects such as core competencies, developing new products and services and improving capabilities for dealing with changes in the external environment. Changes resulting from this type of benchmarking may be difficult to implement and take a long time to materialize	Re-aligning business strategies that have become inappropriate
2	Performance or Competitive Benchmarking	Businesses consider their position in relation to performance characteristics of key products and services. Benchmarking partners are drawn from the same sector. This type of analysis is often undertaken through trade associations or third parties to protect confidentiality.	Assessing relative level of performance in key areas or activities in comparison with others in the same sector and finding ways of closing gaps in performance
3	Process Benchmarking	Focuses on improving specific critical processes and operations. Benchmarking partners are sought from best practise organisations that perform similar work or deliver similar services. Process benchmarking invariably involves producing process maps to facilitate comparison and analysis. This type of benchmarking often results in short term benefits.	Achieving improvements in key processes to obtain quick benefits
4	Functional Benchmarking	Businesses look to benchmark with partners drawn from different business sectors or areas of activity to find ways of improving similar functions or work processes. This sort of benchmarking can lead to innovation and dramatic improvements.	Improving activities or services for which counterparts do not exist.
5	Internal Benchmarking	Involves benchmarking businesses or operations from within the same organisation (e.g. business units in different countries). The main advantages of internal benchmarking are that access to sensitive data and information is easier; organisation data is often readily available; and, usually less time and resources are needed. There may be fewer barriers to implementation as practises may be relatively easy to transfer across the same organisation. However, real innovation may be lacking and best in class performance is more likely to be found through external benchmarking.	Several business units within the same organisation exemplify good practise and management want to spread this expertise quickly, throughout the organisation
6	External Benchmarking	Involves organist outside organisations that are known to be best in class. External benchmarking provides opportunities of learning from those who are at the “leading edge”. This type of benchmarking can take up significant time and resource to ensure the comparability of data and information, the credibility of the findings and the development of sound recommendations.	Where examples of good practises can be found in other organisations and there is a lack of good practises within internal business units
7	International Benchmarking	Best practitioners are identified and analysed elsewhere in the world, perhaps because there are too few benchmarking partners within the same country to produce valid results. Globalisation and advances in information technology are increasing opportunities for international projects. However, these can take more time and resources to set up and implement and the results may need careful analysis due to national differences	Where the aim is to achieve world class status or simply because there are insufficient”national” businesses against which to benchmark.

A Step-by-Step Approach to Benchmarking

Following are the steps involved in benchmarking process:

1.      Planning

Being the initial phase, this is a most important phase. Any mistakes, errors or incompleteness in this phase generally affects the rest of the phases. Sufficient time and attention has to be devoted during the phase to ensure that planning becomes as error-free as possible, and hence makes the rest of the phases more effective and efficient.

Step 1: Identify Opportunities and Prioritise (What to Benchmark) – The involvement of top management in this particular step is crucial. Top management must decide which processes are critical to the success of the company. This should be the top down approach of selecting the projects from the processes. Once a shortlist of processes to be benchmarked is ready, the processes need to be prioritised as per a predetermined set of criteria to fulfil the requirements of all customers, especially the end customer. Customers’ critical-to-quality (CTQ) requirements are studied properly to prioritise the processes.

Step 2: Deciding the Benchmarking Organisation (Whom to Benchmark) – The next step in the process is to decide the organisation whose processes will serve as the benchmark. Obviously some companies, such as direct competitors, will not be available as places to gather certain types of benchmark data. Several organisations should be selected for study. Information on their processes should be gathered from various sources and the most suitable organisation selected. It is always important to ensure that more detailed information about the selected organisation will be accessible and that comparison with the organization’s process will be relevant and useful.

Step 3: Studying the Superior Process – This step is perhaps the most important, most difficult and most time consuming activity in the total process of information collection. Many times the information on processes and procedures followed at another company are confidential, and it is not always easy to gather authentic information, even after making a planned and approved visit at another organisation. The preparation for collecting necessary information has to be planned in such a way that either one visit or a proper authentic data collection source can provide all the details, within a reasonable time period.

The following questions can be asked to review the planning phase of a benchmarking effort:

1. What are the key business processes?

2. Where exactly are the greatest improvement potentials?

3. What are the functions where improvements are most essential?

4. Are all members of the benchmarking project team familiar with the vision, mission, and long-term goals of the organisation, as well as its prevailing business environment and the competitive situation?

5. Have the critical success factors for the organisation been identified?

6. Do all processes require benchmarking, or only the most critical?

7. Can all or some of the processes be improved without benchmarking?

8. Have the ways of measuring the process been decided?

9. Have the owners of the processes to be benchmarked been involved in the project?

10. Have the processes been prioritised based on the scope of improvement?

11. Have the set of predetermined criteria for prioritising the processes been decided in advance, based on the company’s success factors and the competitive business environment?

12. Has a level of benchmarking been decided?

13. Has the team compiled a list of possible organisations having best-in-class standards to be used for comparison?

14. Has the information about all possible organisations to compare been collected?

15. Is the method of collecting information systematic?

16. Will it be possible to access information about a chosen organization’s best-in-class process?

17. Is the organization’s best-in-class process likely to be innovative?

18. How has it been decided to collect data on the best-in-class process?

19. How superior are the results of the process of the chosen organisation?

20. To what extent are the practises of the organisation with the best-in-class process different?

21. Are there basic differences in the structure of the process?

22. How effectively can the process be adapted?

23. What would be the cost of changing the company’s current process and what resistance can be expected?

24. What are the potential benefits if the process is modified as per the best-in-class process?

2. Collection of Information 

Information can be broadly classified under the sub texts of primary data and secondary data.

To clarify further, here, primary data refers to collection of data directly from the bench marked company/companies itself, while secondary data refers to information garnered from the press, publications or websites.

Exploratory research, market research, quantitative research, informal conversations, interviews and questionnaires, are still, some of the most popular methods of collecting information.

When engaging in primary research, the company that is due to undertake the benchmarking process needs to redefine its data collection methodology.

Drafting a questionnaire or a standardised interview format, carrying out primary research via the telephone, e-mail or in face-to-face interviews, making on-site observations; and documenting such data in a systematic manner is vital, if the benchmarking process is to be a success.

3.      Analysis of Data

Step 1: Once sufficient data is collected, the proper analysis of such information is of foremost importance.

Step 2: Data analysis, data presentation (preferably in graphical format, for easy reference), results projection, classifying the performance gaps in processes, and identifying the root cause that leads to the creation of such gaps (commonly referred to as enablers), need to be then carried out.

Step 3: This phase, comprised of two steps, involves the analysis of all the information and data collected in the Planning phase. All the people closest to the process selected for benchmarking should be deeply involved in this phase.

Step 4: Finding Reasons and Devising Improved Processes – The project team should find out the reasons for better results from the benchmarked processes. This has to be done after the information from the best-in-class organisation has been collected and analysed. Based on the analysis, an improved process should be developed.

Step 5: Goal Setting for Improved Processes – The project team’s next step is to set goals for the improvement of the company’s existing process. These goals can, and probably should, be stretch goals that will result in a process even better than the other organization’s best-in-class process.

The review points for this phase are:

1. Do the project team’s members have both analytical skills and creativity and innovation?

2. Has a gap analysis been done between the performance of the company process and the benchmarked organization’s process (look for effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness)?

3. Have the performance gaps in the company’s process as compared to the benchmarked process been identified and analysed?

4. Have the reasons for better performance been brainstormed?

5. Have the process definition documents for both companies been compared?

5. After comparing the descriptive process documents, have the flowcharts of the two processes been compared and analysed?

6. Have the work processes at benchmarked organisation been studied and compared with the company’s processes? Have they been observed at the operator level?

7. Have the impact of the differences in work practises been fully studied?

8. Does the team have proposals for making changes in the processes?

9. Has the team been able to develop an improved process?

10. Have senior management and/or interested parties in the organisation been convinced by the project team that the superior benchmarked process should be adapted by the team company?

11. Has the revised process been tried to ensure the adaptability?

12. Have the successes of the revised process been documented properly for any horizontal deployment or to replicate it in other processes?

13. To get senior management’s commitment, have the improvements been converted to financial gains?

14. Has the cost-benefit analysis been conducted on the proposed revision of the process?

15. Has the team proposed new performance goals, which can be attained with the revised process?

16. Has senior management confirmed its knowledge and agreement about all of the above?

4. Implementation

This is the stage in the benchmarking process, where it becomes mandatory to walk the talk. This generally means that far-reaching changes need to be made, so that the performance gap between the ideal and the actual is narrowed and eliminated wherever possible.

A formal action plan that promotes change, should ideally be formulated keeping the organization’s culture in mind, so that the resistance that usually accompanies change is minimised.

Ensuring that the management and staff are fully committed to the process, and that sufficient resources are in place to meet facilitate the necessary improvements, would be critical in making the benchmarking process, a success.

Step 6: Communicate Findings and Gain Acceptance – The proposals for the improved processes should be presented to senior management and the head of the departments to gain approval of the proposed changes. Unless total approval and commitment is secured, there will be hindrance in the implementation of the actions plans.

Step 7: Establish New Functional Goals – When the proposed revisions to the processes are accepted, the acceptance of the revised functional goals is the next big logical step.

The questions to be asked in this phase are:

1. Has it been decided to whom findings are to be communicated?

2. Have finding been communicated to senior management so that its approval can be obtained for the implementation of the recommendations?

3. Have finding been shared with all the departments involved in the process so that they understand and accept the proposed changes in the process?

4. Have all suppliers of the inputs to the process been informed?

5. Has the impact of revised quality of the output of the process been communicated to the customer?

6. Have different types of communication for different audiences been decided upon?

7. Is there an effort to ensure that the communication will be understood properly by all concerned and that it has been accepted by all?

8. Have the revised process and the proposed performance goals been approved by senior management?

9. Have sufficient steps been taken to find out the gaps in every department that holds reservations or is concerned about difficulties in implementation?

10. Have all the issues raised been addressed properly?

11. Has there been any amendment in the proposed process that has been accepted by all?

12. Have the performance goals been converted to operational goals which are SMART (specific, measurable, aggressive [yet achievable], relevant, timely)?

13. Have operational goals been prioritised and the direction been set for implementation?

14. Has the impact of change on those elements prior to and those subsequent to the process been studied properly?

15. If there are any changes in the requirements of inputs from prior processes, has proper care been taken to change the process to meet the requirement needs?

16. Has senior management approved of all the points mentioned above?

5. Monitoring OR Action Phase

The last phase in the process has three steps. This phase is where the improvement parts have been taken into consideration. Ultimate benefit to a company from benchmarking is judged by how well this particular phase has been carried out. The last step of this phase, “Keep the Process Continuous,” implies this.

Develop Action Plan for Implementation – After the improved process is accepted by all concerned or likely to be affected by it, a detailed action plan is drawn with all key activities taken as inputs. The detailed action plan should carry the important things like a time line, individuals responsible for carrying out the tasks, any short-fall in the completion of tasks and what stretch targets are taken to compensate the short-falls. Those responsible should be committed enough to ensure that the tasks and assignments are completed on time.

Implement Specific Actions and Monitor Progress – While those who must complete assignments on schedule have a responsibility, so does senior management. They must be committed enough to ensure proper coordination of various activities, monitor the progress of implementation of the plan and work as a barrier-remover in the implementation process. When the revised process is in place, a complete report has to be prepared, showing the benefits of the revised process compared with the expectations at the time of approval of the proposed revision of the process.

Keep the Process Continuous – The successful completion of one project can lead to an important milestone for the organisation. The next step would be bringing in additional and more ambitious projects and benchmarking with the best approach. While carrying out the total activities, a mechanism or a system has to be built in to review the performance of the improved process periodically to ensure that the benefits are retained. The process has to be a continuous one and should move at a constant speed and should never be neglected.

The review points for this phase are:

1. Has the team developed an action plan to implement the changes proposed?

2. Has the team written down the changes required for implementing the new process and work practises?

3. Has the team arranged the activities in sequence and decided the sequence as per the order of priority based on the importance?

4. Have the tasks and assignments been made to the right people in the organisation?

5. Have commitments from the team members, their superiors and all who will carry out the assignments been secured?

6. Are there different teams for implementation and analysis of the changes (people good at analysis are not always good at implementation)?

7. Has the new process been ensured by updating all directional documents, such as specifications, standard operating procedures and work instructions?

8. Does everyone know that the improvement is permanent?

9. Has the team or senior management developed a mechanism to review the competitive positions periodically in the total implementation process?

One of the biggest advantages of benchmarking is the extent of improvements the organisation makes by learning from the processes of others. A better and prove process can be adapted, with suitable modifications for company requirements, with less time invested for inventing new methodologies. Benchmarking also uncovers new ways of improving a company’s own processes by motivating actions leaned from studying and experiencing those organisations with best-in-class processes.

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