The Twelve Steps of Benchmarking 4.
Develop senior management commitment 4.
Develop a mission statement 4.
Plan 4.
Identify customers 5.
Perform Research 5.
Identify Partners 5.
Develop Measures 5.
Develop and Administer Questionnaires 6.
Scrub and Analyze Data 6.
Isolate Best Practices 6.
Conduct Site Visits and Interviews 7.
Present Findings/Monitor Results 7.
Conclusion 9.
Appendix 10.
Bibliography 14.
Introduction.
Benchmarking can be defined several different ways. Some say benchmarking is the process of determining who is the very best, who sets the standard, and what the standard is. While others define benchmarking as a process that looks at how things are done in an organization in an effort to identify and implement the best practices in a program of continuous process improvement. Benchmarking can be used in almost any situation: business, education, and even sports. Once the decision is made on what process to benchmark, and how to measure the benchmark, the object of benchmarking is to figure out how the benchmark got to be the best and determine what changes would need to be made to get to that status. Benchmarking studies produce rankings in performance that include productivity and quality while at the same time, identifying the underlying practices or procedures that are driving performance.
In the benchmarking process, the participating organizations share non-public performance information to identify similar operational processes. The organizations then measure each others operating data, identify the best performers out of each group, and then try to adapt to the practices that made that them the best. Benchmarking provides participants with the guidance needed to make the correct informed decision.
Benchmarking is not very hard to understand and implement, it is just time consuming.