Benchmarking is a technique invented in the United States to improve a business or product. The essence of benchmarking is that you take a process that is organized much better than in your company, analyze it, then make a comparison, after which the improvements that are suitable for your business are introduced into it.
Instructions
Step 1
The main feature of benchmarking as an approach is the adaptation of principles that are used in more successful companies. If you simply adopt other people's approaches, they will not give the desired results, since the specifics of the original structure will not be left out. That is why a variety of organizations are suitable as a basis for benchmarking, not only direct competitors, but also companies targeting a different target audience, or even enterprises altogether that are far from the scope of the organization being improved.
Step 2
The consequences of benchmarking are fundamental improvements, but only if you understand your own processes before starting. If you are trying to compare two models, one of which is not entirely clear to you, then you will not get a clear picture. Therefore, before starting benchmarking, they usually monitor and analyze their own production processes.
Step 3
There are several types of benchmarking. Internal benchmarking is available to each company, since the comparison of processes is carried out within the same organization. To make the comparison effective, two similar processes are selected, one of which is successful and the other is not. After comparison, conclusions and ideas for improvement usually emerge.
Step 4
Competitive benchmarking is about comparing it to your competitors. The problem is that it is quite difficult to get important data about competitors, as they usually keep such things under wraps. It is best to choose competitors that are more successful in the market. For example, if you are in the regional supply chain, you can try to learn more about a company that operates all over the world. Sometimes competitive benchmarking uses less than ethical and legal methods: they hire front employees, send in spies, or try to buy information from employees of a competing company.
Step 5
Functional benchmarking is a process in which approaches to doing business or solving certain problems are compared, but not a competing company is taken as a model, but a company operating in a completely different field of activity. Benchmarking in this case can act as one of the aspects of successful mutually beneficial cooperation.
Step 6
Average benchmarking. For this process, several organizations are selected, each successful in its niche, and they try to identify effective approaches in the work of each of them. Many companies can borrow some correct principles and apply them in another field of activity.
Step 7
Once suitable processes have been identified, it is time to implement improvements in your own organization. A strategic change plan is drawn up, and then it is consistently implemented. At the control stages, an analysis of what is happening is done, since it happens that some business processes "do not take root" or do not give the expected effect. It is important to identify such things as early as possible.