Successful companies thrive not merely by process improvements, but through creating communities that embrace wise changes as an ongoing, cyclical part of business-as-usual. Best Practice Institute is dedicated to creating a shared pool of knowledge and analytical talent that enables businesses to measure themselves alongside their peers and develop a permanent best-practice focused culture. Measuring Up Put simply, benchmarking is the process of identifying, understanding, and adapting outstanding practices and processes from organizations anywhere in the world to help your organization improve its performance. Benchmarking provides business organization a means to compare itself with other organizations that are considered to be best-in-class. It involves identifying, analyzing, and adapting excellent practices in order to improve organizational performance. Many business processes are common in different industries. For example, FedEx has similar basic human resource process for hiring as IBM. In the same way, the customer satisfaction survey from one industry is usually the same with another. Although these processes came from different industries, they can be benchmarked effectively because all are common. Indeed, one of the biggest mistakes that organizations can make is to limit their benchmarking practices in their own industry. Benchmarking within the same industry is critical, but it is also imperative to look outside the box, not only to broaden the field of qualified benchmarking candidates, but also as a highly effective means of leapfrogging one’s competition by discovering relevant innovations from outside one’s own bailiwick. By benchmarking, a business can discover which processes are adaptable to the organization and what company (in any industry) is most compatible for drawing comparisons. While benchmarking is just one component of overall organizational improvement, it is a vital step in building not only a stronger organization, but a more best-practice oriented business community. The concept of process improvement is not new. Many techniques, models, and systems have been created and adopted over the years, including TQM, PDCA, Six Sigma, Workout, the Balanced Scorecard, and so on, representing a constant evolution and adaptation of management theory and practice. Despite their disparate titles and myriad stipulations, they all promote common methods of identifying weaknesses, implementing targeted changes, and balancing the organization’s unique, distinguishing characteristics with the needs and influences of its environment. The concern, then, is not necessarily what system one uses, but HOW one uses it, WHY the changes are needed in the first place, and perhaps most importantly, WHO is involved, both internally and externally, in driving the success (immediate and continuing) of the endeavor.
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