Quality Improvement

Benchmarking has been identified as an effective management tool for improving productivity and quality, and thereby enhancing organizational excellence and competitiveness. Its value is attested to by world-class organizations which have registered quantum improvements as a result of benchmarking.

Benchmarking is a process of continuously measuring and improving products and services against the best that can be identified to achieve market superiority and significant competitive edge. Unlike traditional competitive analysis, which focuses on outputs, benchmarking is applied to key processes within a business or an organization. It relies on determining the critical success factors across the organization. Processes governing those factors are analyzed. The best performances against the key parameters are established and these are then used to target improvements. Only a thorough understanding of the in-house processes makes it possible to recognize and integrate the differences, improvements and innovations which are found in best-practice organizations.

The benchmarking process also goes beyond simply determining the performance gap between a company and its competitor. Among other things, it requires the organization to identify what it wants to improve upon and continuously undertake improvement measures. Benchmarking is also a tool that can be used to identify improvement options and facilitate strategic business planning. While a business strategy can answer questions such as identifying existing markets that offer excellent profit potential, by itself, a good strategy does not guarantee success. Benchmarking – a rationale, structured technique for continuously improving key business process and practices using, as the drive, comparative measurement against best practice regardless of industry or location – is potentially the most powerful tool in the strategic armory. Benchmarking is a process for obtaining a measure – a benchmark. Simply stated,...