| Product Innovation Performance through Benchmarking |
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What are the Benefits of Benchmarking?
Benchmarking encourages a company to become open to new methods, ideas, processes, and
practices to improve effectiveness, efficiency and performance.
A benchmarking study results in valuable data that can stimulate thought-provoking discussions
with key stakeholders. The results provide answers to the following key questions:
- How well are we performing compared to other companies?
- What are the best practices?
- What improvement opportunities should we focus on?
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Companies who benchmark their performance report the following benefits:
- Identifies specific problem areas and eliminates guesswork
- Builds confidence when "gut feel" assumptions are validated
- Helps to prioritize improvement opportunities
- Shifts internal thinking from "inputs" to "outputs" (i.e.
measures)
- Serves as an excellent baseline "report card"
- Makes it easier to increase performance expectations and "raise the bar"
- Creates a sense of competitiveness and a real desire to improve
- Challenges people to "work smarter" instead of "working harder".
The process of benchmarking can be just as important as the results; especially if you
plan to engage several people to help implement improvements. By including executives
and other key stakeholders throughout the benchmarking process, you minimize resistance
to change, and win their support.
Companies who involve their team throughout the benchmarking process report the following
benefits:
- Accelerates understanding and agreement on the real problem areas
- Educates on the latest practices being used and performance being achieved
- Motivates the team to work collaboratively internally to surpass external benchmarks
- Removes emotion from the discussion.
Most importantly, regular benchmarking encourages a culture of continuous evaluation and
improvement.
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