Benchmarking "Do's" and "Don'ts"

By Mark Brousseau

One of the hottest topics at TAWPI’s Payments Capture & Clearing (PCC) Council meeting last month in Las Vegas was how organizations can get the greatest benefits from benchmarking and best practices.

That same question was put to a gathering of top supply chain executives at the Supply Chain Leadership Forum, an event hosted by the Supply Chain Consortium.

By comparing notes and taking a Consortium survey, forum attendees identified the Top 5 “Do’s” and “Don’ts” of benchmarking and best practices. The survey gathered information from participants’ real-life experiences, including supply chain areas that have achieved performance improvements and benchmarking information that has been used and interpreted by their companies.

The Top 5 Do’s:
1. Do align with key stakeholders.
2. Do succinctly summarize benefits for top management.
3. Do reduce your scope to actionable items.
4. Do maintain perspective of both your business and cultural model.
5. Do test multiple options before drawing conclusions.

The Top 5 Don’ts:
1. Don’t use competitors that match up poorly with your processes.
2. Don’t ignore your competition.
3. Don’t use the “boil the ocean” approach (focus, focus, focus).
4. Don’t use benchmarking and data analysis tools without understanding how they work.
5. Don’t work in a vacuum and think your organization knows it all.

Do you have any benchmarking "do's" and "don'ts" to share? Post them below.