Avoid these ten benchmarking mistakes

Avoid these ten benchmarking mistakes Author: Anne Evans Benchmarking has become embedded in most organizations as part of the way they stay competitive. But there are lots of opportunities for benchmarking to go wrong. Here are some of the most common mistakes organizations make when benchmarking, and how you can avoid them. Mistake #1. Confusing benchmarking with participating in a survey. A survey of organizations in a similar industry to yours is not really benchmarking, whatever it may be called. Such a survey will give you some interesting numbers, but benchmarking is the process of finding out what is behind the numbers. In other words, a benrking survey may tell you where you rank, but it won't help you improve your position. Mistake #2. Thinking there are pre-existing "benchmarks" to be found. Just because some survey or study says that a cost of $2.35 is the "benchmark" cost of a particular transaction, does not mean that you must perform that transaction for that price. The so-called "benchmark" may simply not be applicable to your markets, customers or resource levels. Insist on identifying your own benchmarking partners and finding out from them what is achievable, and then whether you can achieve a similar level of performance. Mistake #3. Forgetting about service delivery and customer satisfaction. Benchmarking stories abound of organizations that have become so fixated on the cost of providing their product or service that they ...