By 1984, Xerox market share had plunged from 89% in 1974, to a bottom of 17%; new solutions were needed to stabilize and improve the situation. Then came Dr. Camp and a new experimentation in benchmarking. At the time, commercial benchmarking (competitive) was primarily used to compare costs, products features, marketing and so on. Dr. Camp introduce a non-competitive benchmarking who looks at best in class practice throughout the entire commercial environment whichever industry they came from.
During the eighties, Xerox performed more than 200 projects in best in class benchmarking and by the end of the decade Xerox was recognized Best in class in quality, in the US and in Europe. In 1989, Dr. Robert Camp publishes: Benchmarking: The Search for Industry Best Practices that lead to Superior Performance. That really started the movement.
We can divide in two different classes the benchmarking: informal and formal. Informal benchmarking covers the information on usual activities of private or public entities similar to your organization, by looking at stats from different organizations, private researchers, friends, colleagues and whatever info we can glean elsewhere. Informal benchmarking has no process or procedure, it lacks depth and cover whole sectors of activities or, one enterprise. Nonetheless, it is usually cheap, accessible and somewhat accurate over a 10-year period, give and take the usual economic crash; most of SMEs start with this information.
Formal benchmarking is divided in two types: performance and best in class practice. Performance take the informal benchmarking and put methods, procedures and precision into it. Since we analyse entities like us (competitors), laws regulating competition in different countries can seriously impede the process.
Best in class practice describe the process of analyzing procedures, we wish to improve, in a totally different organization or entreprise, who is known to be a leader in that particular field. The goal is not to copy but to generate innovation in your enterprise; and it works. The process needs resources and is mostly used by big corporations who can invest time and money; virtually inaccessible to SMEs
What we offer is an hybrid between the performance and best practice benchmarking, where entities can share information and knowhow in a secure and anonymous way.
The technique of Benchmarking is not a quick fix for your problems, Xerox with all its resources took eight years to gain back its mojo. The process is faster now because of technology but it is still a lengthy endeavour. What we offer will open a path to improvement, but a permanent gain in productivity or quality needs a commitment for the long term whatever the type of improvement method you chose but, the results will be there.
In the last 20 years Benchmarking has been chosen as a top five methods in business improvement in terms of popularity. The people who did not achieve a positive outcome where only comparing results rather than learning from good practices and innovate. It is as important to share knowledge as it is to measure results.
The strengh of best in class benchmarking is the constant innovation it brings to an enterprise. You cannot copy exactly what an other corporation do because, in most cases, it has no relevance with your entreprise. You have to understand troughly the process you benchmark in order to reinvent it for your entreprise with the best in class proven results. Innovation will always a be winner, tomorrow or in twenty years.
Performance benchmarking will become more accessible because of the recent improvements in communication technologies. In the past, enterprises subcontract to a third party who collected and held the data before disclosing diluted information in accordance with the law, it was costly and not very effective but better solutions are emerging, now. This is where you will see the greater advances in the following years and we will play a part in it.
