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5 Steps To Powerful Negotiating - Feature Article
An intricate look into the mind of the powerful negotiator. Learn how to prepare yourself before you hit the negotiating table so you walk in with all the knowledge necessary to gain the edge over your opponent. Psychology that you can take to the...
5 Warning Signals Your Business Might Have A Cash Flow Problem
A key reason for business failure is poor cash management. If you don’t pay attention to your daily cash flow, you face extinction; yet so many business people loss site of their cash flow. No matter how fantastic your company’s products are, you...
BUYING A BUSINESS - ADVICE FOR THE FIRST TIME BUYER/ INVESTOR
As a professional M&A intermediary I am amazed when I hear others in my profession at industry meetings proclaim, “I don’t work with individual buyers.” They put it out there almost like a badge of honor or an indication of reaching a higher level...
How to Use Graphs and Charts in Your Business Plan
I often hear the question, “how many graphs or charts should I have in my business plan?” As with most other business planning questions, the answer is “it depends.” This article discusses the key factors influencing the number of graphs and charts...
Starting Your Business: Avoiding the "Me Incorporated" Syndrome
Many people who want to start a business have similar reasons for their ambitions. Typically, they are seeking autonomy from an employer, freedom, or control over their own destiny, which also means that they can determine their own income, work...
 
Best Practice Benchmarking - The path to Excellence

Today benchmarking is an essential ingredient in strategic planning and operational improvement. Long-range strategies if not survival require organizations to continuously change and adapt to the known marketplace of today and the expected market of tomorrow to remain competitive and deliver on today's imperatives of more, better, faster, cheaper.

BACKGROUND

From its humble beginnings as the surveyor's standard reference mark for elevation and sometimes position (latitude and longitude), the notion of a benchmark and benchmarking have become almost obligatory for any organization wanting to improve its products, services, or processes to better serve customers and improve business results. In today's business application, the benchmark is that performance objective which incorporates the best practice, the epitome or standard of excellence; and benchmarking is the activity of learning, exchanging, and adapting best practices to your organization. Benchmarking is finding and implementing best practices.

The Japanese word dantotsu--striving to be the best of the best--captures the essence of benchmarking. Benchmarking is a positive, proactive process to change operations in a structured fashion to achieve superior performance. The purpose of benchmarking is to gain a competitive edge.

HISTORY, WORLDWIDE REACH

In a recent article, The (Toronto) Globe and Mail ("The Ins and Outs of Management Tools," Gordon Pitts) reported that benchmarking was the third most used management tool in 1996, having risen from sixth place in 1993. This confirms the continuing, expanding, and intensifying interest in this improvement approach around the world.

Benchmarking and the search for best practices have had a wave-like movement across the globe. It was picked up and embraced by Europe within years of its significant use in the USA. What has been astounding, however, is the intensity with which it has been pursued in the Asia/Pacific area. Likewise, there has been somewhat of a lag in application in the South and Central Americas and in Canada. But, more importantly, this trend shows that this business improvement approach can, in fact, be successfully applied everywhere. This should serve to motivate organizations, around the globe, to learn from each other and bring benchmarking, worldwide, up to an exemplary level of expertise and application.

There is now a continuing


interest and high demand for case studies of successful benchmarking investigations. This demand is second only to the preliminary interest that organizations have in finding performance data. Once the organization understands what the benchmark data reveal about where they stand and the magnitude of the gap, there is intense follow-on interest in what best practices will close the gap. That information and insight is usually revealed in case studies as shown in Figure 1. There are 35 case studies among my three books. They are a rich source of quick learning.

CURRENT DRIVING INITIATIVES

Today benchmarking is an essential ingredient in strategic planning and operational improvement. Long-range strategies if not survival require organizations to continuously change and adapt to the known marketplace of today and the expected market of tomorrow to remain competitive and deliver on today's imperatives of more, better, faster, cheaper (Figure 2). To energize and motivate its people, an organization must:

● believe there is a need for change, ● determine what you want to change, and ● create a picture of how you want to look after the change.

Read all...

-----------------------------

Robert C. Camp is President of the Global Benchmarking Network, an affiliation of 20 benchmarking competency centers around the world. For eleven years, he served on the Executive Committee of the Council of Logistics Management and was President in 1993.

He has over 30 years' experience in supply chain management. He has been recognized four times by Xerox for his leadership in benchmarking, and he is cited in The International Who's Who in Quality.

He holds a Bachelor degree in civil engineering from Cornell University and a Masters degree in business administration from Cornell University - Johnson Graduate School of Management. He earned a Doctorate in logistics and operations research from the Pennsylvania State University. He has written many articles and to date has 3 books on the subject.

About the author:

Contact Dr. Robert C. Camp via The Benchmarking Center | Middle East - Read his full profile with The Knowledge Brokers

 

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Strategic planning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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STRATEGIC PLANNING MANUAL
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BPubs.com: Strategic Planning & Business Planning Articles
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Strategic Planning Tools
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