Benchmarking

BENCHMARKING

Benchmarking is defined as the process of measuring products, services, and processes against those of organizations known to be leaders in one or more aspects of their operations.

Benchmarking provides necessary insights to help understand how an organization compares with similar organizations, even if they are in a different business or have a different group of customers.

Benchmarking improves performance by identifying and applying best demonstrated practices to operations and sales. Managers compare the performance of their products or processes externally with those of competitors and best-in-class companies, and internally with other operations that perform similar activities in their own firms.

Benchmarking can also help organizations identify areas, systems, or processes for improvements—either incremental (continuous) improvements or dramatic (business process re-engineering) improvements.

Types of Benchmarking

1. Technical Benchmarking : Technical benchmarking is performed by design staff to determine the capabilities of products or services, especially in comparison to the products or services of leading competitors.
2. Competitive Benchmarking : Competitive benchmarking compares how well an organization is doing with respect to the leading competition, especially with respect to critically important attributes, functions, or values associated with the organization’s products or services.

Benchmarking Procedure

1. Define thesubject for the benchmarking study.
2. Form a cross-functional team.
3. Study your own process. Know how the work is done and measurements of the output.
4. Identify partner organizations that may have best practices.
5. Collect information directly from partner organizations.
6. Compare the collected data.
7. Determine gaps between your performance measurements and those of your partners.
8. Determine the differences in practices that cause the gaps.
9. Develop goals for your organization’s process.
10. Develop action plans to achieve those goals.
11. Implement and monitor plans.

Cars compared (with estimated on road price in Bangalore)

• Tata Nexon XM (₹ 9.76 lakhs)
• Ford Ecosport Ambiente 1.5li Ti-VCT (₹ 9.73 lakhs)
• Maruti Suzuki Baleno Zeta Dualjet (₹ 9.67 lakhs)
• Kia Sonet HTK 1.2 (₹ 9.25 lakhs)

Criteria for selecting the above four cars: All four selected cars are 5 seater vehicles with prices between the specified Rs 8 to 10 lakhs range. They are compartively larger in size in a price range which prodiminantly consist of hatchbacks. All selected cars have safety features like airbags, ABS and EBD. And basic entertainment and communication systems enabled.

Recommended suggestion: Maruti Suzuki Baleno Zeta Dualjet

Reasons for the particular suggestion and additional features included

• Highest mileage of 23.87 km per litre (about 5.5 km per litre higher than the nearest competitor)
• Longest driving range on full tank capacity of 880km.
• Alloy wheels, where as other models have steel rimmed wheels.
• Braking Assist
• Rear wiper and defogger and halogen fog lamps.
• Touch screen display with GPS navigation, and voice command
• Tilt and telescopic steering adjust.
• 60:40 split rear seats for larger luggage capacity.
• Regenerative braking and keyless start.

Source : www.carwale.com