Benchmarking

BENCHMARKING

Benchmarking is a process of measuring the performance of a company’s products, services, or processes against those of another business considered to be the best in the industry, “best in class.” The point of benchmarking is to identify internal opportunities for improvement. By studying companies with superior performance, breaking down what makes such superior performance possible, and then comparing those processes to how your business operates, you can implement changes that will yield significant improvements.

That might mean tweaking a product’s features to more closely match a competitor’s offering, or changing the scope of services you offer, or installing a new customer relationship management (CRM) system to enable more personalized communications with customers.

There are two basic kinds of improvement opportunities: continuous and dramatic. Continuous improvement is incremental, involving only small adjustments to reap sizeable advances. Dramatic improvement can only come about through reengineering the whole internal work process.

STEP-BY-STEP BENCHMARKING

Benchmarking is a simple, but detailed, five-step process:

• Choose a product, service, or internal department to benchmark.
• Determine which best-in-class companies you should benchmark against, which organizations you’ll compare your business to.
• Gather information on their internal performance, or metrics.
• Compare the data from both organizations to identify gaps in your company’s performance.
• Adopt the processes and policies in place within the best-in-class performers.

Benchmarking will point out what changes will make the most difference, but it’s up to you to actually put them in place.

In order to benchmark anything, you need to have quantitative data available to study. That means breaking down internal processes to calculate performance metrics. Quantify everything, because only quantifiable information can be accurately compared.

BENEFITS

In addition to helping companies become more efficient and profitable, benchmarking has other benefits, too, such as:

• Improving employee understanding of cost structures and internal processes
• Encouraging team-building and cooperation in the interests of becoming more competitive
• Enhancing familiarity with key performance metrics and opportunities for improvement company-wide

In essence, benchmarking helps employees understand how one small piece of a company’s processes or products can be the key to major success, just as one employee’s contributions can lead to a big win.

Benchmark with presently available cars in the market for the following case.

Mr. D.S. Pughazhyendhii is a married man who lives in Bangalore which is a highly crowded city. His Family comprises five members including his wife, five-year-old boy, his father, and his mother. He visits his native place Madurai which is 500kms away from Bangalore once in a month. Also, he will be using his car to commute to his office. His budget falls between 8 to 10 lakhs on road. Please suggest to him with options so that he will buy a good car for his family.

Note: Pughazhyendhii is fond of big cars

Shortlisted cars: (Manual transmission, Petrol)

1. Ford Ecosport
2. Renault Triber
3. Kia Sonet
4. Honda Amaze

1. Ford Ecosport

Overview:

The new Ford EcoSport has been launched with more features over its predecessor. Ford EcoSport is available in six trims – Ambiente, Trend, Titanium, Titanium+, EcoSport S and the Thunder Edition. The newly introduced feature-loaded Thunder Edition is based on the Titanium variant and it replaces the Signature trim. The updated model is available in both petrol and diesel engine options.

Ford EcoSport Engine:

Mechanically the new Ford EcoSport continues to be powered by the existing 1.5-litre petrol and diesel engine options. The 1.0-litre EcoBoost continues to be offered in the EcoSport S trim as well. The EcoSport range is available with a five-speed or a six-speed manual transmission along with a six-speed automatic transmission option in the petrol version.

Ford EcoSport Exterior:

The updated EcoSport gets automatic HID headlamps, daytime running lights, electrochromic mirror and rain sensing wipers. The vehicle also gets distinctive highlights like dark inserts on the headlamp cluster and a prominent black treatment to the fog lamp bezel. Additionally, it gets 17-inch alloy wheels, and a dark theme throughout the exterior, which includes black-painted front grille and rear-view mirrors; dual-tone bonnet and decals on doors.

Ford EcoSport Interior:

Except for the entry level variant, all other variants get a touchscreen-based infotainment system with embedded navigation. The Thunder Edition abundant use of cognac accents across multiple surfaces – from front seats to door inserts as well as centre console and instrument panel. The variant further gets a nine-inch floating touchscreen system with embedded navigation.

Price

Ford EcoSport price starts at ₹ 8.19 Lakh and goes upto ₹ 11.70 Lakh (Avg. ex-showroom). EcoSport comes in 11 variants. The price of EcoSport petrol top version is ₹ 11.40 Lakh. The price of EcoSport diesel base version is ₹ 8.89 Lakh. Whereas the price of EcoSport automatic version starts from ₹ 11.40 Lakh.

Pro's & Con's:

2. Renault Triber

Pro's & Con's:

3. Kia Sonet

Pro's & Con's

4. Honda Amaze

Pro's & Con's:

Verdict:

I would suggest Ford Ecosport because it's a well-built crossover that packs in new tech and is great to drive when it comes to daily driving and for those seeking a fun drive, solid build, high speed stability on the highway, driving dynamics & the safety tech it packs in.