Benchmarking

Benchmarking:

Benchmarking is a way to measure business and team success by comparing a process or the organization as a whole to other internal processes or to competitors. Benchmarking helps you understand industry norms and analyze how your company stacks up. You can also compare a process within one department to that of another to evaluate productivity or efficiency. Benchmarking allows you to continue to improve the business or business functions by creating a specific standard for performance. Any team or employee not meeting this standard can then be flagged for additional training or observation, or the operational process can be completely revamped.

Businesses of all kinds use benchmarks to help meet performance goals, keep tabs on important metrics, and continue growing and improving.

Types of benchmarking:

Internal benchmarking:

Internal benchmarking is pretty straightforward. You compare a process or task to a similar process or task within the company. This requires the ability to track metrics for these two comparable systems or departments so the key performance indicator can be assessed and compared. This type of benchmarking is effective because it helps set and meet standards across the board, establishing consistency and ensuring that each department is as efficient as possible.

External benchmarking:

External benchmarking is comparing an internal process to that of a competitor or even several other organizations. This approach can be a little trickier because it requires access to industry data or specific company data, which may not be available unless the other organization has agreed to share it with you. External benchmarking is extremely valuable.

Competitive benchmarking:

Competitive benchmarking is a type of external benchmarking that solely focuses on comparing your own processes and metrics to those of direct competitors. This form of benchmarking is significant because you can identify exactly why a competitor is succeeding or what drives customer satisfaction in your industry.

Performance benchmarking:

Another important form of benchmarking is related to business performance. By tracking metrics and KPIs within the business, teams can continue to compare past outcomes to current standards, continuously updating the standard for improved performance. This type of benchmarking is focused on improving key business functions over time, since the idea is that benchmarks will continue to be raised and strengthened.

Strategic benchmarking:

Strategic benchmarking is typically external and specifically analyzes how other companies got to be successful. What kind of business strategies do they employ? For example, what is successful about their marketing campaigns. Benchmarking the way you strategize can help you learn from what has worked for winning businesses in and out of your industry. This is especially helpful for new businesses or startups.

Practice benchmarking:

This form of internal benchmarking relates to the practices and processes of your business. This requires you to have procedures in place to gather and analyze business data, like how employees and teams are completing their tasks or using certain technologies. Process mapping is one way to start practice benchmarking, and you can quickly identify and address any performance gaps in the company.

Process of benchmarking:

• Determining aspects of the company: In this phase of benchmarking the company identifies all the aspects of their company which can help them determine their benchmarking criteria with the rest of the company. Therefore, in this phase of work the company finds out all the important aspects of their companies, which can rank them as one of the best in the industry and also can deliver information such as their success rate and the element of their work order.

• Planning and research: In this planning and research phase, the company provides necessary information about the different aspects of their company. After understanding all the aspects of the company, the company arranges for the planning phase where these aspects of companies are examined for the goodness’s sake of the company and finally it goes through a research phase where all the planned aspects are researched completely for the best of the companies.

• Collection of data: At this stage of benchmarking, all the data collected from the planning and research department are maintained through some sort of methods and measures. Therefore, these methods help the company provide the final and comparative aspects of the company which can consider themselves different from the rest of the company. And the final data collected through this collection stages are considered as a fact of comparison.

• Examination: In this stage of benchmarking all the findings and output delivered by the planning and research department are examined for the purpose of the overall development of the company. Therefore, this stage examines or analyzes all those findings from the previous phase to deliver the final word of benchmarked aspects of the company.
• Development: At this stage of benchmarking the final examined data collected from the examination stage can be provided with the necessary recommendation of the development of the company. After examining the output of the benchmarking aspects of the company, the same company will create some development programs within the company to improve the working efficiency of the company.

• Incorporation: In this final stage of benchmarking all the aspects that are examined and developed are finally incorporated in the company for the overall development of the company. After finding the aspect which needs to be incorporated in the company, the company can provide a particular supportive environment for such a change in the company.

Therefore, all the necessary facts and those matters of the company which can turn it into a successful company needs to be incorporated in the company.

Importance of Benchmarking:

Benchmarking is a widely used global management process, which is very helpful for organization development and success. But still, most of the industries do not use the benchmarking process as an efficient tool to boost their performance and productivity.

Advantages of benchmarking:

• Keep improving internal operations.
• Understand what's working and what isn't.
• Adopt or improve upon competitor’s practices.
• Reduce costs by increasing efficiency.
• Focus on practices and offerings that promote customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Disadvantages of benchmarking:

• Stabilized standards.
• Insufficient information.
• Decreased results.
• Lack of customer satisfaction.
• Lack of understanding.
• Increased dependency.

Case study:

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.

in this Mr. D.S. Pughazhyendhii wants most factors

• Price
• Mileage
• Boot speed
• Engine displacement
• Fuel
• Transmission

Mahindra Bolero:

Mahindra’s sub 4m SUV gives fierce competition to the Hyundai Venue, Tata Nexon and the Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza.

The Bolero is available in three shades, namely, Diamond White, Lake Side Brown and Mist Silver. Performance-wise you can expect powers of up to 74.96bhp and 210Nm of torque.

However, this family car has no petroleum model, instead only available in its diesel variant.

• Engine Displacement – 1498cc
• Mileage – 16.5kmpl
• Price – Starts from Rs.7.98 lakh.

Maruti Suzuki Baleno:

Once more, Maruti Suzuki makes a mark in this list of the best family cars in India with its Baleno hatchback.

You can choose from either the 1.2-litre VVT motor or the 1.2-litre DualJet engine variant. You can expect up to 82bhp and 113Nm from the former model, and 90bhp and 113Nm from the latter variant.

Some of its features include ABS and EBD seatbelts, 16-inch alloy wheels and LED projector headlamps.

• Engine Displacement – 1197cc
• Mileage – 19kmpl
• Price – From Rs.5.64 lakh.
• Awards – Declared the winner in the Irish small car of the year category in 2017.

Hyundai Elite i20:

Hyundai offers fierce competition to the Maruti Swift with its Elite i20 hatchback. This 5-speed family vehicle comes with decent 285-litre boot space.

The 1.2-litre Kappa petroleum engine can generate up to 81.86bhp power and 117Nm torque. Hyundai further ups the ante by offering nine color options, from a Fiery Red to Mariana Blue.

• Engine Displacement – 1197cc
• Mileage – 17kmpl
• Price – From Rs.5.60 lakh.
• Awards – Winner of the prestigious ICOTY Award in 2014.

Maruti Suzuki Ertiga:

A larger offering from Maruti Suzuki, the Ertiga is perfect for extended families, offering enough space for kids and adults alike.

Boasting a 1.5-litre motor, the model comes with a 5-speed manual transmission and a 4-speed automatic transmission. You can also look forward to 105bhp of power and up to 138Nm of torque. Additionally, you can take advantage of 209-litre boot space to store all your essentials.

• Engine Displacement – 1462cc
• Mileage – 17kmpl
• Price – Rs.7.59 lakh
• Awards – Car of the Year award in 2019.

Conclusion:

I recommend to Mr. D.S. Pughazhyendhii is Maruti Suzuki Ertiga because of

• good safety and driving design.
• suitable for long journeys
• seat range is 8 and cost will effective
• extra space for language.