Benchmarking

Reverse Engineering

Clean Sheet Approach

Balance Score Card

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
within their own firms that perform similar
activities.
 Formal form of benchmarking was first used
in production companies, so it has been
closely connected with production,
development and quality.
 Benchmarking is a systematic and
continuous process involving the
comparison of characteristics of the best
products, services and processes in order to
improve business performance.
 Final objective of benchmarking is the
application of new business knowledge to
business decision making.
 Select a product, service or process to
benchmark;
 Identify the key performance metrics;
 Choose companies or internal areas to
benchmark;
 Collect data on performance and practices;
 Analyze the data and identify opportunities for
improvement;
 Adapt and implement the best practices,
setting reasonable goals and ensuring
companywide acceptance.
 Improve performance: Benchmarking identifies
methods of improving operational efficiency
and product design;
 Understand relative cost
position: Benchmarking reveals a company's
relative cost position and identifies
opportunities for improvement;
 Gain strategic advantage: Benchmarking helps
companies focus on capabilities critical to
building strategic advantage;
 Increase the rate of organizational
learning: Benchmarking brings new ideas into
the company and facilitates experience sharin
 Benchmarking individual members of
staff.
 Benchmarking financial or output
performance
 Benchmarking risks
 Benchmarking the effectiveness of a
process
 Benchmarking the effectiveness of a
training program
 Designed to help an organization monitor
its performance and manage the
execution of its strategy.
 Balanced Scorecard was found to be the
sixth most widely used management tool
across the globe
 In its simplest form breaks performance
monitoring into four interconnected
perspectives: Financial, Customer, Internal
Processes and Learning & Growth.
Balanced Scorecard Perspectives :

 The Financial Perspective covers the financial

objectives of an organization and allows managers to
track financial success and shareholder value.
 The Customer Perspective covers the customer
objectives such as customer satisfaction, market share
goals as well as product and service attributes.
 The Internal Process Perspective covers internal
operational goals and outlines the key processes
necessary to deliver the customer objectives.
 The Learning and Growth Perspective covers the
intangible drivers of future success such as human
capital, organizational capital and information capital
including skills, training, organizational culture,
leadership, systems and databases.
 More than half of major companies in the US,
Europe and Asia are using Balanced
Scorecard approaches. The official figures vary
slightly but the Gartner Group suggests that
over 50% of large US firms have adopted the
BSC. A recent global study by Bain & Co finds
that the Balanced Scorecard is one of the top-
ten most widely used management tools
around the world. The widest use of the BSC
approach has traditionally been in the US, the
UK and Northern Europe, but there is very
strong growth in Balanced Scorecard adoption
in South America, the Middle East and Asia.
 With an increasing need for organizations to review their
effectiveness and costing, more and more managers and
organizational development practitioners have to
undertake “Clean Sheet Reviews”.
 It is in essence a process of collective (or organizational)
forgetting or wiping the slate clean and starting with a
blank sheet of paper. Starting again from scratch.
 Within the context of Business Process Improvement, a
clean sheet review looks at the organizations requirements
of the current organization and reinvents business
processes to meet those business requirements free of the
constraints of the existing organization.
 Ideally a clean sheet approach ignores the constraints of
policy and law as though there is no “as-is” organization
and the review team is creating business processes from
scratch to meet the business requirements.
 Typically the process starts with a requirement or scope
from the senior leadership of the business, stating what
requirements need to be met by the processes the review
will create, along with a deadline for delivery.
 The review team (better for a team to look at this than an
individual) starts with a clean sheet of paper and defines
their own method and schedule for delivering business
processes to meet the requirements of the business.
 Direction of the team is kept to a minimum to encourage
creative solutions unavailable to other methods that are
constrained to developing from the “as-is” processes. This
method therefore protects the opportunity to capture and
exploit the creativity in the team.
 One of the risks or dangers associated with a Clean
Sheet Review, is that many organizations are resistant
to give a truly clean sheet to the process
development team.
 Constraints are put in place which in reality means
that the review is just that – a review looking for small
step improvements.
 The reality is in most businesses it takes a lot of guts,
confidence and “bottle” to truly develop a process
from a blank or clean sheet.
 This in turn leads to many in the profession using the
term as a process but actually just making small
changes and adaptations rather than the whole sale
review and development of processes from scratch
to ensure an effective and efficient process.