Conducting benchmarking. Benchmarking of a company: examples from foreign and Russian practice. An example of benchmarking in an enterprise

One of the tools for improving the work and modifying the existing quality system is benchmarking, that is, comparing the activities of one company with the most successful analogues.

At the beginning of the 20th century, many terms began to appear, including those in the field of economics, marketing, and management, borrowed from other languages, for which there is no one-word translation into Russian. Such terms are often found in the press and business circles. And sometimes they need more clarification. One of these words "benchmarking"- this is a marketing strategy used by various market participants, which consists in comparing their company with more successful business representatives, and based on this, the creation of a training, development, motivation strategy based on the best examples.

Comparison is carried out by analyzing the effectiveness of more successful organizations, regardless of where they are geographically, their size and scope of business. Here you need to understand that not a one-time comparison, but a systematic activity of searching, evaluating, learning and improving based on the best examples, is the essence of benchmarking, in its own words, which can be briefly described as reconnaissance and learning from the experience of successful companies.

Origin and development

The term "benchmarking" comes from the English word "benchmark" - standard, benchmark, criterion. And it was first introduced at the Cambridge Institute for Strategic Planning in 1972. Although its theoretical foundations were laid back in the 19th century in the works of A. Feigenbaum, W. Shewhart, a little later than other quality management specialists.

In 1979, Xerox Corporation launched the Competitiveness Benchmarking project. The company compared its products with similar products made in Japan. The analysis carried out and the steps taken on its basis brought excellent results to the corporation.

The picture of benchmarking in Russia is vividly illustrated by the examples of Ural companies: for example, the company Stroyechinvest, which has been engaged in wholesale and retail trade in the city of Pervouralsk since 1991, was forced to revise the concept of management due to the fact that large enterprises entered the market. retail chains from Moscow, Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg, as a result of which the income of the Ural company was significantly reduced. So, the management of "Stroytekhinvest" decided to combine trading activities with the rental of real estate. This step was taken in 2004.

This experience was immediately adopted by Maxi LLC from the city of Revda, which traded in eight stores, partially replaced by Kirovsky LLC for renting its premises. And since 2006, the Chelyabinsk Nezabudka LLC, which has 26 stores at its disposal, began to lease the premises of Pyaterochka LLC and also reoriented to real estate management.

Benchmarking analysis and its stages

How is benchmarking done:

• the object for comparison is determined (office, division, company as a whole, individual business processes or otherwise);
• a branding partner is selected (which companies or companies will be compared with);
• information is collected (through marketing analysis, data collection on key indicators, reviews, competitor analysis);
• the analysis of the information received is carried out (comparison of the obtained indicators and the identification of problems that need to be addressed in order to achieve the goal of benchmarking analysis);
• based on the analysis, a mechanism for achieving better results is implemented in practice, that is, business strategies are applied that allow the analyzed organizations to achieve higher performance.

At the same time, the following can be carried out: internal benchmarking, that is, a comparison of departments, areas, divisions within the same organization; functional, when the analysis is carried out in the context of specific functions in relation to other companies in the industry; competitiveness - comparison with direct competitors; general - comparison with companies in other industries.

radar diagram

One of the effective types of benchmarking is a radar chart. It allows you to analyze and identify which areas of activity require improvement. Economists Bjorn Anderson and Tom Fagerhoude in their book Root Cause Analysis. Basic Tools and Methods” describes the practical application of the method on the example of a social security office located in major city.

The situation is as follows: when dealing with different, including the lower strata of the population, employees of the organization were often insulted, attacked, witnessed quarrels and fights of clients waiting in line. Naturally, in this situation, the main problem was: ensuring the safety of employees.

The management decided to compile a radar diagram based on publicly available data for other offices and for the whole country. The indicators of the diagram were the number of incidents according to the following indicators:

1. Oral abuse of clients;
2. Verbal threats from clients;
3. Minor physical abuse from clients;
4. More severe physical abuse from clients;
5. Serious injury to employees by customers;
6. Murders committed by clients;
7. Minor damage to property by customers;
8. Significant property damage.

To create a radar chart, do the following:

• collect information;
• set one indicator for each of the axes;
• divide the axes into segments, independent indicators are set for them (the farther from the center, the better the level of the indicator);
• further it is necessary to note the levels of indicators for each of the analyzed companies;
• connect the dots characterizing the indicators of each company with lines;
• identify the most different indicators of your company with the analyzed enterprises.

Thus, the compilation of the radar diagram allowed the employees of the office being assessed to clearly understand what indicators were in a particularly difficult situation, in this case these are (the points closest to the center of the diagram): verbal insults, threats and significant damage to property. And take further steps to correct the situation, focusing on the experience of more successful associates.

Benchmarking can be viewed as a process, an activity of long-term thinking about an entrepreneurial strategy, based on the best experience of partners and competitors at the industry, cross-sector, national and international levels.

Due to the need to use external factors that affect or may affect the behavior of the company and its products on the market, interaction with partners and competitors, a philosophy and function were required related to the identification, search for the results of practice in the firms of partners, competitors and related industries, with the aim of using them in their own firms to increase productivity.

Benchmarking is close to the concept of marketing intelligence. However, marketing intelligence is the collection of confidential (semi-confidential) information about changes in the external marketing environment.

The use of benchmarking is multidirectional. Although since the mid-1970s it was carried out as part of a competitive analysis, today benchmarking has successfully established itself as a way to evaluate strategies and performance goals in comparison with leaders in their own and related industries in order to guarantee a long-term stay in the market.

Benchmarking (English bench - place, marking - mark) is a way to study the activities of business entities, primarily competitors, in order to use their positive experience in their work.

Benchmarking includes a set of tools that allow you to systematically find, evaluate all the advantages of someone else's experience and organize their use in your work.

Benchmarking is aimed at studying business. When applied to innovation, it means studying the business of other enterprises or entrepreneurs in order to identify the fundamental characteristics for developing one's innovation policy and specific types of innovation. When benchmarking, it is important to overcome the psychological complexes of managers and specialists.

Psychological complex means:

Satisfaction of the head of the economic entity with the achieved results;
unwillingness to risk money, i.e. spend money on acquiring information, pay for consultations of analysts and experts, saving all kinds of resources and money spent on marketing research, etc.;
fear that it is very difficult or impossible to do better than a competitor due to the large expenditure of all resources, including money.

There are two types of benchmarking: general and functional.

General benchmarking is a comparison of the production and sales performance of a given manufacturer's products with the business performance of a sufficiently large number of producers or sellers of a similar product. Such a comparison allows us to outline clear directions for investment activity. The parameters used to compare the characteristics of a product depend on the particular type of product.

Functional benchmarking means comparing the performance of individual functions (for example, operations, processes, work methods, etc.) of a manufacturer (seller) with similar parameters of the most successful enterprises (sellers) operating in similar conditions.

For benchmarking, a special working group.

The functional benchmarking methodology consists of the following steps:

1. Selecting a specific function of the manufacturer's (seller's) business.
2. Select comparison options for this business function. In this case, one parameter or a group of parameters can be used. The only one, i.e. an unambiguous comparison parameter of a business function can be, for example, the profitability of the operation, the level of costs for the operation, the duration of the active period of use of this function, the degree of risk, etc. The parameter group is used when comparing such complex business functions as product quality management, cash management, etc.
3. Collection of necessary information about similar manufacturers.
4. Analysis of the received information.
5. Development of a draft of the changes made to this function.
6. Feasibility study of proposed changes.
7. Implementation of changes in the practice of organizing this business.
8. Monitoring the progress of this business and the final assessment of the quality of the change in this function.

The effectiveness of the method under consideration depends on the correct organization of the information collection system in various fields in the open press, in the analysis of products, at exhibitions, in the position of a competing company in the market, the use of former employees of these companies, etc.

Practice shows: the process of improvement is unlimited. Benchmarking is, one might say, a perpetual motion machine of a continuous process of continuous improvement of a company's performance.

The reasons for the sharp increase in the popularity of benchmarking in recent decades are obvious. Competition has become global, and most companies are beginning to recognize the need for a comprehensive and detailed study (and subsequent use) of the best achievements of other companies for their own future success. In order not to be left behind their competitors, all companies, regardless of size and field of activity, need to constantly study and apply the best world practices in all areas of business activity, adopt all types of effective technologies.

Benchmarking is:

Methodology for comparative analysis of the performance of the company and its divisions and borrowing knowledge, achievements from other companies that are "best of the best" in their field;
systematic activity aimed at finding, evaluating and learning from the best examples, regardless of their size, business area and geographical location;
the art of discovering what others are doing better than us, and learning, improving and applying their methods of work;
process of systematic and continuous measurement: assessment of the processes of the enterprise and their comparison with the processes of enterprises of the world's leaders, in order to obtain information useful for improving their own characteristics;
a special kind of activity to search for and obtain information about the best solutions used in the activities of other companies. These companies may be competitors, although the most successful borrowings are most often obtained from those firms that operate in completely different industries, regions, markets, in other countries, etc.

Before answering the question, “Which companies are the best?”, two other questions need to be answered, namely, “What needs to be improved in your company in the first place?” and “How capable is your company of change in this area?” To answer questions, it is necessary to involve competitive intelligence specialists: priority improvements appear as a result of comparisons of one's own activities with those of a competitor.

The three-stage selection of a benchmarking partner is called the STC process. Its name comes from the initial letters of three English words - skim, trim, cream. The first stage - S - a cursory review (from "to skim" - to skim, run through the eyes), when they make a general overview of the available sources of information, and also collect additional available data. The second - T - putting in order (from "to trim" - to finish, grind, put in order), a detailed description of the information available at that time. The third stage - C - selection of the best (from "to cream" - "skim cream"), selection of suitable partners. In the STC process, competitive intelligence is used at all stages.

At the same time, the competitive intelligence service works for benchmarking in two modes. The first is the establishment of those elements of activity (business processes, directions, rules, technologies, procedures, etc.) in which competitors surpass your company. The second mode is to understand who is superior to competitors in the same positions.

A comparative analysis is carried out by type of activity, divisions, company as a whole in order to identify strengths and weaknesses, to establish the best working methods.

The main questions of the analysis are:

How others do it;
why they do it differently;
what conditions allow them to do it better.

Benchmarking should be understood as a process of research carried out in parallel with marketing research and competitive intelligence. Benchmarking is aimed at a detailed study of the internal organization, structure and activities of another enterprise, from which you can learn something useful and important for your own work.

Benchmarking is a comparative assessment of the effectiveness of the system under test and the reference system, the correct functioning of which is beyond doubt. Comparing the performance of the two systems allows you to check the correct functioning of the system under test. The efficiency, correctness and speed of the system operation when performing a specific task are determined. Benchmarking is, in fact, the development of the analogy method, which, in turn, consists in using organizational forms and management mechanisms that have justified themselves in companies with similar organizational characteristics (goals, type of technology, specific organizational environment, size, etc.) in relation to the analyzed organization.

According to the concept of benchmarking, any business process must be marked, i.e. structured in such a way that it is possible to determine how well a business process is performing and to plan the implementation of changes that can track the company's future achievements in improving business processes.

With the help of benchmarking, it is determined why the partner organization has achieved positive results in a particular area, what actions have led it to success. There are two categories of data obtained from the results of benchmarking: firstly, the performance indicators of the organization (what has been achieved); secondly, how and by what methods and technologies it was achieved. The analysis of only one category of data does not give a complete picture of the activities of the organization. Comparison should be carried out on the same indicators and in the same areas.

TYPES OF BENCHMARKING

Currently, there are several types of benchmarking. each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Functional benchmarking is a comparison with organizations that are not among the intra-industry competitors, but carry out functional activities in which the organization is interested in improving (for example, storage, transportation). Benefits of functional benchmarking: Functional leaders are easy to identify, no privacy concerns arise, and there is ample opportunity to discover unique, effective approaches or technologies that can be useful to the organization. But the specifics of functional benchmarking makes it difficult, and sometimes simply impossible, to adapt research results to the characteristics of an organization that performs functional benchmarking.

Internal benchmarking - making comparisons between different departments of an organization. Internal benchmarking is the comparison of different departments and divisions of the same company with each other in order to find out the most effective methods of work to make a product or service more competitive. The simplicity of organizing, conducting, collecting information necessary for comparison determined the spread of this type of benchmarking. General benchmarking is the most complex and difficult to implement type that allows you to compare business processes in organizations belonging to different industries. This type provides the best opportunities for intra-organizational improvement.

Competitive benchmarking - a comparison is made with a company in the same industry (competitor) or a partner company from other industries.

In addition, depending on specific problem areas, cost benchmarking is distinguished, which is aimed at reducing costs, determining the factors influencing their formation, searching for differences in the formation of costs between companies and its other types.

Benchmarking example

Ford

A good example of the use of such analysis can be found in the history of Ford. Benchmarking was carried out by its specialists in the 90s, when the company's position on the market was seriously shaken. In the course of this analysis, studies of car models were carried out, the number of which exceeded 50.

These studies were conducted in order to clarify the advantages and, accordingly, the disadvantages of each. According to such an analysis, the parameters of the best car were identified, which would allow to achieve the performance of competitors' companies and even surpass them.

The result of this company was the car model Taurus, which became the car of the year. Subsequently, the model lost its position due to the fact that improvements began to be made, deviating it from the original concept of development based on the analysis competitive models.

This company has long been recognized as an international organization engaged in the creation of mobile devices and services. Nokia uses benchmarking to maintain its position in the market and develop by keeping track of time and progress in all areas of its activities (logistics, research, development, partner relations, people).

This company is a consulting firm that is engaged in market research, identifying profitable strategies and providing various types of services that allow companies to establish business processes. GIA constantly produces various benchmarking seminars. A typical project of this company includes 2 thematic seminars, where various business and analysis issues can be discussed.

Each seminar can be devoted to the following topics:

1. Economic improvements based on examples.
2. Learning how to run a profitable business based on the experience of competitors.
3. Exchange of key strategies and ideas between competent professionals from different business areas.
4. Training based on the mistakes made by other companies, as an opportunity to avoid incorrect and unnecessary financial expenses in their own work.

Benchmarking method

The essence of the method

Benchmarking is a method of objective systematic comparison of one's own activities with the work of the best companies (divisions of one's company), understanding the reasons for the partners' business efficiency, organizing appropriate actions to improve one's own performance and their implementation.

Action plan:

1. Identification of those aspects of the company's activities for which consumers identify suppliers who have achieved business excellence.
2. Establish a benchmark company against which performance will be compared.
3. Determining how the benchmark company can achieve a high level of performance.
4. Establish performance standards for key aspects of the company's operations that exceed the level of performance of the reference company.
5. Identification of what needs to be done to bring the performance of the company to an optimal level.
6. Development of a plan for implementing the received ideas in order to bring the business in line with the standards and gain superiority over them.
7. Implementation of the plans.

Method features

The concept of benchmarking is not new. The roots of the concept of benchmarking go back centuries. As a standard for evaluating the level of production, benchmarking has been used in organizations around the world since the early 90s of the last century.

In Russia there was a powerful system of scientific and technical information. In the 70-80s, a map of the technical level of products was prepared, introduced by GOST 2.116-76. Each product subject to state certification was evaluated according to the main functional and consumer indicators in comparison with the best world samples.

Benchmarking is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. As customer requirements are constantly changing, so are the performance characteristics of competing companies.

Accordingly, the benchmarks against which benchmarking is carried out also change, and only continuous benchmarking can help a company quickly learn about all innovations and profitably apply them in practice.

Competitive comparison indicators: price, quality, customer care and service, customer feedback, delivery, product variety, new products and services.

The current theory and practice considers the types of benchmarking depending on the object of comparison and what is being compared. The best results come from a combination of general benchmarking involving businesses from other industries and process benchmarking.

Additional Information:

1. Don't copy, create. A company should not copy the approaches adopted by other companies because they may not be appropriate for its business environment, products, market or culture.
2. Decisions and approaches should be directed to the future.
3. Benchmarking should be indicators that correlate with key competitive success factors.
4. Benchmarking is a rewarding process, but it needs to be applied correctly.

Advantages of the method

Provides a competitive advantage.

Disadvantages of the method:

The closed nature of companies and their own "secrecy" complex.
The existing systems of the company's financial accounting and taxation do not always allow obtaining real data on certain indicators.

Identification of the most important factors of the problem under consideration, highlighting the signs of these factors in order to prepare options for possible solutions and their implementation.

Process Benchmarking

The benchmarking method is not limited to business processes or products. In fact, over the years, companies have shown great ingenuity in choosing the elements of the business that are considered in benchmarking.

At the same time, it is important not to forget that successful benchmarking requires identifying the main reasons for high performance. While it is helpful to start by collecting general information about what other companies are doing, the end goal is to identify how they work. The term “enablement tool” in benchmarking refers to the main factors that allow a company to achieve high performance, for example, in the field of product production, business processes or resource use.

Products and services

One common and natural starting point is to focus entirely on a company's products and benchmark a competitor's products, services, or entire offering. Product benchmarking improves the overall understanding of one's own competitive position in the market and can rely heavily on secondary research. It is more difficult for service providers to benchmark against competitors' offerings because service performance is not as easily measured as it is with tangible products. Therefore, successful service benchmarking often requires a large number of interviews and field studies.

Financial indicators

Benchmarking net indicators efficiency does not always solve the fundamental issues of competitiveness. However, it helps to quantify possible achievements and set targets. In addition, financial performance benchmarking can often be done at relatively low cost using publicly available information.

Business processes

Benchmarking is often focused on business processes due to the very structure and effectiveness of this method. Business processes are of great importance because they reflect the capabilities of the company and thus are very close to the fundamental tools for realizing competitiveness. It often turns out that two companies had access to the same resources and customer base, but one of them organized its business processes more efficiently and delivered higher quality at a lower cost.

However, collecting information about competitors' processes is not an easy task and may require significant initial research. When conducting business process benchmarking, competitors are an obvious but not the only benchmarking option. Often good results can be obtained by using information sources throughout the competitor's value chain, including suppliers and distributors. In addition, benchmarking results on companies from other industries can provide valuable information.

Strategies

To make effective strategic decisions, knowledge of competitors' strategies is required. However, as with processes, it is not easy to analyze strategies. A significant amount of information about the company's strategy can be obtained from open sources, but many aspects of the strategy are never publicly disclosed. Despite this, there are still opportunities for successful benchmarking of strategies based on the results of primary research and analysis of the company's strategy using abductive reasoning.

Functions, groups and organizations

Benchmarking is designed to reveal not only what other companies are doing, but also how they manage to do it. Therefore, the study of the structure and organization of work in the company is one of the common topics in benchmarking. We can talk about any aspect of the organization of the company's work: approved functions or created groups, divisions and business units, the number of employees working in them, etc. Part of the benchmarking of an organization can even be the compilation of characteristics on individuals.

The use of social media, such as professional networking websites, has become a new reliable source of information for this type of benchmarking. This method allows you to reduce the cost of visiting specialists and expensive primary research, and with relatively little effort, allows you to discover a large amount of valuable information.

Organization Benchmarking

In today's constantly changing world with a high level of competition, organizations are forced to attract significant human and financial resources, spend a lot of time evaluating the results of their activities to achieve. The experience of numerous companies and managers shows that the company whose management sets specific and measurable goals and energetically achieves them wins in the competition, and those who work under the motto “we will try, and then we will see” and “we will do everything from us” lose. dependent."

Modern management is a special creative synthesis of the following three key components:

1) management as a science;
2) management as an art;
3) management as an experience of successful business practice.

Edward Deming said: "Experience teaches (makes it possible to plan and predict) only when we use it to modify and understand the theory." The modern theory and practice of advanced organizations are the objects of close attention of benchmarking.

Benchmarking is a continuous process of evaluating the level of products, services and methods of work based on comparison with the strongest competitors or those companies that are recognized as leaders (Xerox CEO D.T. Kearns). The American Center for Productivity and Quality believes that benchmarking is a process of continuous exploration of the best practices that determine the highest competitiveness characteristic. Robert S. Camp, a pioneer of benchmarking since Xerox, characterizes benchmarking as "the continuous search for solutions based on the best methods and processes throughout the industry (the so-called best practices) that enable the enterprise to achieve the highest achievements." Benchmarking is a continuous process that discovers, studies and evaluates the best in other organizations in order to use knowledge in the work of their organization (H. J. Harrington, J. S. Harrington).

All these definitions are united by the continuity of activities in the collection and implementation of best practices with one goal - to be a competitive company for many years to come. It is the continuity of the process of development and improvement that allows the company to go down in history, and not to come to naught, unable to withstand the next change in the market situation.

In this regard, benchmarking acts as a powerful tool with which an organization can conduct a comparative analysis of products, equipment, personnel and processes. It allows the organization to recognize the need to break away from the old way of doing things and makes it possible to understand that only through constant changes for the better can the company survive. Every year the popularity of benchmarking is growing in the world.

What is the reason for this, why is an increasing number of organizations directing their eyes to this tool for development and gaining a competitive advantage?

Jason Grayson Jr., head of the International Benchmarking Clearinghouse, highlights the following reasons for the popularity of benchmarking:

Global competition. In the age of business globalization, companies are realizing the need for a comprehensive and detailed study of the best achievements of competitors and the subsequent use of this information for their own survival.
- Reward for quality. National quality leadership competitions are becoming more and more common. A prerequisite for participation in them, in addition to demonstrating the competitive advantages of their products by participating companies, is the use of the concept of benchmarking.
- The need to adapt and use world achievements in the field of production and business technologies. To stay ahead of the competition, all companies, regardless of size or industry, need to constantly learn and apply best practices in manufacturing and business technology.

The development of benchmarking contributes to openness and increase in business efficiency. It provides an opportunity to get answers to the questions posed by the practice of the organization, and has undeniable advantages.

Organization Benchmarking

1. Provides an opportunity to overcome the stagnation in the leadership, to point out their inaccurate understanding of the state of affairs.
2. Turns complacency and complacency into an ardent desire for improvement.
3. Helps to identify the strengths that the organization has, as well as the weaknesses that must be overcome.
4. Provides early warning signals to the organization that it is lagging behind.
5. Sets difficult but real goals.
6. Helps you prioritize your performance improvement activities.
7. Identifies and incorporates best applicable management processes and practices.
8. Finds out the level of organization compared to the best in the world.
9. Determines the backlog of the organization's level of work from the level of its competitors.
10. Provides the organization with proven corrective action plans.
11. Brings together the strategic plan and the organization's efforts to improve it.
12. Opens up new technologies or methods of managing an organization.
13. Focuses on the key success factors of the organization.
14. Allows for large-scale improvements (such as "breakthrough").
15. Helps the organization learn from the experience of others. No organization can have enough time and resources to make all the mistakes on its own.
16. Creates a culture of continuous improvement.
17. Reduces the cost of the improvement process.
18. Leads to rapid adoption of new approaches with less risk.
19. Improves key financial performance.

Today, no organization can survive without seriously studying the strengths of its competitors and learning from the best in its field. The importance of the benchmarking process is that it not only tells you how successful you can be, but also tells you how to change the way you do business so that you can be as efficient as possible. Really, what's the point in identifying the gap between your competitors, industry leaders, or world-class organizations if you don't know how to improve your processes to close that gap?

Edward Tracy, vice president of AT&T's MMS Division, commented on the huge success of benchmarking: “What this process allows us to do is look for weaknesses. It is a structured discipline for reviewing a process and finding opportunities for improvement. Just 12 months ago, I was a skeptic. But when I saw it in action, I realized the benefits of this process.” Benchmarking is the path to excellence. A large number of people, teams and organizations want to be recognized as the best. Excellence gives: customers; high level of remuneration; confession; respect; power; satisfaction of employees and management.

On the path to excellence, the organization must take the following steps:

1. Know your strengths and weaknesses.
2. Find out how competitors succeed in the area where you want to be the best.
3. Use the best practices of competitors in their activities.
4. Based on the acquired experience of the best, develop more advanced techniques.
5. Never stop improving.

The benchmarking process will help you get to know your organization, find out how competitive it is, identify the best practices and incorporate them into your business asset.

As an object for benchmarking in the organization, H. James Harrington and James S. Harrington distinguish:

Business processes;
- equipment;
- production processes (product manufacturing processes);
- products and services.

Benchmarking contributes to a more complete satisfaction of consumer requirements. The consumer always wants to get the best products at the lowest prices. This requirement acts as benchmarks for benchmarking enterprise performance and product prices. By conducting benchmarking, the company has the opportunity to check how realistic it is to meet these requirements. The time has come to answer the main question of our reasoning: “How should benchmarking be done?”.

The ten steps of the benchmarking process were proposed and justified by Robert Kemp:

1. Identification of benchmarking objects.
2. Selection of partners for benchmarking.
3. Determining the most appropriate method for collecting information. Data collection.
4. Establishment of existing backlogs of the company from partners according to the selected performance indicators.
5. Establishing the desired levels of company performance.
6. Communicate the results of benchmarking to all stakeholders and receive assistance in their application in practice.
7. Establishment of specific goals and objectives in the field of improving the efficiency of the company.
8. Development of action plans for their achievement and solution.
9. Carrying out planned activities and tracking their results.
10. Review of previously selected benchmarks.

The hardest part of the benchmarking process is recognizing that your organization doesn't have enough knowledge, but those who have embarked on the difficult path of transformation have achieved impressive results.

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC - digital equipment). DEC benchmarked its production operations and found that their cost exceeds the allowable by 30-40%.

As a result of process and product benchmarking, the following changes occurred:

The duration of the new product development cycle has decreased from 30 months to 12;
- the cost of developing a new product has decreased by 25%;
- only in power generation and in modular processes, the cost of opportunities from improvement is defined as $300,000;
- benchmarking of property management processes led to an additional cost reduction by 12.7%;
- in one of the logistics services, inventory turnover increased by 30%, and productivity increased by 25%.

The Ritz-Carlton hotel chain achieved the following benefits as a result of process benchmarking:

Housekeeping time reduced by up to 65%;
- the number of quality complaints decreased by 42%;
- productivity per employee increased by 15%;
- Decreased by 33% the number of service personnel intrusions into the rooms of residents;
- increased the level of security of the rooms during the cleaning of the rooms.

The benchmarking procedure reduces the cost of goods and services, cycle time and error rate by an average of 20 to 60%. Contrary to the usual rate of continuous quality improvement of 10-20% per year, benchmarking can guarantee progress of up to 200% in as little as eight months.

As a result of a survey of 770 organizations in Europe, the Benchmarking Center (UK) found that:

Tom Carter, vice president of quality at Alcoa, said: "We use benchmarking to find out what level of efficiency can actually be achieved and how to reduce the gap between current levels of efficiency and optimal."

Benchmarking is a continuous activity to systematically identify the best systems, processes, procedures and practices. A benchmarking project that reduces lead time from 30 days to 3 days, but does not increase the organization's market share, value added per employee, return on property, or increase customer or consumer satisfaction, is not the right solution. Benchmarking processes that implement cost-optimized solutions actually improve the performance of an organization. Recently, one of the pioneers of benchmarking in Germany, Professor Rolf Pfeiffer of the Export Academy in Reutlingen, was asked the following question: “Which management tool would you recommend for an organization if the company has already been running successfully for several years?” Professor Pfeiffer's response was immediate: "Benchmarking!" The businessman was surprised and asked about the reasons. The answer was short: “If someone - whoever he is - works successfully for a long period of time, he begins to consider himself wise. In the confidence of his "omniscience" he begins to forget about competition. But competitors will overtake you, I will fight you as soon as you show at least some weak side. Thus, benchmarking is just right for such enterprises that are satisfied with their performance, but at the same time want to compare their achievements with competitors.

There are very successful German enterprises. There are many brilliant enterprises in Europe. These highest achievements do exist. So why these high results are impossible for you? You don't need to reinvent the wheel for this. You need to be willing to look at your enterprise with a critical eye and learn from others. Undeniably, a benchmarking project is expensive - a real benchmarking study usually takes about six months - but there is always a way. Benchmarking contests are of great help in this regard.

Industry competitions such as the International Best Factory Awards/International Best Service Awards for industrial enterprises and the service industry, which are successfully held around the world and enjoy the state support of the host countries, are deprived of all these shortcomings.

In Germany, for example, the Export Academy in Reutlingen organizes an annual benchmarking competition. Winners receive the International Best Factory Award (International Best Factory Award), abbreviated as IBFA. It also established the International Best Service Award (IBSA) (International Service Sector Award). At the same time, the Academy cooperates with the Cranfield University School of Management in England and SDA Bocconi in Milan.

In Germany, these events help to look at your potential from the outside and see opportunities for improvement.

The statement of one of the participants of the competition is a vivid confirmation of this: “Four aspects turned out to be especially useful for us:

Success through analysis: Each participation is accompanied by an exploration of one's own enterprise. Already this step often brings ideas that will not appear just like that.
- Success through partnerships: Competitions provide many contacts. The enterprises taking part in them are ready for openness. Thus, an important exchange arises - one that can translate into partnership and benefits all participants.
- Success through change: A constructive consideration of one's own strengths and weaknesses strengthens receptivity to important potentialities. Once they are defined, the only question left is how to change yourself accordingly in order to be able to use them. These active changes keep the enterprise in shape.
- Success through orientation: Only regular comparison with other successful companies provides a starting point for one's own success.

The slogan of the German company "Rose plastic":

“He who no longer strives to become better can no longer be successful,” perfectly expresses the general meaning of the above aspects of the competition.

Many companies are critical of benchmarking. However, once the process is complete, benchmarking becomes part of the philosophy of the enterprise.

Reviews of companies participating in the competition:

“We began to engage intensively with our processes and began to understand them better.”
“After filling out the questionnaire, we understood what indicators should be assessed. We didn’t pay attention to many numbers before.”
"Benchmarking has brought us a culture of continuous learning and improvement."
“After involving all departments and employees in the benchmarking process, everyone has a better understanding of the company's processes.”
“After we won the benchmarking competition, our employees are proud to work for us.”
“Thanks to benchmarking, our goals have become clearer, now we know our strengths and weaknesses.”

The successful implementation of the strategy is another key problem that benchmarking solves. In fact, benchmarking is an alternative method of strategic planning, in which tasks are determined not on the basis of what has been achieved, but on the basis of an analysis of competitors' performance.

Benchmarking technology combines strategy development, industry analysis and competitor analysis into a single system. Industry analysis is the first step in developing a strategy. It includes studying the degree and nature of competition, customer behavior patterns and purchasing power, supplier behavior patterns, barriers to entry into the industry, threats to substitute products and services, and other features. Industry analysis provides insight into the earnings potential of an industry average and helps identify the reasons why some companies outperform others. Competition analysis allows you to understand how much attention a competitor pays to your lines of business, that is, how much resources it will spend on the development of these areas. Having decided on the industry analysis and analysis of competitors, they proceed to the stage of developing a strategy. You need to answer the question, how can your company beat the competition? Using key factors success in the context of various functional areas: expansion of production, introduction of new products and services, changes in pricing, sales and delivery, marketing, personnel, technologies, etc.

This operational work is carried out by the organization every year, requires the distraction of large financial resources and use the potential of the company's employees. A significant reduction in time, and most importantly, financial resources gives the annual participation in the benchmarking competition, where the company receives a comparison of results not only within the industry, but also in an international project receives development criteria for organizations in other countries. Information as a magical source and the beginning of the strategic planning process becomes available to you in the form of a report for the contestant. To become competitive, you need to improve at a faster pace than your competitors and go beyond the country to see the promise and opportunities of the global community. It is best to carry out checks regularly and under the same conditions - but at least once a year. Then the manager immediately sees progress and can set new goals and develop a program to achieve them in a really changing market situation.

An analysis of the statistical data of enterprises - participants in the IBFA / IBSA competition in Germany - fixes the following positive changes in enterprises:

Increasing staff qualifications;
- improving the quality of products;
- reducing the number of manufacturing defects;
- reducing the cost of eliminating defects;
- increasing the reliability of supplies;
- improvement of planning and organization of production;
- shortening the cycle of introduction of new products;
- change in the scale of companies.

The best results are achieved by those companies that take a comprehensive approach to continuous improvement and integrate all improvement activities. “A modern company, like a high-class athlete, must constantly maintain excellent shape in order to compete with competitors and win against them in the face of an unprecedented intensification of competition due to globalization, when it has to compete with the world's best players not only on the outside, but also on domestic market". To do this, the company needs benchmarking - a relatively new approach to the strategic planning of companies' activities that has become very promising in recent years in management circles.

Enterprise Benchmarking

AT modern economy the enterprise strives to ensure sustainable and financially successful functioning in the market, including through the use of management tools. This can be helped by such a method as benchmarking, which appeared in the 70s of the XX century. Initially, it was interpreted as a method for assessing the effectiveness of the organization, later it began to be used to evaluate the activities of competitors. Benchmarking is currently defined as a method based on the experience taken as the benchmark of the enterprise, the application of best practices in your enterprise and the development of the best development strategy aimed at improving the organization. Its main goal is to improve the problematic aspects of the enterprise by comparing with the standard. In Russia, work on the use of this method began to be carried out not so long ago, starting from the 90s of the last century.

The formation of the concept of benchmarking in the world has gone through several stages of its development:

1. Product analysis;
2. Benchmarking competitiveness;
3. Process benchmarking;
4. Strategic benchmarking;
5. Global benchmarking.

In theory, there are several types of benchmarking:

1. internal benchmarking - performed between departments in the same organization;
2. competitive benchmarking - comparing the performance of your company with competitors;
3. functional benchmarking - comparison with organizations that are not competitors;
4. general benchmarking - comparison of business processes with organizations belonging to different market sectors.

Speaking about the history of benchmarking, we can mention that the Global Benchmarking Network (GBN) was established as a community of independent benchmarking centers. Created by such countries as the USA, England, Italy, Germany, Sweden. Today it unites similar centers in about 20 countries of the world. In the US, there is the Melcolm Baldrige Quality Award, which involves the active use of benchmarking tools. With regard to the legal restriction of benchmarking, US law does not impose any restrictions. In Europe, on the contrary, Article 85 of the European Treaty prohibits the signing of agreements with other enterprises that may harm free competition or harm the European market.

In Russia, the use of this method is still insufficient compared to countries such as the USA, Japan and others. For example, the use of benchmarking in foreign countries is regulated and supported at the state level, specialized companies are created to search for benchmarking partners, in Russia there is no such practice. In our country, there is only one annual major event that supports the development of benchmarking - the "Government Quality Award", thanks to which an enterprise can improve various aspects of its activities and become a benchmark for comparison with other enterprises. The award also enables the laureates to secure their image, to establish themselves as a reliable manufacturer of high-quality products, and helps to attract new partners.

The table shows examples of the use of various types of benchmarking in Russian enterprises.

Examples of the use of different types of benchmarking in Russian enterprises:

Type of benchmarking	Company name	Comparison object	results
Competitive	Irbit Motorcycle Plant	Restructuring of plant divisions	Decision to close several shops
	Irbit Motorcycle Plant	Motorcycle performance per employee	Improving the skills of employees, reducing equipment downtime
	CJSC "Peter-Star"	Comparison of reporting indicators
	OAO Severstal	Production indicators	Cost reduction, application of new technologies, market development
	Combine named after Stepan Razin	beer quality	Purchase of new equipment
Functional	Nizhpharm	Display of goods	A new approach to merchandising
Interior	City Clinical Hospital No. 1 of Novosibirsk	The quality of medical care provided	Three winners have been identified who are an example
	Utilities	All activities	Modernization of equipment, a new motivation system for staff, a change in methods of working with consumers

As can be seen from the table, competitive benchmarking is very popular in Russia.

The paper describes the experience of using benchmarking of Western enterprises in the Irbit Motorcycle Plant (IMZ) in the following areas:

The production structure of the enterprise: it was necessary to determine which production units to leave; after studying Western experience, the management decided to sell the foundry, forging and several other workshops, as a result of which IMZ saved money on the maintenance of unnecessary equipment.
- production efficiency: the Indian motorcycle company Royal Enfield was considered as a benchmark; it turned out that approximately the same number of people work on the standard under study, but based on one employee, 25 motorcycles are produced at Royal Enfield, and 1.7 at IMZ. It was decided to apply the following measures: reduce equipment downtime, train workers in additional professions and improve their skills.

The objects of competitive benchmarking can also be other areas of the organization's activities, for example:

Performance indicators: OAO Severstal, a steel plant with a full production cycle, benefited from the experience of several domestic companies and 56 Western steel companies; after the analysis, the areas in which it is necessary to carry out work were revealed, namely: cost reduction, market development and the introduction of new technologies.
- product quality: the management of the Stepan Razin plant turned to the Baltika plant to compare the quality of the beer produced; the result of the analysis was the purchase of new equipment for the fermentation of beer, after which the quality of products has improved markedly.
- reporting indicators: CJSC Peter-Star, a telecom operator, compares reporting indicators in a certain format with another similar company, Golden Telecom. Some performance indicators are compared with Svyazinvest data.

An example of functional benchmarking is the activity of Nizhpharm. The object of comparison with the reference enterprise, which was the company Wimm Bill Dann, was the display of goods in pharmacies. After conducting research, it turned out that Wimm Bill Dann products are always in the best places. After analyzing their activities, the management of Nizhpharm changed their approaches to merchandising and came to the conclusion that the best place in the pharmacy for medicines is to the right of the cash register window.

Another type of benchmarking is internal. It is used when there is a need to analyze the processes or work of employees in one organization. In this paper, we can see an example of using benchmarking in banking. Also clear application internal view benchmarking is described in the work, where it was used by the leadership of the main clinical hospital (GKB) No. 1 of the city of Novosibirsk. The object of the study was the quality of medical care. Among all the departments, the top three were selected and then the experience of their work in the organization was set as an example for other departments of the hospital, which were asked to apply it.

Despite the presented examples, the use of this method is still insignificant in our country. For its successful application, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of Russian enterprises.

The following are the reasons hindering the full and successful application of benchmarking:

1. Insufficient development of a full-fledged ethical culture of companies;
2. Lack of sufficient practice in our country;
3. Influence of features of national accounting;
4. Insufficient use of management accounting procedures;
5. Lack of trust in benchmark companies and benchmarking partners.

Company Benchmarking

Improving the performance of a company is without a doubt the most important goal of benchmarking. Let's look at how a company can achieve this through benchmarking.

First, benchmarking allows you to identify best business practices and successful business processes. It is often unclear how successful companies achieve high operational efficiency. By observing and carefully researching how these companies operate, you can identify the processes, skills, or competencies that contribute to their success, and then apply the same methods to your own company.

Secondly, the knowledge gained about other enterprises can be easily applied in your organization.

Third, a company can gain a competitive advantage by applying the best practices from other industries in its field of activity. For example, a small family farm that sells its own agricultural products online can use the same strategies as on social media such as internet blogs to gain attention and gain new customers. It will be a new way to attract customers, and it can lead, at least temporarily, to a competitive advantage.

There are three main types of benchmarking:

Strategic benchmarking. To determine the best way To maintain their competitiveness, companies identify winning strategies (usually outside their industry) of successful firms and implement them at home. In addition, strategic goals are compared in the order in which new strategic decisions are highlighted.

Benchmarking by performance indicators (competitive benchmarking). This type of benchmarking is based on a comparative analysis of your company's products and services. Benchmarking primarily focuses on product and service quality, product features, price, benefit, reliability, design, and customer satisfaction, but can include anything that has measurable metrics, including processes. Performance benchmarking helps you determine how good your products and services compare to those of your competitors. Process benchmarking. The basis of this type of benchmarking is to study companies that are similar to yours in order to identify best practices that can be applied to their own business processes in order to improve their efficiency. Process benchmarking is a separate species, but it usually flows from competitive benchmarking. This is because companies first identify the weak competitive points of their products or services and then focus on key processes to eliminate those weaknesses.

Four ways of benchmarking:

In addition to views, there are four ways in which benchmarking can be done. It is important to choose the best one: this will reduce the cost of benchmarking and increase the chances of finding "best standards" that you can really rely on.

Internal benchmarking. In large organizations that operate in geographically dispersed locations or manage the production of a large number of both diverse products and services, the same functions and processes are carried out by different teams, divisions or departments. In some departments it is done well, in others it is worse. Internal benchmarking is used to compare the performance of individual teams, divisions, or departments to highlight those that perform better and share their knowledge and experience within the company with other teams to achieve better performance. This is typically used by companies that have recently expanded geographically but have not yet established proper knowledge sharing systems across departments. If such systems exist, then there is no need to use internal benchmarking to implement best practices.

Functional benchmarking. It is useful for functional unit managers to analyze how well their units are performing compared to those in other companies. It is fairly easy to identify the best marketing, finance, HR, or operations departments in other companies because they excel in exactly what they do, and then apply their methods to their functional areas. In this way, companies can consider a wide range of organizations not even related to the industry, and instead of improving individual processes, they can improve entire functional areas.

General benchmarking. General benchmarking refers to comparisons that "focus on excellent work processes rather than business practices within a particular organization."

Competitive benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of identifying, understanding and adapting existing examples of the effective functioning of a company in order to improve its own work. It equally includes two processes: evaluation and comparison. Typically, the “best” product and marketing process used by direct competitors and firms in other similar areas is taken as a model for identifying ways for the firm to improve its own products and methods of work. Benchmarking can be considered as one of the areas of strategically oriented marketing research. Disadvantages: the difficulty of obtaining objective indicators due to the closeness of companies, including their own. The existing systems of financial and tax accounting do not always allow obtaining real data on certain areas of activity.

The purpose of benchmarking is to establish, based on research, the need for change and the likelihood of success as a result of these changes. Benchmarking is carried out as part of a competitive analysis and is not new to most businesses, although it is a more detailed and streamlined function than a competitive analysis method or approach.

Benchmarking types:

1) Benchmarking competitiveness - measuring the characteristics of an enterprise, researching specific products, process capabilities or administrative methods and comparing them with the characteristics of competitors.
2) Internal benchmarking - the characteristics of production units are compared with similar business processes within the organization.
3) Functional benchmarking - specific functions of two or more organizations in the same sector are compared.
4) Process Benchmarking - comparing the performance of certain processes and limited functions with enterprises that have the best performance in similar processes.

When conducting benchmarking, the following stages can be distinguished:

Definition of the benchmarking object;
Choosing a benchmarking partner;
Search for information;
Analysis;
Implementation.

A competitive strategy is a set of practices and initiatives aimed at attracting and satisfying customers, resisting competitors and strengthening market position. The concept of competitive strategy is narrower than the concept of business strategy, because the latter, in addition to the methodology of competition, includes actions and management plans for solving the entire range of strategic tasks.

The goal of a competitive strategy is to achieve superiority over competitors in providing consumers with products and services that are in demand and thereby gain competitive advantage and market leadership. In addition, competitive strategy includes offensive and defensive actions, the allocation and reallocation of resources to maintain long-term competitive opportunities and advantageous competitive position, as well as tactical actions taken when market conditions change. Businesses around the world are trying to develop unorthodox competitive strategies. Since a company's competitive actions are tailored to the characteristics of its market position and the general situation in the industry, there are countless options for competitive strategies - there are as many competitive strategies as there are competitors.

However, in general, differences in strategies are determined by two factors: the goals that the organization pursues in the market, and the basis of competitive advantage - low costs or differentiation:

1) Cost leadership strategy, which provides for a reduction in production costs and, as a result, the possibility of setting lower prices for products, which, in turn, attracts a large number of consumers. This strategy is theoretically based on the "effect of accumulated experience": the longer the enterprise operates and produces more products, the lower the unit costs per unit of output.
2) The strategy of broad differentiation, which is aimed at giving the company's products specific properties and features that will distinguish it from competing products. The strategy of broad differentiation also focuses on attracting more customers through product features that will best meet the needs of customers.
3) The third approach refers to fixing a certain market segment and concentrating the firm's efforts on a selected market segment (segmentation strategy). In this case, the company thoroughly clarifies the needs of a certain market segment for a certain type of product. In this case, the firm may seek to reduce costs or pursue a policy of specialization in the production of the product. It is also possible to combine these two approaches. However, what is absolutely mandatory for the implementation of the third type of strategy is that the firm must build its activities primarily on an analysis of the needs of customers in a particular market segment. That is, in its intentions, it should proceed not from the needs of the market in general, but from the needs of quite specific or even specific customers. The market segment is defined on the basis of income.

You can always distinguish between mass-produced goods and luxury goods:

A niche market strategy based on low costs, which focuses the enterprise on a narrow segment of consumers, where the enterprise is ahead of its competitors due to low costs;
- a market niche strategy based on product differentiation, which aims to provide a narrow segment of consumers with products that fully meet their tastes and preferences.

Benchmarking tools

Working with information as a benchmarking tool is divided into five stages:

The first stage - you need to decide what exactly needs to be improved in the organization, choose the criteria by which you will evaluate the "exemplary" enterprise, as well as the point of view from which other people's successes (director or buyer) will be evaluated.
The second stage is the search for, for example, successful and unclassified companies.
The third stage is the collection of information (databases, publications in the press, reports on the activities of the enterprise, conferences and seminars, fairs, exhibitions, business associations, marketing and training organizations, as well as business acquaintances).
The fourth stage is the analysis of the collected information. It is important not only to find out the similarities and differences in the work of the native enterprise and the "sample", but also to identify the reasons for the backlog, to highlight useful experience.
The fifth stage is the implementation of successful solutions adapted to the business, but in no case be blindly copying the general model and concept, tracking the dynamics of changes and evaluating the work done.

Benchmarking in the CIS countries is difficult to do, primarily because domestic business cannot be called transparent.

Reporting on the activities of the organization, the number of employees, sales and deliveries are usually carefully guarded from prying ears and eyes. Based on the foregoing, an official offer to exchange such information can even cause aggression. It is better to conduct such negotiations in an informal setting.

Participation in a regional or industry benchmarking club is often used as an external approach. A group of companies, usually from the same region or industry, agrees to work together for the purpose of exchanging information. This approach requires participants to have the same understanding of the company's benchmarking tools and the purpose of benchmarking. It is customary to agree on rules and a code of conduct regarding issues such as the scope of the project, the degree of "openness" and confidentiality.

For example, studying financial activities, customer satisfaction, waste rates, dealing with suppliers and results. production activities. Enterprise visits ("within the industry") - visiting other organizations - is a popular form of benchmarking. In general, it is easier to understand how others perform their processes through observation and practical demonstration. Often these visits take place informally and are organized through personal contacts. A more formal approach can be taken to study a wide range of companies in many sectors.

Benchmarking in management

As shows overseas experience, in recent years, benchmarking has found its application not only in commercial enterprises, but also in public administration.

Managers of public sector organizations, as well as government officials in many countries around the world, have begun to use benchmarking as a tool for evaluating the work performed in order to apply the best management practices of other successful organizations.

National and local governments around the world are looking for ways to reduce costs, increase management efficiency, increase the return on budget spending, and improve the quality of services provided to citizens. However, in order to do this, it is necessary to carefully and carefully study the existing experience and adopt the techniques and management methods of the most successful organizations in both the public and private sectors.

Consider the extent to which benchmarking can be used to stimulate competition in the government controlled.

There are certain arguments for this:

1. Thanks to benchmarking, the production of state structures is oriented towards the preferences of citizens. It compares the services provided and performance indicators of various territorial administrations (cities, settlements, communes, etc.). This kind of analysis makes it possible to fill in the gaps in the list of services that are provided in a given particular place, or, conversely, to critically consider the need to use resources for the product of the administration’s activities that is available in a given place, and the possibility of its production on market principles. For a more correct assessment of the result, the analytical function of comparison within the framework of benchmarking should be accompanied by the identification of citizens' preferences through surveys.
2. Benchmarking also contributes to the optimization of resource allocation by identifying inefficiencies in the production of standard products of administrations and provides directions for increasing efficiency. It also acts as a tool for assessing investment directions, since the analysis determines what resources are still needed for the production of certain significant services. In this regard, it also contributes to the growth of innovations, primarily in terms of improving the organizational side of activities, and their dissemination in the executive authorities.
3. The results of the analysis within the framework of benchmarking also provide information for improving the system of remuneration of civil servants.
4. Through the continuous process of learning and improvement induced by benchmarking, the flexibility and adaptability of the work of public organizations to changes in the environment and in the needs of citizens increases.

The above considerations indicate that benchmarking is a successful management technology that should be used in domestic practice. Its application can be very successful, especially since there is considerable practical experience in the use of methods of social competition in the public sphere in the recent past.

In the future, it is benchmarking that can serve as a starting point for determining the areas of public administration that need to be improved in the first place and, therefore, stimulate innovation.

The success of a benchmarking project lies in the strict observance and responsible implementation of each of its stages. The reference matching algorithm does not have strict regulation.

The planning phase, which consists of three stages. During planning, you need to determine what to compare. What parameters and characteristics of the firm (enterprise) and competitors should be the object of comparative analysis. Next, competing companies are identified.

And finally, the methods of collecting information and the process of its accumulation are selected:

1. Analytical phase (analysis phase), which includes two stages. During the analytical phase, the difference in the characteristics of products, services and, accordingly, competitors is determined. Next, levels of future performance are designed that will allow you to get ahead of competitors.
2. The integration phase, which also consists of two stages. During this phase, the results of the comparison are discussed and acceptable approaches are developed to stay ahead of competitors in the compared areas of activity. On this basis, specific goals should be formulated for all functional divisions of the firm (enterprise).
3. Phase of actions (implementation), consisting of three stages (steps). During the period of organizing the fulfillment of the goals set, a specific action plan is developed, implemented, and its implementation is monitored. Based on the results of the control, the necessary adjustments should be made to the planned action plans to achieve specific competitive advantages. The result of all this work should be the achievement of the leading position of the company and the strengthening of its financial position.

The proposed approach to benchmarking, which includes 10 stages, will allow the surveyed enterprise: to rely on the experience of other organizations; take into account modern experience, not outdated ideas; significantly reduce the costs of rework, duplication; improve understanding of what is being done and how effectively activities are being carried out; organize more efficient management; set realistic goals; determine the necessary changes; increase employee accountability.

Further development of benchmarking will contribute to the openness of business, increase its efficiency, which is so necessary for the Kazakhstani economy today. Mastering this method of management and business improvement will allow domestic enterprises and companies, not only large, but also small and medium-sized, to keep up with the times and take their rightful place in the world market in the near future.

Quality Benchmarking

Rapid changes in consumer preferences (fashion, tastes, attitudes, etc.) put enterprises in difficult conditions for survival at the present stage of restructuring the economic mechanism of the Russian economy. Thus, each enterprise, due to the above and other reasons, is forced to independently solve many complex problems of organization, production technology of certain goods, search for markets (including foreign ones) of various resources (material, financial, etc.), as well as markets sales. All this puts enterprises in front of the need to introduce new, non-traditional forms marketing and management, which, in fact, is benchmarking. As a result of these circumstances, business enterprises, spurred on by production and financial uncertainty, must constantly address the issues of optimal integration of science, production and distribution, taking into account the future.

The level of functioning, or rather, the survival of an economic entity, depends on how the issues of synthesis of the above fundamental elements, as well as constant monitoring of fluctuations occurring in the commodity markets and timely updating of their product line, will be solved. There are many reasons leading to the bankruptcy of enterprises, the collapse of various undertakings and projects.

The main reasons for failed projects include:

1) insufficient degree of study (research) of the market;
2) reassessment of the market volume;
3) unsuccessful R&D results;
4) unsuccessful determination of the price;
5) low quality of the product;
6) insufficient advertising;
7) incorrect positioning of the novelty on the market;
8) incorrect assessment of the costs of the project;
9) insufficient assessment of the degree of competition.

Due to these reasons, various difficulties arise for enterprises: on the one hand, it is necessary to conduct fundamental and applied research and development of new products, products, goods, etc., and on the other hand, the probability of a successful result is low.

In order to achieve the expected successful result, the enterprise must seriously analyze and control each stage of the newly designed products.

The main of these stages are:

1) generation of ideas. The design and development process should begin with a rigorous analysis of the intended markets for the enterprise's products, as well as a consideration of currently available proposals for this problem. An important distinguishing feature of benchmarking is the strict requirement to conduct this process constantly and by all the personnel of the enterprise, regardless of their position. In this case, all available sources of information should be used, including the Internet, industry and other newsletters, foreign media (Wirtschafs Woche, Economist, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Spiegel, Top Agrar, etc.) . To resolve issues with translations of foreign economic literature, as well as to work with business partners from near and far abroad, it is advisable to have a translator (s) on the staff of the enterprise, which, in fact, is now happening at many joint ventures in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Saratov, Samara, etc. Based on the information received, processed and analyzed, the company's managers must decide on the choice of products being developed and manufactured, which markets should be kept in mind, and on the basis of this, form short-term, medium-term and long-term plans .

At the same time, it is necessary to have a clear vision, which boils down to:

A) maximizing profit
b) achieving a specific sales volume (market share);
c) winning the favor of customers;
d) sales growth.

The main components of benchmarking when collecting ideas about a product and its characteristics, especially the quality of a manufactured and sold product, are:

A) clientele
b) competitors' products.

The purpose of benchmarking for the selection and analysis of existing innovative proposals is to optimize them with subsequent effective implementation. The goal of the next steps is to optimize performance. First, in the process of project implementation, it is necessary to collect and select ideas that deserve the attention of the management and marketers of the enterprise. The main task of this stage is the maximum identification and elimination of unnecessary ideas about the development and production of goods.

The essential point at this stage is a thorough unbiased analysis of the selected ideas.

2) development of the concept of a new product and its verification. After the selection, the accepted ideas must undergo a conceptual study, taking into account the real possibility of not only production, but also the sale of manufactured goods in various markets. It should be emphasized that the idea of ​​a product is understood as the possibility of producing and offering the material value necessary for the market, satisfying the needs of the maximum number of consumers. From this follow the tasks that require their urgent and optimal solution. In the process of solving the above problems, the entire team of the enterprise, regardless of their position, needs to work out the accepted proposals - from organizing the effective production of a new or improved product to its profitable sale.

As a result of this, although difficult, but very necessary work the management of the enterprise (management of different levels of management) should receive answers to the following questions:

1) clarity of the concept;
2) availability of benefits;
3) reliability of information;
4) the degree of satisfaction of needs;
5) intention to buy;
6) subjects of purchase and use;
7) suggestions for improvement;
8) estimated price.

The main components of the success of the enterprise in a dynamically developing market are the continuous improvement of the quality of manufactured and sold products through a carefully thought-out system of incentives and punishments; updating the line of products (goods) and production technology. Newly created products, taking into account the proposals developed and accepted for implementation and subsequent scientific and technical developments, should ensure concrete success in certain markets. A very important and strong feature of benchmarking in an enterprise is the strict implementation of the strict principle of urgent implementation in practice of the results of research and development work not only applied, but also fundamental levels, which in turn implies a close relationship between scientific research and their industrial development. The current exemplary set of works on the creation and development of new products is given below.

Of great importance in optimizing the functioning of the system for creating and developing a new product with a predetermined quality are rationally developed technology and organization of production of goods, the main elements of which can be:

1) technical level of the product;
2) terms of creation and development;
3) the highest possible level of product (product, product) quality;
4) increase in production volumes;
5) increase in the product range;
6) the minimum level of costs in the preparation of production and in the process of production itself;
7) the expected cost reduction in the operation of the product.

In order to solve these problems, benchmarking specialists should carry out a certain set of works.

Among the many factors contributing to the successful conduct of business, the relevance of launching a new product (product, product) to the market is of great importance. It is the timeliness in meeting the needs of customers in a particular product that is the most important element of the financial and economic strategy of each enterprise operating in the market. The available historical experience has proved that delays in bringing products (products, goods) to the market, regardless of the reasons that caused these delays, make unnecessary efforts and costs for their production and sale, i.e., lead to loss of resources, significant losses, failure to fulfill their obligations to shareholders, the state, and sometimes, unfortunately, to bankruptcy. It is clear that the process of development, testing and adjustment of mass production of goods is a rather complex and responsible process, including many stages and stages performed by various structural divisions of the enterprise. It should be worked out taking into account the time factor, for which it is recommended to use calculation and visual aids. One of the types of such benefits is a schedule. The pre-production schedule is an essential part of the business planning process. This schedule should also take into account the necessary stages of work, high quality, short production and launch times, as well as possible deviations from the parameters adopted in the business plans and undesirable consequences and sanctions for the occurrence of these deviations.

The main tasks and methods of reducing the time of creation and development of new products, as well as the all-round improvement of their quality, regulated by the R&D tape schedule, are given below:

1) development of terms of reference;
2) development of a technical proposal;
3) draft design;
4) working draft;
5) consideration and approval of product quality standards;
6) production of a prototype;
7) bench tests;
8) full tests;
9) trial marketing;
10) analysis of test results and marketing research;
11) adjustment of the manufactured product (product);
12) start in a series.

For the implementation of the above stages, it is desirable to use line graphs. Currently, this planning and controlling toolkit has been adopted by many medium and large enterprises.

However, it has some serious drawbacks:

1) does not show the relationship of individual works, which makes it difficult to assess the significance of each work for the fulfillment of intermediate and final goals;
2) does not reflect the dynamics of developments;
3) does not allow to periodically adjust the schedule due to changes in the timing of the work;
4) does not give clear points of overlap and conjugation of adjacent stages;
5) does not allow applying a mathematically justified calculation of the implementation of the planned set of works;
6) does not make it possible to optimize the use of available resources and the timing of the development as a whole.

Planning and managing a set of works to improve the technical and commercial characteristics of a product in every possible way (especially its quality) is a complex and, as a rule, contradictory task. Analysis and evaluation various characteristics functioning of production, financial and social systems can be carried out by various methods. Currently, STC has good reviews (method network planning and management). The main planning document in this system is the network schedule, which is an information-analytical model, where, with varying degrees of reliability, interdependencies, relationships, as well as the results of work that are of great importance for the implementation of the goals, are reflected. Visually, this model is a network diagram, consisting of arrows and circles, depicting individual works and events.

The sequence of the process of managing and controlling the progress of product development includes the following operations:

1) compiling a list of all actions and intermediate results (events) when performing a set of works and their graphical reflection;
2) an estimate of the time to complete each work, and then the calculation of the network schedule to determine the deadline for achieving the goal;
3) optimization of the calculated terms and necessary costs;
4) operational management the progress of work through periodic monitoring and analysis of the information received on the implementation of tasks and the development of corrective solutions.

From the point of view of a manager, work is any processes (actions) that lead to the achievement of certain results (events).

The concept of "work" can have the following meanings:

1) real work - work that requires time and resources;
2) waiting - a process that requires only time (drying, aging, relaxation, etc.);
3) effective work, or dependence, is an image of a logical connection between works.

An event in a network model can have the following values:

1) initial - the beginning of the implementation of a set of works;
2) final - achievement of the ultimate goal of the work package;
3) intermediate (or simply an event) - the result of one or more of the works included in it;
4) boundary - an event that is common to two or more primary or private networks.

Let us briefly consider the main elements of the SPU.

An essential element of the SPL is the path, i.e. the sequence of certain jobs in the network, in which the end of one sequence coincides with the beginning of the next.

The most important parameters of the network model are:

1) critical path;
2) event time reserves;
3) time reserves of tracks and works.

The critical path is the longest path of the network. In the process of business planning of work on the production and sale of products, the specified critical path provides an opportunity to determine the timing of the end of the cycle of work (events).

The event time reserve is a delayed period of time, characterized by the occurrence of an event without tangible consequences of failures to complete the technological block of work.

The latest allowable time is the time of occurrence of an event, exceeding which will cause the same delay in the occurrence of the last event.

The earliest possible date for an event to occur is the time for completion of work prior to the event.

The total reserve of travel time shows how much the duration of all works can be increased in total.

Free slack is the maximum amount of time that you can extend or delay the start of a job.

It should be emphasized that the initially developed network model is usually not the best in terms of work completion time and resource use. A carefully conducted critical analysis allows us to evaluate the feasibility of the structure of this model, determine the degree of complexity of each work, load production equipment performers of works at all stages of their implementation.

Benchmarking project

When benchmarking, employees of the enterprise work in teams consisting of representatives of different services. The most important components of the activity of employees and the organization are planning and orientation to create value, as well as competence in the field of customer service, technology and business culture. As you can see, benchmarking is an activity that is related to customers, technology and entrepreneurial culture and is carried out in planning, with a focus on creating value and competence. In addition, benchmarking is referred to as a set of management tools, such as global management, quality, measurement of customer satisfaction, which enterprises are now using.

How to implement an appropriate strategy to become the best of the best?

What should be changed or kept in the enterprise to become the best?

Why own enterprise is not the best?

However, most experts are of the opinion that benchmarking means borrowing management methods from others who are doing well, by comparing with other areas of business or competitors and identifying the weaknesses of your enterprise.

At ICI fibers (fibres), benchmarking is viewed as learning by comparison, which has two levels - a strategic level and a level of individual processes.

In Japan, where benchmarking has been practiced for a long time, the most common form is product benchmarking, which is based on the “me too” psychology. Less popular is benchmarking of functions and processes.

When determining the effect that benchmarking can provide, it should be borne in mind that no one has ever questioned the fact that the exchange of experience and its study are beneficial. True, we should not forget that "cross-pollination" is fruitful not for every enterprise. Therefore, the need for benchmarking must be proven. Benchmarking becomes the art of discovering what others are doing better than us and learning, improving and applying their methods of work.

Thus, the benefit of benchmarking is that the production and marketing functions become most manageable when the best methods and technologies of other than their own enterprises or industries are researched and implemented in their enterprise. This can lead to improved business, increased efficiency, beneficial competition, and customer satisfaction.

Essentially, there are two main types of benchmarking - internal and external benchmarking.

Internal benchmarking refers to the comparison of processes within the same enterprise or group. Since in this case no comparison with external processes and foreign technology is made, the potential for innovation is very limited here.

Significantly more benefit from external and cross-industry benchmarking. Comparison of own processes (in-house) with the most successful processes throughout the industry highlights a company with a particularly high potential for new impulses and innovations.

The benchmarking project is carried out in order to improve certain aspects of the business process of the enterprise. The basis for this is the preparation of information about internal processes and the determination of a systematic method for collecting data. A well-established approach is to compile questionnaires with relevant key performance indicators (KPIs, in English KPIs - key performance indicators). KPIs are indicators for determining the volume of business activity. Having compiled such a questionnaire, one can begin to purposefully identify suitable enterprises for the survey and send them appropriate requests for the benchmarking project.

The experience of long-term application of benchmarking shows that a direct comparison of an enterprise with its direct competitor is practically impossible. For this purpose, in particular, enterprises with identical or similar production methods or business processes are more suitable. The primary analysis of advantages and disadvantages is carried out, as a rule, on the basis of a comparison of quantitative indicators entered in the questionnaire.

At the next stage, a qualitative comparison of business processes is made. To do this, relevant seminars are held, and business processes are compared and analyzed on the ground, during mutual visits to enterprises. Through the exchange of experiences, innovative resources are identified and a definition of specific successful practices as best practice is developed. The positive components identified can then be quickly adapted to the respective conditions and implemented in a targeted manner in the home enterprise.

An example of cross-industry benchmarking: comparing a computer manufacturer with a message from a sales organization. The starting point for the benchmarking project was a computer manufacturer's difficulties with picking and shipping. In this regard, there were high costs and unsatisfactory punctuality of deliveries (timeliness), which was only 70%. After compiling a description of the production processes and a questionnaire, inquiries were sent to various enterprises. As a suitable partner company, it was possible to attract a large mail-order company for household goods to participate in the project. The company was famous for the efficiency of order fulfillment and punctuality of deliveries. The lessons learned from this project were enormous. A computer manufacturer was able to optimize its order fulfillment business in just 6 months. As a result, cost savings amounted to 10%, and on-time delivery of goods reached 95%.

In search of best practice, innovation-oriented industrial enterprises face a number of challenges, namely:

Development of a continuous process of self-improvement based on the constant collection and analysis of information about a competitor;
in improving indicators to compare previous experience with the standards and achievements of leading enterprises;
studying the processes and methods used by competitors in solving problems, i.e. developing a system of benchmarking best practices.

The prospects for the use of benchmarking by the enterprises implementing it are associated with borrowing the best work practices, developing the creative potential and motivation of employees, as well as more quickly overcoming the resistance of personnel to innovations.

The introduction of benchmarking allows you to improve planning, management and production at the enterprise and increase its competitiveness.

Types of benchmarking

Depending on the objects of comparison, benchmarking can be divided into several types:

Internal benchmarking - this type of benchmarking compares processes (products, services) within an organization. Close or similar processes (products, services) are selected as objects. With internal benchmarking, it is fairly easy to collect data, but comparisons are limited and results can be biased.

Competitive benchmarking - a comparison is made with direct competitors (in terms of products or services provided) operating in the local, regional or international market. For this type of benchmarking, it is necessary to choose competitors located at a different “level” of the market. For example, an organization operating in a local market may choose to compare an organization operating in an international market. In this case, the data obtained from the comparison will be more reasonable and important, but they are quite difficult to obtain.

Functional benchmarking - comparing the processes of one's own organization with similar processes of another organization, but working in a different field of activity. With this kind of benchmarking, you can get objective and important data with less effort, using ethical and legal methods of obtaining information.

Generalized benchmarking - for this type of benchmarking, organizations are selected that have the best processes and approaches in their segment. Such organizations openly publish information about their activities (examples are publications on production Toyota system, or Motorola's 6-sigma system). From these processes and approaches, the most suitable ones are selected for study and comparison. Then they adapt to the conditions of their own organization.

Various sources are used as sources of information for choosing a benchmark for benchmarking. For example, publications on commercial activities, databases of consulting and audit companies on organizations that apply best practices (for example, GMP), lists of winners of quality awards, etc.

To improve performance, one or more types of benchmarking are used. The objects of benchmarking and the focus of research may be different, but the main stages for all types of benchmarking will be the same. This sequence of actions has developed as a result of the practice of applying benchmarking by many organizations.

The main stages of benchmarking include:

1. Definition, analysis and specification of the benchmarking object. The entity can be a process, service, or product of an organization. At this stage, it is important to understand how much resources and effort the organization is willing to spend on the benchmarking process - whether it will be a one-time event or benchmarking will become a permanent practice of the organization.
2. Identification and definition of characteristics for which benchmarking will be carried out. These may be important consumer properties of a product or service, or process quality parameters.
3. Formation of the benchmarking team. It is better to include specialists from various departments of the organization in the team in order to be able to more widely and objectively evaluate the capabilities of both their processes (products, services) and the processes (products, services) of benchmarking partners.
4. Selection of benchmarking partners. Leading organizations that have achieved success in implementing the characteristics of interest (identified in step 2) can act as partners. A partner can be one organization or several. If internal benchmarking is performed, then such partners will be related departments, processes or products provided by the organization itself.
5. Collection and analysis of information necessary for comparison. To make comparisons, it may be necessary to present the information received in the same form as it is presented within the organization. For example, if the technical characteristics of a product are compared, then the set of these characteristics may differ for different manufacturers. Characteristics will need to be brought to a single "base".
6. Conducting an assessment of the organization's ability to achieve the required characteristics in comparison with a benchmarking partner (or partners). Evaluation can be carried out by various methods that allow you to assess the existing "gap" between the work of your own organization and the work of a benchmarking partner (for example, using GAP - analysis).
7. Identification of possible changes to existing work practices. A "vision" of the future state of the organization is created. This vision should be based on the results of adapting the processes of the benchmarking partner to the conditions of their organization.
8. Development of strategic goals and plans for their implementation to achieve the desired level of performance. Depending on the scale of the changes, the plans may affect the change in processes, management systems, organizational systems, work performance culture, and other aspects.
9. Implementation of the planned changes and constant monitoring of the progress of transformations in the organization. If necessary, adjustments to the plans are made.
10. After achieving the set goals and implementing plans, a decision is made to repeat the cycle and implement all stages of benchmarking for new conditions.

Before using benchmarking as a performance improvement tool, an organization must decide how much resources it can allocate to it. It is better to conduct benchmarking using well-established methods. The benchmarking technique can save a lot of time and resources. If a decision is made to use benchmarking as one of the tools for continuous improvement, then it can be separated into a separate process.

Benchmarking business processes

The implementation of a benchmarking project is quite simple in terms of methodology. Initially, it is necessary to highlight the structure of the business process, on which to further fix all the differences found in the analyzed business processes.

As a rule, to formalize the structure of a business process, it is necessary to carry out its initial description, for example, in the ARIS tool system, and only then proceed to their further comparison. At the same time, in addition to best practices, it is possible to collect existing business process issues, which allows you to create a set of urgent measures for the operational optimization of the business process.

One more subject area that can be analyzed in a business process benchmarking project are operational risks, since their management is a prerequisite for organizing a high-quality business process. In addition to the above, when benchmarking a business process, it is important to analyze its environment - performers, documents, information systems, technological resources, etc. In practice, when organizing a project, it should be taken into account that the more information is collected on the process, the better the comparison will be, while it is most interesting to look not at the regulations and descriptions of business processes, but at their indicators and results.

By fixing all the differences found in the previously created business process structure, several tasks can be solved at once: collect information for benchmarking business processes; provide typification of business processes and replication of best practices; diagnostics and operational adjustment of the business process. If we consider a typical benchmarking project, then it has the following structure: choosing a benchmarking object, collecting information, analyzing information and adapting, improving business processes. One of the main stages of this project is the selection of the benchmarking object.

To do this, you must perform the following steps:

Determining the goals of benchmarking - at this stage, the main goals of the project are formed. For example, ensuring the dissemination of best practices within the company, typing business processes, or improving a particular business process.
Definition of benchmarking objects - at this stage, objects for comparison are determined. As a rule, indicators, business processes, personnel, knowledge, etc. become such objects.
Definition of benchmarking tools - depending on the goals and objects of benchmarking, necessary tools. In practice, when conducting internal benchmarking, questionnaires are most often used with subsequent clarification of information.
Selection of companies for benchmarking - at the selection stage, those companies or divisions that will be suppliers of information for benchmarking are determined.
Identification of information sources - at this stage, a list of information sources is formed and fixed. In practice, the sources of information for conducting a business process benchmarking project can be internal regulations, management reporting, description of business processes, etc.
Determining the structure of business processes to fix the differences - at this stage, the structure necessary for the accumulation of the found differences in the analyzed business processes is formed, which is done through the description of the existing business process.
Determination of forms for collecting materials - within this stage, various methods of collecting information are determined, as well as questionnaires and reporting forms are formed. In most cases, everything is limited to the study of documentation, questionnaires and interviews.

The next key stage of the business process benchmarking project is the information gathering stage:

Preliminary survey - the meaning of the stage lies in the preliminary distribution of questionnaires to collect information. At the same time, the questionnaires should contain the structure of the business process, which is selected as the object of benchmarking.
Clarification of the data obtained - work to clarify the data obtained during the survey is carried out during a series of interviews, and it is at this stage that the basic information on the organization of business processes is recorded.
Identification and fixation of strong deviations - this stage is the main one in terms of benchmarking, since by identifying and fixing strong deviations, you can find those differences that make a significant difference in the efficiency of the business process.
Definition of "best practice" - at this stage, of all the differences found in the organization of business processes, it is necessary to determine what will become the "best experience" for further implementation.

After the best practices in business processes have been identified, we can talk about moving to the next stage of the benchmarking project - information analysis and adaptation:

Determination of ways to achieve the "best experience" - at this stage, the possibility of transferring the "best experience" to other business processes is analyzed, because it is not enough to find the "best experience", you also need to understand how to replicate it.
Determination of directions for improving business processes - these works allow you to determine the changes that must occur with the business process in order for the found best practices to work.
Determination of the method and extent of application of the selected best practices in the enterprise - in fact, at this stage, the design of the business process "as it should be" for a particular organization takes place. Those. a new process is created that contains all the best that was found within the framework of the benchmarking project.

However, it is not enough to create a new business process, you need to implement it into activities, which happens at the next stage of the project - improving business processes:

Development of a plan for improving business processes - at this stage, planning is carried out for the transition from the existing business process "as is" to a new vision of the business process - "as it should be".
Improvement of business processes (introduction of changes) - change management technology is used to introduce changes into existing processes. Each required change is fixed, the person responsible for its implementation is determined, after which the implementation of the changes and their success are monitored.
Evaluation and analysis of the effectiveness of improvement is the final stage of the project, which determines how much the implemented “best practices” have made the business process better. To do this, an analysis of actual indicators is carried out, and already on the basis of the results of the analysis, a decision is made on the success of the project for benchmarking business processes.

Application of benchmarking

Today, for most managers of small and medium-sized enterprises in Russia, "benchmarking" is an unfamiliar word, and benchmarking is perceived not as a management method, but as a regular competitor analysis or marketing research. However, even 10 years ago, few of our entrepreneurs distinguished between the concepts of "management" and "marketing", and today these are integral attributes of the economic activity of almost every Russian company, from large to small and smallest. Benchmarking confidently finds its place in the managerial arsenal of leaders of small and medium-sized enterprises abroad. The queue is behind Russian companies, and already today, those organizations that master this method will have undeniable competitive advantages in the market.

Benchmarking or reference comparison - a term that has already become quite firmly established in the Russian economic lexicon - is a management method (tool) that can help many Russian companies in solving the problem of improving management systems and increasing competitiveness.

The name of the method comes from the English words "bench" (level, height) and "mark" (mark). This phrase is interpreted in different ways: "reference mark", "height mark", "reference comparison", etc.

Benchmarking is a continuous search for new ideas and subsequent use in practice. The essence of benchmarking is, firstly, comparing your performance with that of competitors and the best organizations. Secondly, in studying and applying the successful experience of others in their own organization.

Moving from industrial espionage and competitive analysis, benchmarking became an effective management tool in the late 1970s and has become one of the most popular management methods in recent years.

Benchmarking, like most other management tools, is a product of big business for big business. Large companies, in search of competitive advantages, direct their efforts to the development of new management methods. These studies are global in nature, and the most successful solutions become separate areas in management, they are provided with a theoretical methodological base, they take their own place in the arsenal of business solutions. There are enough examples of this: 6-sigma (Motorola), Taguchi methods and Just in Time (Toyota), Poké-yoka (Matsushita), and again Benchmarking (Xerox).

In this situation, the manager of any of the millions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) around the world has the right to ask the question: "do these methods apply to my business?". Can small companies really benefit from new approaches to management? Frequently cited examples of benchmarking describe the experience of large corporations such as Xerox, Toyota, Ford, Yamaha, and others. It is fair to assume that the approaches of large companies will not be suitable for small and medium-sized businesses either. Indeed, improving the quality of a business through the introduction of modern management methods - total quality management, a balanced scorecard, a system for deploying plans from the Hoshin Kanri company and others, is accompanied for small enterprises by the question of the applicability of solutions used by large firms. Although, it should be emphasized that "... small firms are no less interested in building and developing quality systems than large companies, with the only difference that standard and widespread approaches do not always work in small businesses."

Small and medium enterprises play an important role in the economy of any country. Russia is no exception in this sense, and support for small businesses is being elevated today to the rank of state policy. Despite this, most management theories still take root first in large companies. How justified is the secondary role left to small businesses in the development of modern management systems, whether small companies should learn from the examples of large ones, or whether research is needed that reveals the potential of small enterprises as a source of new management trends. The possibility of forming our own approaches, including for reference comparison, in our opinion, exists. Benchmarking, in particular, with certain reservations, can be considered as a product of small and medium-sized companies, which arose from the need to learn from large firms and elevated to the rank of a management method. The tradition of transposing the experience of large companies to their own management systems was noticed by small organizations in Japan long before benchmarking was recognized as an official management tool.

Obviously, the analysis of benchmarking opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses should be carried out through the prism of the characteristics of enterprises representing this market sector.

The success of benchmarking depends to a large extent on determining what is to be compared. Small businesses always have a lot of problems, and managers have a desire to improve everything at once. The effect of this approach is usually zero. Next, we will consider indicators that are used by small companies practicing benchmarking as an object of measurement and comparison.

Research by E. Monkhouse revealed a tendency to use benchmark comparison of financial indicators in the field of small and medium-sized businesses.

A study of small companies by experts from the University of Sheffield six years later showed that both strategic and process benchmarking have found their way into small and medium-sized businesses. The figures of this study reflect the table.

Indicators used for benchmarking in small and medium-sized enterprises:

Indicator / object reference comparison	% of companies using this indicator	% of companies that consider this indicator effective
Financial indicators
Consumer Satisfaction
Quality of products/services
Marketing Information
Employee training
Product/Service Innovation
Communications
Employee satisfaction
Attitude towards quality
Process innovation
Team spirit
Stress level
None of the above

The data in the table is not surprising - small firms mainly use for comparison indicators that reflect problems that lie "on the surface" and have established approaches to measurement, such as financial condition, quality. More flexible and less tangible metrics, such as team spirit or organizational stress levels, are less commonly used, as it is difficult to determine the final object of comparison and normalize information.

In our opinion, the use of easily measurable indicators by small companies in benchmarking is dictated by the dynamic competitive environment in which small and medium-sized enterprises find themselves. Therefore, indicators that correlate with key success factors in the competitive struggle are more often the object for reference comparison than others. Research data from the University of Sheffield shows the main positions in which small and medium-sized companies compete (table).

Competitive Comparison Indicators (Key Success Factors) for SMEs:

These studies confirm the dominance of standard indicators for benchmarking in SMEs. Paying attention to less tangible indicators is a matter of time and the development of a culture of improvement. Today, small companies, especially in Russia, do not have balanced systems for collecting, evaluating, implementing and analyzing successful business solutions for measuring and benchmarking indicators that do not have strict definition methods.

How often do small companies actually use benchmarking? Coopers and Librand's research covers 1,000 companies, of which 67 percent report some form of benchmarking. According to research by the University of Sheffield, 63 percent of SMEs in Europe are involved in the benchmarking process, while 37 percent of respondents have never used such a method. According to the leaders of these companies, benchmarking is a waste of time and resources, in the words of one of the managers, "... benchmarking was invented by consultants for consultants." The position of the majority of Russian entrepreneurs today can be expressed in the same words.

However, paradoxically, small companies have much more potential for competitive benchmarking than is commonly thought. Theoretically, they always have before their eyes a lot of examples (landmarks) to which one should strive. In practice, the methods used by leading companies are either not available or unknown. In addition, the use of benchmarking in small companies is hindered by a number of other factors or barriers.

In addition to the standard reasons for not benchmarking: "lack of time and money", some of the barriers for SMEs look significant, especially against the backdrop of large companies.

First, small companies, due to limited resources, do not seek to attract outside specialists and use the services of consulting firms when there is a substitute in the form of various manuals and books about successful business decisions.

Secondly, fewer and fewer specialists from large companies with knowledge and experience in applying modern management methods are moving to work in small firms.

Third, membership in any of the recent benchmarking "clubs" is quite expensive for small companies. Thus, membership in the European Foundation for Quality Management for a small company will be from 1.350 euros per year.

Fourth, small business managers are, by definition, much closer to their customers, employees, and competitors than their corporate counterparts. Often their attention is scattered between strategic and operational information. As an advantage here, one can note the ability to constantly "keep abreast" in relation to the indicators of daily activities, from which managers in large companies are relatively removed. On the other hand, such a position of managers of small companies does not always allow one to have an objective idea of ​​the organization's activities in the strategic plan. However, here we can cite research data by E. Monkhouse, who notes that about 75 percent of the leaders of small companies clearly understand the strategic prospects of their business, and 65 percent also see the prospects of their competitors.

Fifth, in order to achieve the desired effect of benchmarking, the indicators measured must be flexible enough to reflect the diverse characteristics of small businesses.

Most of the barriers to benchmarking noted above are non-financial. There may be an opinion that these barriers are indirect and relate to management problems.

In Russia, it has developed so that not everyone is ready to give information about their enterprise. In addition, the existing systems of taxation and financial accounting of the company do not always allow obtaining real data on certain indicators.

However, the main, and at the moment, the only reason for not using the potential of benchmarking as an effective management tool in small and medium-sized enterprises is a poor understanding or ignorance of the benchmarking method.

In Russia, the leaders of small and medium-sized businesses, entering into informal relationships with partners or competitors, often use the best achievements of each other in their company. As experience shows, direct communication with colleagues provides the most valuable ideas and knowledge for business, which, as a rule, leads to the introduction of new forms of management, software products, and the use of new technologies in production.

In addition, the potential for development and the key to the success of the company in the interest of managers. Not without reason, leadership is one of the basic principles of the philosophy of modern entrepreneurship, which plays a key role in building total quality management systems in ISO 9000 standards, in improvement models based on quality awards and in almost all modern management methods. The important role of the leader in small companies is emphasized by the closer relationship between managers and employees than in large companies. This can serve as an advantage for SMEs, as it greatly simplifies the task of managers to convey to staff what benchmarking is, why and how it is necessary to benchmark.

Benchmarking, as a new and large-scale management initiative, should be started directly by the leader. However, most of them have a misconception about benchmarking, whether it is used to compare companies' products and services or numbers, or to understand processes. However, there is also an understanding that benchmarking allows for small means to make radical changes based on comparison with other companies: competitors or leaders. Leadership support is critical, as they must dedicate time, allocate funds, motivate, remove obstacles, and reward efforts.

Finally, it is important for management and benchmarking teams to remember that a formal benchmarking study usually takes about six months. There is no shorter way. "The biggest problem is finding the time to research. If you need a quick change, choose a better way," says Martin Leaper, director of quality for a small American company, Seites Corp.

Thus, we can draw the following conclusions regarding the features of the use of benchmarking as a management tool in small and medium-sized enterprises:

1. Benchmarking in developed countries is used by more than half of the companies representing small and medium-sized businesses. An even greater number of organizations consider benchmarking to be an effective tool for increasing competitiveness and improving the management system.
2. The potential of benchmarking in small and medium-sized businesses can be effectively realized by using the advantages of small companies: proximity to the consumer, a stronger leadership role and organizational flexibility.
3. The "complex of secrecy" is still the main barrier for small and medium-sized companies when conducting benchmarking, in addition to the traditional barrier of "limited resources". In this regard, comparative benchmarking of financial indicators or simple competitive analysis is more popular among small business managers.
4. The choice of financial indicators as an object of comparison is dictated by the intense competitive environment in the small and medium-sized market sectors. Another feature of small companies is a closer, unlike large business, connection with the consumer, which determines the choice of indicators as benchmarking objects that reflect the key success factors of the organization: customer satisfaction and the price of the product / service. Analysis Methods

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Business in Russia continues to develop and master new management tools that make it possible to improve the quality of business processes and increase the competitiveness of organizations in the market. Benchmarking is one such tool.

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Modern large enterprises already consider this analysis as an important tool in their development strategies, and small and medium-sized businesses are often not even familiar with the concept of benchmarking and the meaning of this term. But such ignorance does not yet speak of this tool as useless, but quite the opposite, benchmarking can be used to increase the competitiveness of some small businesses.

There are many different definitions of this concept, and in order to fully understand what it contains, you should familiarize yourself with several of them.

The name benchmarking comes from two English words branch (height) and mark (mark).

There are the following definitions of this concept:

1. Benchmarking- the process of comparing the company's performance with the world's best organizations existing in the same market segment in order to make appropriate changes and maintain their success.
2. Benchmarking- a method of comparative analysis in order to apply the data obtained in practice to improve the efficiency and quality of the company's activities.
3. Benchmarking- the process of carefully reviewing the business processes of organizations and their performance, with the aim of comparing their activities with those of industry-leading companies and corporations, in order to use the obtained data to approximate and even overtake enterprises of the best in a single class.
4. Benchmarking– search for the best practices for the enterprise, leading to increased productivity and development.
5. Benchmarking- a development standard in which similar business processes should be analyzed and measured.

The phrase "Benchmarking" can mean:

1. Be smart and wise enough to recognize that there is always a competitor who is superior in some way.
2. To have sufficient wisdom not only to recognize, but also to adopt knowledge and skills from a direct competitor in order to catch up with him, and then get around him.

It is benchmarking today that allows you to quickly improve the activities of organizations at minimal cost. By understanding how industry-leading enterprises operate, one can reach the same heights, and possibly even surpass direct competitors. By carefully studying the achievements and mistakes of others, an entrepreneur can form his own strategy of action, which will be as effective as possible for his enterprise.

There is an unspoken rule in benchmarking: “If one entrepreneur came up with and succeeded, then another businessman who applied the same strategy in the same industry is likely to succeed.”

Historical edit

The use of this business tool began in the 80s of the 19th century. Many recognize Xerox as the pioneer or discoverer of this technique, because it, faced with more successful foreign competitors, copied their strategy and managed to outperform them in the market.

To implement their plans, the representatives of the company were faced with the task of answering sequentially two questions:

1. Which firm is the leader?
2. How did this company operate to be successful?

These questions are the basis of benchmarking today and still remain relevant.

Following Xerox, there were many others who chose to use this method or similar ones, thereby expanding the scope of benchmarking and refining the power of this tool.

The expansion of this business tool has led to the fact that the search for companies for analysis is no longer limited to consideration of direct competitors, but also affects other companies in the same field of activity or even in another. Recently, the analysis has become more and more reduced to the search for answers only to the second question.

Analysis, search and identification of successful strategies of competitors is not all. It is quite a difficult job of a different kind to implement such a course of action in a particular organization.

Main types

There are the following types of benchmarking:

1. Interior. An analysis of a particular process within the organization itself that allows the compilation of indicators of processes that are similar or analogous.
2. Competitive. It is a process of comparing the main characteristics of an organization and comparing these parameters with those of competitive organizations, in order to study specific products, intended capabilities and methods of administering work.
3. Functional. Analysis and comparison of certain indicators of companies (two or more) with the same business data of an enterprise that is the best and operates in identical conditions.
4. General. It is a comparison of the main indicators of production and sales of the company with the main indicators common to a large number of competitors engaged in similar business activities. This type benchmarking allows you to identify the main investment areas.

Phases

The competitive analysis process itself can consist of 4 main phases, each of which includes some steps.

Phase #1 - Preparation

1. The first step is to determine the object of the competitive analysis process. The value and level of relevance of an object intended to perform the tasks and main functions of the organization is measured and studied. In this process, areas of significant difficulty are identified, bottlenecks are probed, and areas of particular interest are identified.
2. Thresholds are set in order to derive a score of success. The selected objects will be further considered depending on some of the most important aspects of the activity with the help of financial units. These aspects may include: costs, time, quality level, etc.
3. To conduct the most accurate and capacious analysis, additional information resources are involved such as: fairs, seminars, reports, business plans, target audience surveys, supplier surveys, exchange processes, factory inspections, reference data, chambers of commerce, media information, literature, etc.
4. Search for the main enterprises for comparative analysis. The selection of such organizations should be carried out not only within their market area. Other branches of activity may offer the most decisive and innovative methods, suitable for enterprises engaged in completely different activities. An enterprise that is not a direct competitor is much more willing to provide more complete information for a more detailed comparison and analysis.

Phase #2 - Analysis

1. Based on the values ​​and factors of the organization's work selected at the first stage, the most inefficient processes, services, products and technologies, the performance of their own enterprise and the reasons for such inefficiency are determined.
2. Directions are chosen that allow more effective organization of these processes and technologies. We will have to look for an answer to the question of why competing enterprises are better in this area.

Phase #3 - Implementation

1. At this stage, it is necessary to determine the goals of the proposed changes and strategies for their implementation. A detailed discussion of the expected results is carried out, a full awareness of the need for change and the exact goals of the organization's work are established, taking into account the introduction of new standards and forms of activity.
2. A detailed action plan is being drawn up, calculation of the resources spent on such a reorganization, the persons responsible for changes at each level are announced, a reorganization calendar is developed and the results of such activities are forecasted.
3. Implementation of all proposed changes according to the plan and calendar.
4. Changes are monitored at every stage of change, which is designed to compare the effectiveness of similar innovations. It also checks compliance with the planned restructuring plan and compliance with the target dates.

Phase #4 Repetition

Effective market methods and processes are constantly evolving and subject to major changes, what was yesterday the most innovative methodology is quickly becoming the standard. That is why the fourth stage should include a continuous process of improving the work of the organization. Well, in order to make work in this direction as simple as possible, you should use the documentation of benchmarking experience in as much detail as possible.

Examples of successful benchmarking

Ford

A good example of the use of such analysis can be found in the history of Ford. Benchmarking was carried out by its specialists in the 90s, when the company's position on the market was seriously shaken. In the course of this analysis, studies of car models were carried out, the number of which exceeded 50.

These studies were conducted in order to clarify the advantages and, accordingly, the disadvantages of each. According to such an analysis, the parameters of the best car were identified, which would allow to achieve the performance of competitors' companies and even surpass them.

The result of this company was the car model Taurus, which became the car of the year. Subsequently, the model lost its position due to the fact that improvements began to be made that deviate it from the original development concept based on the analysis of competitive models.

Nokia

This company has long been recognized as an international organization engaged in the creation of mobile devices and services. Nokia uses benchmarking to maintain its position in the market and develop by keeping track of time and progress in all areas of its activities (logistics, research, development, partner relations, people).

GIA

This company is a consulting firm that is engaged in market research, identifying profitable strategies and providing various types of services that allow companies to establish business processes. GIA constantly produces various benchmarking seminars. A typical project of this company includes 2 thematic seminars, where various business and analysis issues can be discussed.

Each seminar can be devoted to the following topics:

1. Economic improvements based on examples.
2. Learning how to run a profitable business based on the experience of competitors.
3. Exchange of key strategies and ideas between competent professionals from different business areas.
4. Training based on the mistakes made by other companies, as an opportunity to avoid wrong and unnecessary financial expenses in your own work.

What is compared in the benchmarking process?

Competitive analysis is not a highly specialized analysis that is limited to products or core business processes. Based on the past experience of similar studies, it can be said that the campaigns showed incredible originality and ingenuity in the selection of the main factors considered in the benchmarking process.

But with all this, one should not get carried away and forget that the essence of the analysis is to identify the reasons for the effectiveness of competitors. If the analysis begins with a general collection of information, then it should end with a clarification of the methodology of work. The result of the work should be the so-called implementation tool, which is a factor leading the company to high efficiency in the required area.

Benchmarking- a reliable method that allows you to improve business activities by studying the experience of other companies existing in the global market and in a particular area. This analysis becomes the strongest tool that increases the efficiency of companies and allows you to implement best practices that lead to development and profit.

Benchmarking can be seen as a process, an activity of long-term thinking about an entrepreneurial strategy, based on the best experience of partners and competitors at the industry, cross-sector, national and international levels.

Due to the need to use external factors that affect or may affect the behavior of the company and its products on the market, interaction with partners and competitors, a philosophy and function were required related to the identification, search for the results of practice in the firms of partners, competitors and related industries, with the aim of using them in their own firms to increase.

Benchmarking is close to the concept marketing intelligence. However, marketing intelligence is the collection of confidential (semi-confidential) information about changing marketing.

The use of benchmarking is multidirectional. Although since the mid-1970s it was carried out within the framework, today benchmarking has successfully established itself as a way to evaluate strategies and performance goals in comparison with leaders in their own and related industries in order to guarantee a long-term stay in the market.

Benchmarking(English bench - place, marking - mark) is a way to study the activities of business entities, primarily competitors, in order to use their positive experience in their work.

Benchmarking includes a set of tools that allow you to systematically find, evaluate all the advantages of someone else's experience and organize their use in your work.

Benchmarking is aimed at studying business. When applied to innovation, it means studying the business of other enterprises or entrepreneurs in order to identify the fundamental characteristics for developing one's innovation policy and specific types of innovation. When benchmarking, it is important to overcome the psychological complexes of managers and specialists.

Psychological complex means:

• Satisfaction of the head of the economic entity with the achieved results:
• unwillingness to risk money, i.e. spend money on acquiring information, pay for consultations of analysts and experts, saving all kinds of resources and money spent on marketing research, etc.;
• fear that it is very difficult or impossible to do better than a competitor due to the large expenditure of all resources, including money.

There are two types of benchmarking: general and functional.

General benchmarking is a comparison of the production and sales performance of a given manufacturer's products with the business performance of a sufficiently large number of producers or sellers of a similar product. Such a comparison allows us to outline clear directions for investment activity. The parameters used to compare the characteristics of a product depend on the particular type of product.

Functional benchmarking means comparing the performance of individual functions (for example, operations, processes, work methods, etc.) of a manufacturer (seller) with similar parameters of the most successful enterprises (sellers) operating in similar conditions.

To carry out benchmarking, a special working group is usually created.

The functional benchmarking methodology consists of the following steps.

1. The choice of a specific function of the manufacturer's (seller's) business.
2. Select comparison options for this business function. In this case, one parameter or a group of parameters can be used. The only one, i.e. an unambiguous comparison parameter of a business function can be, for example, the profitability of the operation, the level of costs for the operation, the duration of the active period of use of this function, the degree of risk, etc. The parameter group is used when comparing such complex business functions as product quality management, cash management, etc.
3. Gathering the necessary information about similar manufacturers.
4. Analysis of the received information.
5. Development of a draft of the changes made to this function.
6. Feasibility study of the proposed changes.
7. Implementation of changes in the practice of organizing this business.
8. Monitoring the progress of this business and the final assessment of the quality of the change in this function.

The effectiveness of the method under consideration depends on the correct organization of the information collection system in various fields in the open press, in the analysis of products, at exhibitions, in the position of a competing company in the market, the use of former employees of these companies, etc.

Practice shows that the process of improvement is unlimited. Benchmarking is, one might say, a perpetual motion machine of a continuous process of continuous improvement of a company's performance.

The concept of benchmarking

The reasons for the sharp increase in the popularity of benchmarking in recent decades are obvious. Competition has become global, and most companies are beginning to recognize the need for a comprehensive and detailed study (and subsequent use) of the best achievements of other companies for their own future success. In order not to be left behind their competitors, all companies, regardless of size and field of activity, need to constantly study and apply the best world practices in all areas of business activity, adopt all types of effective technologies.

Benchmarking- this is:

• methodology for comparative analysis of the performance of the company and its divisions and borrowing knowledge, achievements from other companies that are « bestofthebest» in your field:
• systematic activity aimed at finding, evaluating and learning from the best examples, regardless of their size, business area and geographical location;
• the art of discovering what others are doing better than us, and learning, improving and applying their methods of work;
• process of systematic and continuous measurement: evaluation of the processes of the enterprise and their comparison with the processes of the world's leading enterprises, in order to obtain information useful for improving one's own characteristics:
• a special kind of activity to search for and obtain information about the best solutions used in the activities of other companies. These companies may be competitors, although the most successful borrowings are most often obtained from those firms that operate in completely different industries, regions, markets, in other countries, etc.

Before answering the question, “Which companies are the best?”, two other questions need to be answered, namely, “What is the first thing you need to improve in your company?” and “How capable is your company of change in this area?” To answer questions, it is necessary to involve competitive intelligence specialists: priority improvements appear as a result of comparisons of one's own activities with those of a competitor.

The three-stage selection of a partner for benchmarking is called the process STC. Its name comes from the initial letters of three English words - skim, trim, cream. First stage - S- quick review (from « toskim» - skimming, skimming) when they make a general overview of the available sources of information, as well as collect additional available data. The second - T - putting in order (from « totrim”- to finish, grind, put in order), a detailed description of the information available up to this point. Third stage - FROM- selection of the best (from « tocream» - "skim cream"), the choice of suitable partners. In the process STC competitive intelligence is used at all stages.

At the same time, the competitive intelligence service works for benchmarking in two modes. The first is to establish those elements of activity (business processes, directions, rules, technologies, procedures, etc.) in which competitors outperform your firm. The second mode is to understand who is superior to competitors in the same positions.

A comparative analysis is carried out by type of activity, divisions, company as a whole in order to identify strengths and weaknesses, to establish the best working methods. The main questions of the analysis are:

• how others do it;
• why they do it differently;
• what conditions allow them to do it better.

Benchmarking should be understood as a process of research conducted in parallel with market research and competitive intelligence. Benchmarking is aimed at a detailed study of the internal organization, structure and activities of another enterprise, from which you can learn something useful and important for your own work.

Benchmarking is a comparative assessment of the effectiveness of the system under test and the reference system, the correct functioning of which is beyond doubt. Comparing the performance of the two systems allows you to check the correct functioning of the system under test. The efficiency, correctness and speed of the system operation when performing a specific task are determined. Benchmarking is, in fact, a development of the analogy method, which, in turn, consists in the use of organizational forms and management mechanisms that have justified themselves in companies with similar organizational characteristics (goals, type of technology, specific organizational environment, size, etc.) in relation to the analyzed organization.

According to the concept of benchmarking, any business process must be marked, i.e. structured in such a way that it is possible to determine how well a business process is performing and to plan the implementation of changes that can track the company's future achievements in improving business processes.

With the help of benchmarking, it is determined why the partner organization has achieved positive results in a particular area, what actions have led it to success. There are two categories of data obtained from the results of benchmarking: firstly, the performance indicators of the organization (what has been achieved); secondly, how and by what methods and technologies it was achieved. The analysis of only one category of data does not give a complete picture of the activities of the organization. Comparison should be carried out on the same indicators and in the same areas.

Types of benchmarking

Currently, there are several types of benchmarking. each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Functional benchmarking— comparison with organizations. not related to the number of intra-industry competitors, but performing functional activities in which the organization is interested in improving (for example, storage, transportation). Benefits of functional benchmarking: Functional leaders are easy to identify, no privacy concerns arise, and there is ample opportunity to discover unique, effective approaches or technologies that can be useful to the organization. But the specifics of functional benchmarking makes it difficult, and sometimes simply impossible, to adapt research results to the characteristics of an organization that performs functional benchmarking.

Internal benchmarking— making comparisons between different parts of the organization. Internal benchmarking is the comparison of different departments and divisions of the same company with each other in order to find out the most effective methods of work to make a product or service more competitive. The simplicity of organizing, conducting, collecting information necessary for comparison determined the spread of this type of benchmarking.

General benchmarking- the most complex and difficult to implement type that allows you to compare business processes in organizations belonging to different industries. This type provides the best opportunities for intra-organizational improvement.

Competitive Benchmarking— the comparison is made with a company in the same industry (competitor) or a partner company from other industries.

In addition, depending on specific problem areas, cost benchmarking is distinguished, which is aimed at reducing costs, determining the factors influencing their formation, searching for differences in the formation of costs between companies and its other types.

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In our country, there is an active development of business, the development of new management tools. This allows you to improve the quality of business processes, make them more perfect, and enterprises more competitive. One such tool is benchmarking.

From this article you will learn:

1. Types of benchmarking
2. The principles on which it is carried out
3. 4 stages
4. Benchmarking examples from world practice
5. How is benchmarking used in Russia?

What is company benchmarking and what is it used for?

Benchmarking

an ongoing process of evaluating the level of products, services and practices based on comparison with the strongest competitors or leading companies.

Through the use of benchmarking, business becomes more efficient and open. This tool allows you to find answers to questions that arise in the course of doing business, and has the following Benefits:

1. Its application makes it possible to overcome the stagnation in the leadership, allows you to point out to managers that they misrepresent the state of affairs.
2. Benchmarking motivates self-satisfied and complacent businessmen to strive for the best.
3. It helps to identify both the strengths of the organization and the weaknesses that need to be strengthened.
4. Its holding is an opportunity to warn the company in advance about the backlog.
5. Benchmarking sets difficult but achievable goals.
6. Helps to determine which actions to improve performance are prioritized.
7. Allows you to identify and include the best management processes and practices used in business.
8. It reveals the level of the company compared to the best in the world.
9. Determines how much the level of the firm's functioning lags behind the level of competing organizations.
10. Provides the organization with proven corrective action plans.
11. Allows you to combine the strategy and efforts of the enterprise to improve it.
12. Opens up new technologies and ways of managing a company.
13. Focuses on the main success factors of the company.
14. Allows you to carry out large-scale activities aimed at improving performance.
15. Helps to learn from the experience of partners and competitors. No company has enough time and resources to learn from its mistakes.
16. Creates a culture of continuous improvement.
17. Allows you to reduce the cost of ongoing improvements.
18. Allows approaches to be implemented more quickly and with less risk.
19. Contributes to the improvement of key financial indicators.

Depending on the field of application, benchmarking is classified into:

• Benchmarking the level of customer service.
• Benchmarking of information technologies.
• Benchmarking product characteristics.
• Product quality benchmarking.
• Benchmarking the development and training of employees.
• Benchmarking business process management.
• Phone customer service benchmarking.
• Performance benchmarking.
• Production benchmarking.
• Cost Benchmarking.
• Image benchmarking.
• Benchmarking of personnel management and recruitment, etc.

The history of benchmarking

Benchmarking began to be systematically applied in practice in the 1980s. The pioneer company in the use of this tool is Xerox.

She faced a foreign organization that competes with her and has a higher performance in most indicators. Xerox management decided to find out what the secret of the competitor's advantage was in order to reach its level or even get ahead of it. The task was divided into several components, which made it possible to answer the questions:

1. Which company's products, services and business processes can be considered the best?
2. What allowed this company to reach such results?

After Xerox, other organizations began to resort to the use of benchmarking, the scope of its application was expanded, and the methodology was finalized. The range of problems studied has become much wider, that is, the search for advanced methods of doing business has begun to be carried out not only in competing companies, but also in other organizations both in their industry and in those adjacent to it.

Recently, the search for answers to the second of the identified benchmarking questions has been improved. But observing and describing the methods of conducting the activities of organizations that are leaders is not enough. Separately, a rather difficult component of the task is the implementation of these methods in your enterprise.

The trends in management in the 1980s did not bypass benchmarking either. This period was marked by the development of the concept of integrated quality management (Total Quality Management, TQM). The popularity of this concept was very high in the next 10 years.

Benchmarking is based on principles that are fully consistent with the concept of Total Quality Management. According to some experts, benchmarking is a tool without which it is impossible to implement TQM.

Be that as it may, the basis and concept of integrated quality management and benchmarking is the desire for high quality of the company's business processes, its products, and services.

TQM and benchmarking are components of the corporate culture of continuous improvement, involvement of personnel in the organization's business processes and customer orientation.

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Why is benchmarking so popular today? Jason Grason Jr., head of International Benchmarking Clearinghouse cites these reasons:

1. global competition

Businesses are now globalized, and companies are realizing that it is essential to comprehensively and in detail study and then implement the best achievements of partners and competitors if they want to survive.

1. Quality reward

Recently, there have been more and more campaigns at the state level, during which enterprises that are leaders in terms of quality are identified and rewarded. To take part in such a program, a company must not only prepare a presentation of the competitive advantages of its products. In the arsenal of tools for managing an organization, benchmarking must be present.

1. The need for widespread adaptation and use of world achievements in the field of production and business technologies

Any organization, regardless of size and field of activity, needs to constantly study and implement best practices in the field of production processes and business technologies. This will keep you ahead of your competitors.

Types of company benchmarking

You need to know how process benchmarking differs from results benchmarking. Performance benchmarking simply compares performance. But in reality, benchmarking is meant to penetrate the processes behind the results; determine why performance indicators differ; borrow ideas that have been successfully implemented in practice.

It is not easy to categorize benchmarking activities because many companies that practice them ignore the recommended templates.

Internal benchmarking

It is used to compare different indicators of the same organization. For example, a chain of retail outlets can compare traffic to their stores. The approach has a number of advantages: it is not difficult to obtain data, there are no problems associated with access to information. But there are also disadvantages: internal benchmarking does not provide for the search, study and implementation of the best achievements of competitors.

Competitive benchmarking

This tool involves comparing results and business processes across organizations. Conducting competitive benchmarking is not a problem for companies that can obtain information about the activities of competing organizations from reports and reviews published by them that are freely available. If access to such information is closed, then benchmarking is possible only if competitors are willing to share information.

Competitive benchmarking is practiced in the entertainment industry. Organizations in this sector provide each other with safety data, because if an accident occurs at an attraction in one park, this will serve as anti-advertising for everyone else.

Functional benchmarking

It is based on a comparison of results and processes in one business function carried out in different sectors of the economy. The ability to compare is due to the nature of the processes, and not the areas with which the activities of the organizations of interest are related.

An example of such benchmarking is the comparison of administrative functions (for example, work with personnel). It is less problematic to compare a certain function of your enterprise with a similar one in companies in other industries, since in this case there is no competition, and information exchange is more likely.

Functional benchmarking allows you to be innovative in solving problems, as it can be used to explore ways to solve problems in other industries.

General benchmarking

Involves the study of innovative solutions developed in other companies, which are not associated with either a specific function or sector.

In the UK, for example, the postal service took a chemical company as a model for safety compliance. The health and safety environments of these organizations vary greatly, but learning about certain processes has helped the postal service learn a lot.

Principles by which company benchmarking is carried out

No. 1. Reciprocity

Benchmarking involves the need to interact, come to an agreement, exchange data in order to benefit each of its participants. But reciprocity cannot be achieved if you act blindly. First, you need to outline the boundaries of the range of information, agree on the procedure for exchanging information, the logic of the study.

Each partner must be sure that the behavior of other benchmarking participants will not go beyond the agreed limits. If the rules are followed by everyone, the result of the study will be brilliant. All conditions must be agreed in advance.

No. 2. Analogy

Similarity needed operational processes participating companies. Any process can be evaluated, the main thing is that its results can be applied by researchers in the context of their organization. The success of benchmarking is guaranteed if there is an analogy of processes and the selection of partners according to certain criteria.

Number 3. Measurement

Benchmarking compares the parameters defined for several organizations in order to find out why they are different and how to achieve better values. It is most important to determine the main parameters of the process, then it becomes possible to improve them after the process has been studied.

No. 4. Reliability

Benchmarking should be based on factual data, accurate analysis and study of processes, and not just intuition.

Company benchmarking: 4 stages

Stage number 1. Training

1. First you need to choose the object of competitive benchmarking. It is necessary to study how significant and relevant the selected object is, with the help of which the tasks and main functions of the enterprise are performed. In this process, the most difficult stages are singled out, bottlenecks and the most interesting areas are looked for.
2. In the second stage, thresholds are set to determine the success score. Subsequently, when considering the selected objects, some of the most significant aspects of the activity with the help of financial units will be taken into account. These aspects can be: costs, time, quality level, etc.
3. To make the analysis results more accurate and capacious, you need to use additional sources of information, such as: fairs, seminars, reports, business plans, target audience surveys, supplier surveys, exchange processes, inspection of production facilities, reference Information, chambers of commerce and industry, mass media, literary sources.
4. At this stage, you need to look for organizations for comparative analysis. The search should be carried out not only in your market sector. By studying businesses in other industries, you can learn about the most determined and innovative ways of working that will work for you as well. And if you are not a competitor for the selected company, then the likelihood that it will provide you with the data necessary for analysis and comparison is higher.

Stage number 2. Analysis

1. Identification of processes, services, goods and technologies with the least efficiency and identification of the reasons why they are inefficient, based on the values ​​and factors of the enterprise selected at the previous stage.
2. The choice of directions that will improve the efficiency of business processes and technologies. Here you will need to find out what is the reason for the advantage of enterprises competing with you.

Stage number 3. Implementation

This stage involves defining the goals of the planned changes and developing a strategy for their implementation.

1. The expected results are discussed in detail. At the same time, it is necessary to realize the need for changes and establish specific goals for the work of the enterprise, taking into account the requirements of new standards and the implemented forms of activity.
2. A detailed action plan is drawn up, the costs of the reorganization are calculated, the employees responsible for the implementation of innovations are identified, a schedule of changes is developed and a forecast of the results of the planned improvements is made.
3. All the developed changes are being implemented in accordance with the developed plan and schedule.

During the implementation of the project, it is necessary to control all the transformations so that you can evaluate how effective the innovations are. In addition, it should be checked whether the work is carried out strictly in accordance with the plan and whether the deadlines are observed.

Stage number 4. Repetition

The development of market methods and processes with high efficiency is very intensive, they are constantly changing and quickly move from the status of innovative to the standard. In this regard, at the fourth stage, it is recommended to connect a continuous process of improving the activities of the enterprise. It is possible to simplify work in this direction by documenting in detail the experience of benchmarking studies.

Companies that have carried out benchmarking: examples from world practice

Competitive benchmarking at Ford

The design parameters and functional properties of Ford Corporation products were significantly inferior to analogues produced by competing enterprises until it began to practice benchmark comparison. The return of the lost market share was possible only if a new, advanced family of passenger cars was created. The bet was made on Taurus.

In order for the developed model to be better than that of competitors, it was necessary to conduct benchmarking. First of all, we identified the most attractive features of the machines on the market for customers. After that, for each of these properties, the best cars in the studied class were determined. Taurus had to reach their level and even surpass it.

The scope of the study was wide. Cars of all world manufacturers were studied. Although they did not directly compete with the Ford Taurus, they were attractive to consumers due to the presence of certain properties. More than 50 models were analyzed according to 400 design parameters.

The company laid the foundations to implement the principles of new car development using the DMADV (Define - Measure - Analyze - Develop - Verify) cycle.

As a result, the Ford car was recognized as the car of the year and came out on top in terms of sales.

Later, design flaws were identified in the Taurus transmission, and the reputation of the car suffered greatly. The model was refined several times, and more and more deviating from the original concept. In the late 1990s Taurus sales decreased from 400 to 60 thousand. The last batch of cars of this model was released in August 2006. The Taurus story showed Ford that competitive benchmarking needs to be done more than once.

Functional benchmarking at General Motors

by General Motors from 1982 to 1984. a benchmarking study was conducted, the purpose of which was to find alternative methods of quality and safety management. In those years, many managers accepted the challenge of W. Edwards Deming: "If Japan can, why can't we?", Which he threw in one program on television (NBC channel).

More attention has been paid to quality as the main distinguishing feature of highly competitive products. Benchmarking involved such famous companies like Hewlett-Packard, 3M, John Deer. Starting the study, General Motors formulated 10 hypotheses about the factors that have the greatest impact on quality. It was necessary to confirm their legitimacy with data on the activities of organizations that are partners in the study.

Benchamrking allowed General Motors to objectively and comprehensively evaluate the quality management systems of the organizations that participated in the study. Employees of the company found out what is the dependence of the overall efficiency of the company on quality management.

The report on the research conducted by General Motors with partners was published in September 1984, while similar data, which allowed the development of the criteria for the Balbridge model and the ISO 9000 series of regulatory documents, appeared in the public domain at the end of 1998.

This advance in knowledge gave the benchmarkers, led by General Motors, some competitive advantage. The quality management systems of these enterprises have been improved, which has made it possible to achieve a higher opinion of consumers about the level of quality of their products compared to the products of other companies.

It is worth noting that General Motors did not systematically and purposefully study the working conditions of the enterprise and the main business processes, although the results of such studies are the basis for the organization's self-improvement. Benchmarking made it possible to determine the main parameters of the quality management system, and they did not repeat it. This approach is typical for most benchmarking studies.

In addition, General Motors has directed efforts to comply with the requirements of the industry standard QS 9000 (a regulatory document developed on the basis of ISO 900 standards taking into account the characteristics of the automotive industry), to participate in competitions for the Malcolm Balbridge award, to master the Six Sigma methodology. However, experience shows that the improvement of the quality management system should be evolutionary.

GIA Group Benchmarking Circle

The Global Intelligence Alliance (GIA) is a group of companies specializing in consulting. They research the market and help establish and operate market research processes.

As part of its activities, the GIA group organizes benchmarking circles, the purpose of which is to meet leaders of market research, discuss and share best practices that are related to various aspects of the management of this research.

The group has conducted more than 40 benchmarking workshops since 1999. These projects have involved market research specialists from 30 organizations. A typical project is to hold 2-4 thematic meetings to discuss issues identified by the project participants, with the support of a consultant from the GIA team.

The benefits that companies derive from such meetings are clear:

• they get best-in-class training and use cases without spending a lot of money;
• adopt the experience of other organizations;
• exchange ideas with specialists with extensive experience in other sectors of the economy;
• learn from the mistakes of other enterprises, which allows them to avoid unnecessary expenses in their activities.

At the heart of the GIA benchmarking process are meetings on various topics. They are carried out in turn by all participants. The duration of the meetings is 6-8 hours. Their themes are not repeated.

The main topics of the meetings are as follows:

• integration of market research and strategic planning;
• integration of market research and marketing activities, sales;
• development of a network for collecting information about the market within the company;
• competitive counterintelligence;
• development of market research reports;
• scheduling scenarios and organizing learning games.

Social media and Nokia benchmarking

The purpose of Nokia's benchmarking research is to support and set new development goals in various areas (logistics, research and development, employee relations). Benchmarking is an integral part of company development projects and training programs.

The company practices various types of research (joint and competitive benchmarking), participates in benchmarking groups, projects on selected topics and in relation to certain organizations. Nokia experts are also conducting broader benchmarking studies. Sharing benchmarking data can also be part of academic research projects involving multiple industrial companies.

New opportunities for research have opened up as social media channels are used not only within the company, but also outside it. Social media contributes to the strengthening of interaction in the course of joint activities. These interactive platforms enable the sharing of knowledge during the planning and preparatory phases, as well as during analysis and implementation of improvements.

External resources such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have become widely used in benchmarking research. In each of these social networks, trade union groups have been created, in which it is possible to discuss in detail topics that are of interest to each participant.

Thanks to the work in social networks and the use of platforms for joint activities, it became possible to take information from additional reliable sources, interact with other organizations, adopting their experience in order to support benchmarking (primarily in the field of open source software projects and related communities). developers).

Nokia has been experimenting with social media to explore new ways to share information and discuss technology advancement. IBM was involved as a partner in these experiments.

Areas of particular interest are open source project methods, the use of 3D virtual spaces to work in a global context at a professional level, software development, and open source innovation.

Professional blogs and wikis, discussion forums such as YouTube and Slideshare are dynamic and direct sources of information, interaction and sharing. The use of social networks is possible at any stage of benchmarking. Internal blogs and wikis also help prepare, conduct research, and share results.

How benchmarking is used in Russia: examples of companies

In our country, benchmarking is not as widespread as in the United States of America and Japan. For example, such studies are regulated and supported by the state abroad, there are special organizations that help to look for benchmarking partners. In Russia, there is no such practice.

The only Russian event held every year that can be considered to support the development of benchmarking is the Government Quality Award. This award allows companies to improve various aspects of their activities, to become the object of reference comparison when conducting research by other enterprises. In addition, the award winners have a good image, consumers perceive them as reliable manufacturers of high quality products. It is easier for such companies to find partners.

Table 1 contains examples of various benchmarking studies carried out by domestic manufacturers

Table 1- Examples of different types of benchmarking by domestic companies

Type of benchmarking	Company name	Comparison object	results
Competitive	Irbit Motorcycle Plant	Restructuring of plant divisions	Decision to close several shops
	Irbit Motorcycle Plant	Motorcycle performance per employee	Improving the skills of employees, reducing equipment downtime
	CJSC "Peter - Star"	Comparison of reporting indicators
	OAO Severstal	Production indicators	Reducing costs, introducing new technologies, expanding the market
	Combine named after Stepan Razin	beer quality	Purchase of new equipment
Functional	Nizhpharm	Display of goods	A new approach to merchandising
Interior	City Clinical Hospital No. 1 of Novosibirsk	The quality of medical care provided	Three winners have been identified who are an example
	Utilities	All activities	Modernization of equipment, a new motivation system for staff, a change in methods of working with consumers

The table shows that Russian enterprises prefer to conduct competitive benchmarking. For example, specialists from the Irbit Motorcycle Plant (IMZ) are exploring the experience Western companies in the following areas:

• the production structure of the enterprise: the goal was to identify which divisions of the company should be left; after the European experience was studied, the leaders decided to sell the foundry, forging and several other workshops, which made it possible to free up funds that contained unnecessary equipment;
• performance efficiency: the Indian company Royal Enfield, which produces motorcycles, was taken as the benchmark; In the course of the study, experts found that the staff of the reference organization is similar to the IMP, but at Royal Enfield there are 25 manufactured units of goods for each employee, and at IMP - 1.7 motorcycles. The following decision was made: to reduce equipment downtime, train employees in additional professions, send them to advanced training courses.

Other areas of the enterprise's activity can be selected as objects of competitive benchmarking, for example:

• performance indicators: specialists from OAO Severstal (a metallurgical plant with a full production cycle) studied the experience of a number of Russian enterprises and 56 Western metallurgical companies; the analysis of the benchmarking results made it possible to identify areas that require changes. It was decided to cut costs, develop the market, introduce new technologies;
• product quality: the leaders of the plant them. Stepan Razin applied to the Baltika company with a request to conduct a comparative analysis of the quality of the drinks produced; benchmarking showed the need to purchase new equipment for beer fermentation; after its launch, the quality of products has become higher;
• reporting indicators: the telecom operator CJSC Peter-Star conducts a comparative analysis of reporting indicators in a certain format with a similar company, Golden Telecom. Comparison of individual performance indicators is carried out with the data of the Svyazinvest organization.

Functional benchmarking is carried out by Nizhpharm. The standard of comparison was the company Wimm Ball Dann, the object of comparison was the display of products in pharmacies.

The results of the study showed that Wimm Bill Dann products always have the best shelf positions. After analyzing the activity of the standard, the Nizhpharm organization changed approaches to merchandising. It turned out that the most advantageous place for placing medicines in pharmacies are the shelves to the right of the checkout window.

Another type of benchmarking is internal. It is used when it is necessary to analyze the processes or work of personnel in one company. An example of such a study is the internal benchmarking of banking organizations, as well as the main clinical hospital No. 1 in the city of Novosibirsk.

In the second case, the quality of medical care provided by each of the departments of the hospital was studied. According to the results of the study, three leaders were chosen. Their experience became an example for the rest of the departments, who tried to apply it.

Although benchmarking is used by a number of Russian enterprises, it has not yet become widespread in our country. In order to successfully carry it out, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of domestic companies. The full and successful application of benchmarking in Russia is hampered by the following reasons:

1. The ethical culture of enterprises is inferior due to underdevelopment.
2. There is no practice of conducting benchmarking studies in Russia.
3. National accounting has certain features.
4. Management accounting procedures are not used sufficiently.
5. Companies do not trust the benchmarks they choose and benchmarking partners.

Typical company benchmarking mistakes

• To learn is not to use

Researching the activities of an enterprise operating in your industry does not mean extracting useful experience. It is not enough to get certain data you are interested in, you need to organize a benchmarking process in order to understand what is behind it.

• Blindly following standards

For example, a study showed that the cost of a particular operation in a benchmark company is $1. You don't have to aim for that number at all. It may well turn out that you will not be able to apply the chosen benchmark to your customers, or to the market, or to resources. The standard of comparison must be selected one whose situation is similar to yours.

• Forgotten interests of the consumer

It happens that some enterprises, studying the experience of successful companies and directing all efforts to reduce the cost of operations, bringing them closer to the "reference", completely forget about consumers. If you reduce costs, then with a high probability the service will deteriorate, as a result, customers will be lost, the business will decline. The approach to solving any issues must be balanced.

• Complicating the task

What indicators do you study as part of benchmarking? A process is a set of tasks, and a system is a set of processes. Studying and evaluating the entire system is not possible; these are long and expensive processes. Select one or more processes from the system, study in detail. After that, start exploring the next part.

• strange direction

Don't dwell on topics that don't align with your strategy and goals, or that conflict with other firm initiatives. There should be monitoring of benchmarking projects by strategists to ensure they are not irrelevant.

• "Slippery" concepts

If you choose a topic that is very difficult to work through, then you will waste a lot of effort. One such topic is corporate communications. If you want the ongoing research to benefit you and your company, then highlight from this area of ​​​​activity the main goals for implementation that can be rigorously measured (for example, dissemination of memos around the enterprise).

• indefinite basis

The essence of this mistake is to study the experience of other companies without a preliminary analysis of their own activities. Benchmarking involves the need to have data on the performance of your company. This information may be provided by the organization to research partners in exchange for information of interest to it.

• Ill-conceived questions

There is a benchmarking etiquette, and its main rule is: do not ask your partner questions, the answers to which can be easily found in the literature.

• Spy passions

Partners need to know what data you need, how you will process it, who will have access to it, what is the purpose of its use. Ideally, when the participants in the benchmarking study enter into a formal agreement among themselves, which stipulates these issues.

To avoid mistakes when benchmarking using social media, contacting professionals will help.