Benchmark Type and its Features

Bench-marking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost.Bench-marking is used to measure performance using a specific indicator (cost per unit of measure, productivity per unit of measure, cycle time of x per unit of measure or defects per unit of measure) resulting in a metric of performance that is then compared to others.

There are 4 types of bench-marking methods. At the very first there are two common types of bench-marking methods, from which other bench-marking types are derived.

Types of Bench-marking

1. External bench-marking:
It is a process of comparing the organizational methods and performance with the other peers of the same industry.

2. Internal bench-marking:
It is a process of comparing the various methods and performance internally within the organization. In this internal bench-marking, the internal performances of various departments across the varied locations in the organization are compared.

3. Competitive bench-marking:
In competitive bench-marking, your performance is compared with the direct competitors. Data collection is considered tough here but one can gain more inner ideas about the competitor’s performance and its reasons.

4. Industry bench-marking:
In this type of bench-marking, the comparison is made with the leaders in the field. In this category, data collection can be considered tough and tedious but you should know that you’re comparing with the leaders and pioneers in business.

Features of Bench-marking
Bench-marking has various features which contribute a lot overall to the organization in terms of growth, development of new divisions, new technology adaptations and many more.

Here are the few features of bench-marking which makes it a successful method.

1. Good impact on customer’s needs:

Feedback is always important for any organization. By using various bench-marking methods, the organization gains good customer feedback.This is because it helps to improvise the needs of the customer, meet the quality level expectancy and better delivery speed.

2. Helps in raising company standards:

Bench-marking contributes to raising the company standards by comparing it with various performers in the market.For example, by the process of bench-marking the organization might be able to raise the overall standard of the equipment used in production etc.

3. Betterment in learning methodologies:

Bench-marking works towards the improvement in various learning methodologies adopted by the organization. It helps the organization to learn new methods, adopt new ideas, and new work model etc.

4. Get inspirations from the pioneers:

Bench-marking gives inspiration from various pioneers of the market.For example, it the various inspirational stories of the leaders in the market and encourages the employees to do bigger innovations.

5. Strengthening the weakness:

When something is not appropriate or up to the mark, benchmarking helps the organization to recover from the mistake happened by throwing some light on the areas which have to be altered, and new ideas to improve the losses occurred.

6. Enhances the learning experience:

Bench-marking gathers information about the educational standards of the other organizations and new learning techniques followed.By this, it motivates the employees of the organization to get a better education.

7. Keeps in pace with new technology:

Bench-marking helps the organization to adopt new technologies which is prevailing in the market and which is successfully adopted by many organizations.

8. Strives for the organization’s force on success:

Bench-marking helps the organization to stay focused on the overall well being of the organization by displaying the various market demands, customer expectations and the net profit gained by other organizations.By this, it will make the employees force externally and not only about the internal factors.

9. Works for employees career growth:

Bench-marking not only does welfare for the organizational growth but also encourages employees career growth by supporting and encouraging them in bringing better outputs, and also helping them in eradicating the mistakes committed by them in their previous product developments.