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Compare competitive strengths and weaknesses. |
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When Coke and Pepsi engage in competitive battles, or when P&G determines how to increase market share, these organizations use competitive marketing research as an input ingredient. When Xerox determined it wanted to be a world-class competitor, it benchmarked every process to determine how to make that process the best in class. |
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Comparisons of attributes can be made in several ways: either a direct competitive comparison of strengths and weaknesses or benchmarking that studies comparable processes in any other organization. Benchmarking is a learning experience that "steals shamelessly" from friend and foe alike. |
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When Ford benchmarked six other well-run companies, it found the following key attributes: executives spent time outside their offices communicating with employees, people and their skills were a competitive advantage, trust replaced controls, cross-functional teams developed cutting-edge products and services, bureaucracy was out, teams were in, authority was delegated, training was readily available, and each benchmarked company said it was customer driven. |
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At IBM Rochester, the manufacturing cycle time for a computer system was 246 days from ordering parts to shipping. Through benchmarking, the cycle time was reduced to less than 30 days. As people on the benchmarking team observed successful new practices elsewhere, they readily accepted the need for change. |
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When an international electronics company benchmarked its plants by function, it found several plants had extremely efficient manufacturing processes and immediately adopted the more efficient processes throughout the organization. |
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A Fortune 500 company benchmarked attributes other large organizations considered key to success. The best companies listed processes that achieved results as the keys to success while less successful ones ignored the process and simply listed the resultsas though each was unaware of the fact that process performance determines results. |
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"Bench racing" can be a good way to connect vision and reality. The idea comes from runners sitting on the bench and imagining themselves racing around the track outrunning competitors. This technique offers an opportunity to visualize your journey through obstacles to a successful finish.
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