Benchmarking Strategies

Like top-notch athletes, corporations need to stay in fighting shape to compete. And assessing the fitness-both functionally and financially-of every corporate operation and activity is the role played by the benchmarking process. Not simply a detailed company physical that isolates operational weaknesses and fiscal bloat, when effectively implemented, benchmarking also represents the cure-a set of best practice guidelines for maximizing performance, guiding the company toward corporate health, while cleaning up operating inefficiencies and financial waste.
Written by a leading benchmarking authority, Benchmarking Strategies is a state-of-the-art how-to manual for transforming your organization into a lean, optimally performing endurance runner-no matter what sort of shape your company is in now. In a practical, user-friendly format, Reider helps you identify just what sort of businesses your company is in (and not in), develop a set of benchmarks and basic business principles as part of a corporate strategic plan, identify areas or functions that need improvement, implement best practices in a companywide program of continuous improvement, and develop performance measures to chart genuine gains as a learning organization.
A best practice is defined not simply as an operational change that is cost effective, but one that moves the company toward fulfilling the expectations of its stakeholders (from boards of directors, CEOs, and frontline employees to vendors and customers). The book then offers a practical vision of achievable excellence in which every activity affects every other and every employee and department is a shaper of corporate destiny. In clear, practical language, Benchmarking Strategies de-cants the often unwieldy theory behind corporate improvement into expert advice on:
* Benchmarking principles, techniques, and implementation
* Identifying your company's basic operational principles
* Benchmarks for organizational growth-including cost