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Please briefly comment on these 2 posts. 1-Now I will be the first to admit that before I got to college and truly started diving deeper into my management and business classes, I had no idea about the term of benchmarking as this is not typically a subject that comes up often in high school classrooms. With that being said, I feel that it is necessary to first define what benchmarking is that way we can better understand the questions within the discussion moving forward. Benchmarking is defined as the process of measuring products, services, and processes against those of organizations known to be leaders in one or more aspects of their operations (ASQ, 2022). This is a huge aspect in the world of business because in order for us to see how we stand against those with similar organizations we must use benchmarking to our advantage. Another key factor about benchmarking that I feel is worth pointing out, is the fact that benchmarking can be useful in helping an organization identify areas within the organization that could use some improvement.
When speaking about ratios and their use in benchmarking, financial ratios are tools used to assess the relative strength of companies by performing simple calculations on items on income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements (Ingram, 2019). Ratios are very important when discussing benchmarks because they almost work as assist tools because they will break down things like the income statement and balance sheet to help show where the company thrives and where the company needs to think about upgrades. When asked about evidence of a company’s strategy working, I feel that the best evidence is the organization’s income statement and balance sheets because these two things do not lie about a business and when you begin to slack on certain things within a business, the income statement and the balance sheet will reflect these things which indicates that the current strategy is not working best for the business. Benchmarking is also very useful for comparing your current goals with those of rival organizations because you can take your current numbers and line hem up with those of your competition which helps you visualize if that rival company is performing better than you which is the opposite of what we are looking for in a business. One thing to keep in mind is that competitive benchmarking involves a strategy called a competitive analysis which is looking at the practice behind the metrics used in benchmarking which helps us understand when our competition is either doing well or struggle (Brandwatch, 2017). The one thing I like about benchmarking is as stated that it can help you know when a competitor is either struggling or doing well and both cases are a time where reevaluating your own strategy is a good thing to do to ensure you either stay ahead of the competition or begin to catch your competition if they are doing well.
The last thing that I want to point out in this discussion about benchmarking is that this is a system that seemingly all organizations use, and it is clear as to why they use this strategy. Benchmarking is a tool that while can help you understand where the business is thriving and where it is not, benchmarking can also be very useful when trying to figure out if your rival companies are either doing well for themselves or if they are struggling to currently make ends meet. In my honest opinion, and maybe some will disagree, I believe that all companies around the world should implement benchmarking into their company in order to see true results from within the company.
2-Benchmarking is great tool that is primarily used to determine if a particular performance level or goal is being met by an individual or company. “Simply stated, benchmarks are the ‘what’, and benchmarking is the ‘how’” (Stroud , 2014). Benchmarking should be used at various points throughout the fiscal year. It is also a good idea to broaden the scope of your benchmarks to include data from competitors.
Benchmarking can be divided into three groups, internal, competitive, and strategic. Internal benchmarking is what one may expect. Benchmarking that looks within the company’s best practices. Competitive benchmarking assists in determining the company’s position within the industry. Strategic benchmarking is often used “when a company needs to go outside of its own industry” (Stroud , 2014).
Benchmarking is not a one step process. The company must identify process gaps that exist in what they are currently doing. It is a good idea to reach out to executive leadership for approval and support. Documentation of what the objectives are, the scope, the current process being reviewed, and the metrics that will serve as a guide. The team should identify a plan for collection of data and analytics. Once data is compiled, it is measured against those pre-determined metrics and applied to the gaps identified and a plan for implementation of process changes is developed. (Stroud , 2014)
With my industry we have a huge focus on quality measures. At a minimum of quarterly, but as a best practice monthly, we hold Quality Assurance, Performance Improvement (QAPI) meetings. These meetings are essentially benchmark meetings. We review data as it relates to customer care items such as falls, falls with injury, pain, re-hospitalization, etc. We measure this data against sister facilities, state numbers, and national numbers. As we trend low in one area, we focus on that area by reviewing our current process, gathering trended data, and working to improve and implement a new process. This not only helps us have a competitive edge, but it assures we live true to our mission and core values. Our mission is to provide high quality health care with every day compassion. The more we improve ourselves, the better we live that mission.
