Benchmarking Methodology

8 Steps to Benchmarking

Step 1 of the Benchmarking Methodology - Identify e-Service or e-Domain

e-services

Usually, the need for benchmarking arises quite naturally. You may have thought that a particular e-service should be introduced and you want to see how other have done it; or you have received feedback from customers that your e-service isn't very efficient or user friendly. You may be wondering why potential clients are not adopting your new e-service.

e-domains

Your need for benchmarking maybe more strategic in nature. For example you wish to see why you approach to e-government, e-learning, e-commerce, e-health etc., are not succeeding to achieve the necessary citizen usage you need to reduce the operating costs of providing such services. Perhaps another country is doing it differently. You may have failed to achieve the international ranking you had hoped for or think you deserve.

Whatever the reason for wanting to benchmark your services or strategies against other organizations or countries you should ensure the reason is well founded and their are clear objectives - benchmarking CAN be very time consuming and costly.

Fortunately, there are many ways in which you can keep costs to a minimum and benchmarking can be an exceptionally useful approach to achieving world-class performance, improve user satisfaction and adoption rates and achieve commensurate levels of savings. A sensible and pragmatic approach to establishing your own in-house Benchmarking Methodology can go a long way to help you be successful and cost effective.

The savings from implementing the recommendations that come out of a benchmarking exercise can greatly outweigh the costs of the benchmarking exercise itself.

However, whatever you chose to benchmark remember the vital component of any benchmarking methodology lies in the interpretation - the benchmark needs to be 'interpreted' through a gap analysis, realistic doable recommendations made....then properly implemented.

Step 2 of the Benchmarking Methodology - Form Benchmarking Team

It is best if the benchmark team include researchers and project managers who have real practical e-service or e-domain development experience on the ground and have experience with the proposed service area.

Your Benchmarking Methodology should ensure that careful consideration be given to the make-up of the team Having the right range of experience enables them to not only gather relevant information, use known information, sift through the hype which often surrounds national endeavors, and adapt the best practices to the local situation and prioritize for maximum impact at a cost that won't 'break the bank'! See benchmark services

One word of warning - DON'T leave it all to outsiders! A hybrid (mixed) team works best - internal and external. It is important that the project team consists of an appropriate mix of people - not just technicians!

It is also important that any benchmarking initiative be supported by an authoritative sponsor - after all, there is not much point finding a better way to build a mousetrap if no one has the authority to build it! And make sure that the sponsor is either part of the team or at the very least totally familiarized with the Benchmarking Methodology being used and their role in it.

Kicking off a Benchmarking Project

Benchmarking should be treated like any other project. All the rules of team formation, planning, delivery, change, monitoring and eventual closure should be undertaken - so follow a sound project methodology ... for more on project methodology and management

In addition, the team should be bonded from the outset - so that everyone knows what approach will be taken, the scope of the project and their role in it.

They should commence collecting relevant data about existing services or strategies from the outset and this exercise should be managed formally and can be a useful way to bond the team - what better way than to bring relevant information to a meeting and discuss with the group?

Consider a Benchmarking Methodology as a prelude to Change Management and Project or Program Management and you won't go far wrong. Align these three Methodologies in your organization and you will be ready for any change!

Step 3 of the Benchmarking Methodology - Analyze Current e-service or e-domain

The objective here is to fully understand the current state of the e-domain, e-service or e-services. If this was not the first strategy to be be developed - how effective has that strategy been, were KPI's established and if so - have they been achieved.

The aim must be to be able to measure the success of any benchmarking exercise - otherwise their would be little point in doing it! The object of the exercise, remember, is to find better ways to do something based on what others are doing - if you cannot compare then it will be a waste of time and money - amybe a solution looking for a problem!!

So, if it is an e-service - you will need to define the current scope of the existing e-service (or manual service), document the service flow, measure the time taken to fulfill that service - end to end and at key stages, the cost of providing that service, the demand for the service, volumes, potential volumes, customer satisfaction surveys etc.

One of the best ways to do this is to get the team together to brainstorm all of the information you will need to collect to know the current service and where or who to get the information/data from. IT people should be good at this so consider having a seasoned well practiced business analyst with a lot of practical experience in the area facilitate an online or on site meeting.

Once the current e-service has been thoroughly analyzed and performance measurements taken and as much about the current system as possible is known - then it is wise for the team to brainstorm the deficiencies and any 'must keep' benefits of the current system against the reasons for undertaking the benchmark in the first instance (Step 1).

The team must leave this stage with a crystal clear view of what they are hoping to achieve from the benchmarking .... we will benchmark other organization in order to:

You get the idea - SMART (specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely ... for more on setting SMART objectives visit this useful site at an Australian University

There are lots of sites I could have sent you to .. but this one is designed for the education practitioner and adds a valuable personal perspective to setting SMART goals which can and should be translated for the stakeholders in any proposed e-service - customers and users (Did I forget to tell you that you should ensure that you know all those individuals or groups that have a vested interest in the outcome - stakeholders).

Perhaps the most important - is the individual's,group's, or segment's WIIFM - 'What's In It For Me - think long and hard about value for the end user/s and stakeholders. After all take-up and adoption of an e-service or e-domains e-service portfolio, e.g. e-health services is often the reason direct or indirect (savings) we undertake a benchmark in the first place!

Step 4 of the Benchmarking Methodology - Identify Benchmarking Partners or Countries

e-services

So your team knows everything there is to know about the current state of their e-service or e-domain and they sre fully committed to following the Benchmarking Methodology - now you need to find candidates to benchmark against - Logical Hey!

If for example, its an e-service - then you will need to find similar organizations that offer similar services and are prepared to work with you. They may need to host visits from your team, provide performance data and flow diagrams of their e-services.

Mmmh! they may feel their is a conflict of interest - perhaps it is well not to approach any organization that might consider it a competitive disadvantage to them!

The best way to approach this is to broadcast a proposal to benchmark to organizations that may not be in your area of influence and make it mutually beneficial...you will share findings with them and the group so what you find out from the groups of 'benchmarkees'is shared with the entire group. There we go again - WIIFM is the key, create real value for them and you are much more likely to get a positive collaboration.

If you are an e-service expert.com service member you could post that request for benchmarking partners right here...not a service member yet... Check out our Membership Center

e-domains

If its is an e-domain, e.g. e-health strategy, e-commerce strategy, e-gov. strategy, etc. then you key concern will be to chose countries that have an abundance of published data and data in a language your researchers can understand!

You can often get a lot of information from organizations set up to assist in the transfer of knowledge in this area, e.g. OECD, UN, WHO, EU, etc. Many of these organizations publish global rankings. However, be aware that:

1. Some countries publish a great deal more information than others with much freely available information in the public domain, and some are overtly commercial. The latter aim to ultimately sell their knowledge and services from government backed companies from their country under the guise of collaboration. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but be aware you could have hooked a tiger by its tail!

2. In addition, many countries inflate their achievements to increase their global standing.
3. Global rankings should also be treated with a degree of skepticism for the following reasons:

   A) They often reflect what is considered to be best practice well after that best practice has been developed - so they can hardly be considered as 'leading edge'! Underlying areas (pillars) of analysis are for reasons of comparison not changed until they have gained a measure of acceptance around the world.

   B) Countries can sometimes climb the global rankings without doing anything - a recent case saw major rises for some countries in some global competitiveness rankings due to an underlying pillar being economic stability. This favored some countries that survived the recent economic downturn - like Australia and Switzerland driving countries impacted by the downturn like USA, UK, etc., down the rankings. This had little to do with the strategies these countries had adopted to become more globally competitive!!

   C) Many countries see the global rankings as some sort of 'super league' and the justification of there vision to become the leading nation in the world for doing business online or the provision of e-government services.

   The question you should pose is if countries all follow the same best practices and recommended approaches, global best practices, rankings etc - how will any one country differentiate itself as a winner??

   Surely, the answer is to follow so far (get the basics done - for sure!) but there comes a time when some genius is required.

As we all know genius doesn't have to be a based on the development of an entirely new concept (which it can) - but on a radical twist of an old idea! For an article on this aspect of the knowledge economy visit Here

Consider building into YOUR Benchmarking Methodology a formalized approach (selection criteria, etc.) to partnering - you could forge powerful strategic alliances for the future

Summary, choose your benchmarking partners carefully!

Step 5 of the Benchmarking Methodology - Undertake Benchmarking & Identify Best Practices

e-domains

After the warning given in Step 4 above - do you really want to identify Best Practices used by other countries...if all it does is make your achievements the same as theirs. Yes! there are many reasons to follow the crowd - getting the fundamentals right is vitally important.

For example, developing the accessibility, speed and coverage of your communications infrastructure is vital to providing any sort of e-service at all! However, as technology changes, converges and explodes in all directions - what seemed the best way a few years ago maybe far from the best way to do it now.

Benchmarking to a solid benchmarking methodology will help you identify not only best practices but trends, new ideas that have not achieved 'best practice status' yet. Remember at the end of the day - you need to prepare an action plan that works for your country or organization.

Research is key - but research by people that have practical experience in development, implementation and are well able to ascertain the practical advantages and nuances that may be extracted from what others are doing .... is of paramount importance!!

If you detected that as a plug for e-service expert.com benchmarking services ... you are absolutely right ... and will therefore treat benchmarking with the degree of cautiousness that will make for a positive outcome to Your Benchmarking Methodology.

Seriously though, knowing what you are looking for is half the battle as is knowing how to spot 'the same old mistakes'!

You can see examples of e-domain benchmarking on this site Country Reports- but recognize that this is simply the research that precedes the full gap analysis, recommendations and preparation of an action plan followed by the implementation project that follows.

e-services

The biggest thing to remember here is that when you analyze the e-service DO NOT confine yourself to an internal view. You are benchmarking an end-to-end process. It is as likely, possibly more likely, that you will find high impact practices that extend well beyond your traditional service boundaries and those of the organizations you have chosen to benchmark.

Many governments and a great many private sector organizations adopt the traditional bricks and mortar...it goes something like this - I have a service that I have provided using traditional methods...I need to turn it into an e-service - this is the content I will e-enable (Wrong)

Why?

The short answer to this is e-service traffic. For example, if as a local authority or city council you have determined that if every time a citizen wants to report an abandoned vehicle outside their house or a pot hole in the road or some such rare occurrence for the individual, but perhaps representing a large volume of transactions for the authority as a whole (pardon the pun!) you will make huge savings through being able to report and handle these services online ... you may be disappointed!

Because it is a such a rare occurrence for the individual they are more likely to phone or call into the local office - robbing you of the chance to save considerable transactional costs.

To attract a citizen to uses the service for all of their occasional requirements you may need to see how other services can be bundled in with it to make it a more obvious value based decision for the citizen to be online at your e-service site. That is why some countries are now moving towards bundling in private sector services e.g motor vehicle licensing (public sector) with motor vehicle insurance or breakdown recovery (Private Sector), embedding government services in private sector sites and adding such things as social networks.

When benchmarking e-services at you benchmark partners look to see how they attract traffic if their adoption rates and popularity of their services is better than yours. Of course you won't know that if you do not measure it (Step 3) rates.

Traditional services say find a high traffic site, build a shop, provide a good service and people will use that service - location, location, location!

In the online world - life is different, people will largely be looking for information - provide valuable information such that they visit your site as a first point of call not the last resort! The new maxim is Content, Content, Content! Content attracts traffic - then an only then can an e-service convert this to service use or monetization in the private sector.

Step 6 of the Benchmarking Methodology - Undertake a Gap Analysis

Here you interpret the way others are going about the task to achieve the end results you desire - (Step 1) and through measurement of their approaches you compare what they are achieving with what you are achieving (Step 3). Select possible practices - strategic or tactical e-service designs list them and prioritize them

It is helpful for the team to meet to brainstorm the selection criteria that will be used to select the most promising approaches to be included in your preliminary action plan.

Include more than you will ultimately implement as you will find that some will not translate into your organization or the local environment, yet others will, on further investigation prove less beneficial or more problematic than first anticipated.

Look for common threads of success in your benchmark partners approaches but do not let that blind you to the 'out of the box' approach that may be proving successful for less than obvious reasons and may only be being undertaken at one of your benchmark partners.

Measurement maybe the only way you can pick-up on these gems! Identifying the effect ahead of the cause or spotting a trend that holds promise for the future.

Sometimes the selection of practices that you wish to focus on may seem contradictory or conflict with one another. In such instances you may want to consider some form of facilitated decision conferencing to help you weigh all the factors... Decision Conferencing Services

The final result should be a well described list of potential action areas with a list of the key parameters associated with each and the anticipate performance improvements expected. This will enable you to present this as a prioritized list (In report form) to the sponsor (if they were not present at a decision conferencing event) in order to take it to the next stage (Step 7).

Step 7 of the Benchmarking Methodology - Initiate and Action Plan to Implement Best Practices

Caution... You are about to initiate a project - possibly a portfolio of projects (one for each initiative) or program (where the various projects have a common goal)!

If you conduct the projects correctly following a sound project methodology you will ensure that at any stage the review process will be prepared to weed out any initiative at any point when that initiative becomes untenable - rather than pursue a lost cause. So make sure you now treat these projects appropriately, use proven project methodologies and tools, adopt the necessary change management that is needed to ensure the complete transformation of services.

Well! you should be well on your way to benefiting from a solid approach to benchmarking and establishing a good benchmarking methodology.

You may also have identified areas where e-service-expert.com services could help and also keep the costs down whilst increasing the likely benefits you achieve from benchmarking your e-services or your e-domain strategies.

But there is more....

Step 8 of the Benchmarking Methodology - Assessing & Monitoring Achievements and Re-Benchmarking

Like all good projects you should constantly monitor (measure) performance that results from the implementation of the changes - that is the only way you will know whether you are successful and whether there is the possibility of squeezing out some more efficiencies or customer satisfaction!

Remember also that you need to keep your benchmarking partners informed of your findings and achievements - that is part of the deal (Step 4).

I hope this brief introduction to Benchmarking Methodology has helped you and leads to a successful benchmarking exercise in your organization and the permanent establishment of a benchmarking methodology....Did I say permanent?

Yes! With change avalanching down on our heads, convergent technology opportunities and the need for rapid change an in-house benchmarking capability (you can outsource it too - just so long as you have the ability to swing into action quickly and effectively!)as part of your project organization and as a prelude to change - remember continuous change is the mantra for the 21st. Century.

Finally - like all methodologies, this Benchmarking Methodology is there to guide you. Slavishly following any methodology or 'best practice' will in itself not guarantee great results - only YOU can do that!

Use the Benchmarking Methodology as a guide and feel free to adjust it to suit your local conditions and your collaboration partners. Mix and Match you benchmarking teams and partners - but make benchmarking a regular cost effective success modeling technique.

Happy Benchmarking