(Professional Business Analyst Training

organisation)

BENCHMARKING

Introduction

The term ‘benchmark’ originally meant a assessors mark as a point of reference. It has come to mean anything taken as a point of reference or a point of comparison. In general sense therefore benchmarking mean’s setting standards which act’s as a point of reference.

In business benchmarking has come to mean variety of things. It has assumed a very special significance in today’s competitive world. It is now recognised as an effective approach towards improvement of productivity/quality & other dimensions of performances that determines competitiveness.Benchmarking is used as a guideline to collect business & user requirement.

Origin of Benchmarking

In general sense benchmarking has been with humans since business has started its operations early during civilisation days. From earlier times, traders have sought to compete by offering better, cheaper and varied type of products. In order to do this they used to compare with standard norms available then.

Traditional BA (Waterfall) Agile BA

Requirements are documented in Use Cases,Business Requirements, Functional requirements, UI Specifications, Business Rules.

Requirements are documented in Epics, User Stories and optionally Business (or Essential) Use cases.

   

Focuses on completeness of requirement and spends time in ensuring the requirement is unambiguous and has all the details.

Focuses on understanding the problem and being the domain expert so that s/he can answer questions from the development team swiftly and decisively.

Focuses on getting a ‘sign off’ on the requirements.

Focuses on ensuring the requirements meet the currentbusiness needs, even if it requires updating them.

Often there is a wall between the BA/Business and the Development team.

Agile BA (Often called as Product Owner) is part of the team.

Tends to dictate solutions.Has to remain in the problem domain, leaving the development team ‘space’ to explore different solutions.

Long turnaround. Quick turnaround.

Focus on what the requirements document said. In other words, output (Artifact) is a well written thorough requirements document.

Focus on the functionality of the developed software. In other words, output (Artifact) is the software that meets thebusiness needs.

   

After the advent of Industrial revolution the business processes have become more compounded. statistical quality control etc have evolved.

Role of Benchmarking•The role of benchmarking is to provide management team with knowledge of what gets ‘best performance’ or ‘superior performance’ in a particular field.•Best performance relates to output, efficiency, quality and & other measurement relevant to performing the job. •Benchmarking not only investigates what best practice means in terms of performance but also examine how best practices is achieved.

Benchmarking is therefore not only the practice of obtaining measurements but also involves understanding the conditions resources and competence necessary to deliver top performance.

No single department or company can corner the market on all good ideas in view of this it makes good sense to consider the experience of others.

By systematically studying the best practices and by innovative adaptations an organisation can accelerate the progresses of improvement.

Benchmarking and Total Quality Management is a long-term commitment to satisfying customer requirements in every aspect of business operations.

Companies who adopt this approach make a commitment to continuous improvement. Often a team approach is adopted under management leadership to identify areas of improvement implement solutions. Increasingly benchmarking is being adopted by organisations that are striving for continuous improvement because it offers an external perspective in the quest for service quality.

Re-engineering is “radical redesign of business processes” whereas benchmarking is “finding and implementing best practices”.Through Benchmarking best practices can be unearthed and when these practices form basis for the new design of the process then it is called Re-engineering. Thus Benchmarking is essential to Re-engineering but still a necessary stand-alone tool.

Learning AspectFind and implement best practices for high performance processes that full satisfy customer needs.Benchmarking in normal words is to develop unique standards which lead to high accomplishment in any business.Benchmarks are measurements to gauge the deed of a action & procedure to achieve the same.

♦ Target Position / State ( “Best Practices”) ♦ Guiding Position / Standard Value ♦ Progressive appearance of a suitable

boundary. Benchmarking = Process of handling & dealing with benchmarks.

Areas to Benchmark ♦ Key business processes ♦ Areas of customer dissatisfaction ♦ Applications with swiftly moving

knowledge ♦ Areas of employee dissatisfaction ♦ Processes where transparency exceeds

assessment

Benefits of Benchmarking ♦Widen practical drawn out goals and planned

targets ♦ Establishes realistic, actionable objectives for

implementation ♦ Provides a logic of necessisity to show

progress ♦ Encourages striving for excellence,

breakthrough thinking and innovation ♦ Emphasises warmth to varying consumer

desires.

Why Result Benchmarking ♦ Performance evaluation with other

participating organisations ♦ Superior aptitude to goal setting and

performance ♦ Improved source for planned & effective

decisions ♦ Broadened awareness on trade outline

Basics of Result Benchmarking ♦ Variety of functioning criteria in recipe to

product cases ♦ Assemble statistics with survey ♦ Data handling and examination ♦Management of wide ranging and unique

information ♦Matured goals benchmarks for particular

areas backing for corrective process.