Understand optimal structures for benchmarking, successful approaches to prioritizing research requests, methods for building buy-in for benchmarking as a concept and ways to track process improvements resulting from benchmarking efforts. Learn how successful companies structure, launch and maintain high-performing benchmarking efforts. This Best Practices Benchmarking® Report includes best practices to help companies create optimal structures for benchmarking, successful approaches to prioritizing research requests, methods for building buy-in for benchmarking as a concept and effective ways to track process improvements. When well executed, benchmarking initiatives help companies compare their processes, identify gaps in performance and discover proven tactics for closing those gaps. Successful companies harness the power of benchmarking to lower cost positions, increase productivity and drive greater competitiveness.
Best Practices, LLC was recently cited as benchmarking experts in Treasury & Risk Management magazine.
Jonathan Tanz, director of research at Best Practices LLC, a benchmarking and consulting firm in Chapel Hill, N.C., says that a typical benchmarking costs $70,000 to $150,000, while a high-end one might cost as much as $300,000. But the potential savings that can be identified by a benchmarking dwarf those costs, he says. “Typically, finance organizations can save 20% to 30% of their total costs. That comes in at about $3 million to $5 million of annual savings per $1 billion of revenues,” Tanz says. “The ROI on benchmarking is absolutely clear.”
He adds that the potential return from benchmarking is related to its scope, with work on broad-based processes likely to produce bigger savings. “If you have processes like order management, sales contracting and credit that cut across multiple functional silos, you have a huge opportunity not just for cost savings, but also improvement in the business itself and the speed at which business can happen,” he says.