Benchmarking Strategies: A Tool for Profit Improvement

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 reductions, price and sales volume increases, and new distribution channels
* Strategies for gaining competitive advantage-not just meeting your competition but surpassing them
* How effective benchmarking encompasses both internal and external needs
Offering the insight, wisdom, and hard-nosed realism of a seasoned coach, Benchmarking Strategies is the essential manual to making excellence an ongoing reality in every corner of your firm and to transforming a good organization into a world-class competitor.
Find out how operationally and financially fit your company really is . . .and the secret to transforming it into a tough competitor if it isn't. Both the diagnosis and the cure for an out-of-shape organization, benchmarking is one of the most effective regimens available for transforming any company into an optimally functioning, world-class performer. Used in a program of continuous improvement, benchmarking is a process that allows a company to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of each of its activities and operations and put in place a set of best practices designed to move the company toward improved performance and profits. And Benchmarking Strategies shows you exactly how.
Written by one of its leading experts, Benchmarking Strategies is a practical manual to benchmarking principles, techniques, and implementation, outlining just how to set up benchmarking criteria, monitor overall progress-while fulfilling the expectations of the company's various stakeholders.
Inside, you'll find expert guidance on:
* Developing benchmarks and basic business principles for your company as part of a detailed corporate strategic plan.
* Identifying internal operational areas or functions to benchmark and establishing best practice target triggers for building internal excellence in Using external benchmarks to compare your company to competitors, industry, and best-in-class functions to become the best you can be.

ROB REIDER, CPA, MBA, PhD, is the founder and President of Reider Associates, a management and organizational consulting firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A nationally recognized expert in the area of performing operational reviews, Dr. Reider is the course author, presenter, and discussion leader for over 20 different workshops and seminars conducted nationally by Reider Associates and recipient of AICPA's Outstanding Discussion Leader of the Year Award. He is the author of the audiocassette self-study courses, Developing a Consulting Practice and Operational Auditing and the books, The Complete Guide to Operational Auditing and Operational Review: Maximum Results at Efficient Costs.