With the economy’s slow turnaround, organizations and their employees continue their fight to remain competitive. Process owners are searching for answers as executives demand further cost savings and profitability. But they often do not know how to isolate their biggest weaknesses and opportunities for improvement. Or if they do know how, they frequently do not have the data needed to make decisions.
“External comparative benchmarking is essential to manage any business,” said Chris Gardner of the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC), an internationally recognized benchmarking and best practices authority. As manager of APQC’s Center of Excellence that helps organizations identify performance gaps and best practices through benchmarking, Gardner has observed many process owners use metrics data to not only determine how they stack up against the competition, but also embrace leading-edge practices to beat them.
