Benchmarking for people and business

Good ideas can be applied in different situations. They universal. Like benchmarking. Each person used it for sure. Moreover, children use these techniques more often than adults. Benchmarking - detailed learning someone else's successful experience and using it to improve its internal process.

For example. You type slowly and therefore take a long time to prepare documents. Friend told you that by learning “blind typing” of text, he increased speed recruitment work by 20%. Not a bad result, you thought, too. learned to blind set. Document preparation time was reduced in half. This is how this technique works.

It turns out need to understand the problem. Find someone who solved this problem and became successful. Gather information on how the task was solved and in which deadlines. Introduce changes to the company. There are several ways use of someone else's positive experience.
Consider the situation. You colleagues need to more often and willingly share knowledge with each other, helped in working moments and wanted to become mentors for newcomers. Everything this should improve customer service and increase the loyalty of partners and employees. There are four ways to solve it.

Option No. 1

you recalled that recently at a general meeting praised the leader neighboring unit. He "great" established a knowledge exchange between people in their department. This has helped to reduce the adaptation time of new specialists for 11 days. Go to him at the end of the working day and ask share the details of this project. A colleague will help with the search for insights, talks about the difficulties and main points. Having gained knowledge, you close this question in your department.

So, this method is called internal benchmarking .

Option # 2

You recalled that at the last conference the speaker spoke about the case of the company Camomile , which managed to achieve high employee involvement in the process corporate training. If earlier on weekly trainings only 36% of employees visited, then a month after application “Innovative” methodology, this figure rose to 54%.

It looks like This case is public, because people talk about it at events. You can “Google” how they did it or write on LinkedIn or Facebook to this speaker and ask to send a detailed description of the case. And better introduce you to the guys from " Daisies ”to consult with practitioners. They work in a different industry, but it’s not fundamentally. After collecting information and talking with experts, you have complete guide to action. Plus they will tell you where there is a “narrow neck ”, what to look for and what to avoid. Just next go and implement.

This method is called functional benchmarking .

There’s still a third way

You know that competitors who work in your local market and have already entered the international (and you only dream about it) , increased customer loyalty. Their managers have learned not only register applications from dissatisfied customers, but also solve a number of issues directly by phone without the involvement of technical specialists. Did you hear about this from beloved ”partner, who always tells insider information for an additional discount.

Competitors established a process for sharing knowledge between call center managers and technical specialists. Satisfied were not only customers. The company management also won. Time at the employees of those. support costs more than operators. Salary money spent more effective, and people call more readily.

Great, now it remains to find out exactly how the competitors organized the training call center managers with the involvement of colleagues from the technical service. Call a friend in this company, because you used to work together. Invite a cup of coffee in the morning before work. Most likely he is for you will tell about this project even more than would be enough for a successful implementation.

This is a competitive benchmarking . There is one “slippery” moment in it. It is better that the information received is not strictly confidential.

There are another generalized approach, when you adopted experience to solve a problem world-famous businesses such as Toyota, Ford, Apple. About such initiatives write books and talk in international forums.

someone else's positive experience is useful and exciting. Often cool solutions appear at the junction of different, unrelated industries. More read, drive to conferences, chat with people. It will help you find new interesting ideas, notice insights and strive for development of their business. It’s important not just to know what others have successfully completed project. Important desire to apply their strategy in their business.

Benchmarking non one-time activation. Want to constantly grow and improve, need to learn continuously from others. You will succeed, because children never they don’t think that they cannot walk. They just get up and do first step.

Read also: "How do I get a customer back?".