APQC Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative research [Archive.org URL]

Executives wanting to know how their organization’s performance stacks up in comparison with that of their industry peers and leading-edge organizations worldwide can access a valuable new resource. A group of large corporations, government organizations and consulting firms has joined forces with the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC), a Houston-based nonprofit, to form the Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative. The organization will create and promote a publicly accessible framework for defining business processes and measuring enterprise performance. The Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative’s advisory council includes executives from IBM, Fuji Xerox, Raytheon, the U.S. Navy and the World Bank.

“In my experience, the traditional approach to benchmarking is such a source of frustration, whether it’s done by external companies or collaboratively,” says Dermot Shorten, vice president at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in Boston and a member of the new group’s advisory council. “You’re never quite sure of what you’re getting, and it’s tough to get good metrics and keep them up-to-date. We see [this initiative] as a great catalyst and opportunity to help companies get to the root of collaborative benchmarking, both within their industry and externally, so that they can figure out what they need to improve.”

The initiative will provide a comprehensive, publicly accessible business-process taxonomy and a database of standardized metrics and benchmarks. “In the past, there have been many proprietary best-practices frameworks, but they have focused on particular functional areas — for example, finance and accounting — and none has reached critical mass,” says Carla O’Dell, president of APQC. “This initiative aims to cover every major business process. It will provide an overall view of the enterprise, including where value is derived and costs are consumed, in a variety of business models.”

Companies can contribute their performance data to APQC’s online database and receive aggregated data from other participants with which to compare their performance, understand best practices and identify their weaknesses. “This is free, open data — high-level, protected and aggregated,” says O’Dell. The information will help businesses “accelerate the cycle of improvement,” she adds. [Business Finance annotation]

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