- QUESTION: Do you think a large company such as APPLE made of individual departments should have a performance management for the whole company or let each individual department make their own? Why or why not?
Benchmarking involves learning how other successful companies do something and imitating or perhaps even improving on their techniques. Pioneered in the U.S. by Xerox Corporation, benchmarking is similar to the time-tested practice of "reverse engineering" in which a company buys the product of another company to take it apart in order to learn how it is made. Given that Xerox developed the concept of competitive benchmarking in the early 1980s, it appears that the concept is here to stay. It is especially useful to companies which are falling behind others in the industry.
Xerox developed the concept when management realized that Japanese companies were slowly taking over the copier market by making and selling products superior to those of Xerox at a cheaper price. Since this is a situation which is bound to affect various companies in the future, benchmarking is bound to be increasingly adopted. Unlike MBO, TQM, or reengineering, almost everyone who uses benchmarking finds it to be very useful and well worth the time and money to do it.
- QUESTION: How can Bench marking be used as a performance process in your organization? What are the possible pros and cons?