This site was created by the University of Hartford's AMSPA class of 1996 and is intended to provide an initial resource for those who are looking to get "plugged in" to the world of benchmarking on-line. A logical first set of questions for anyone would be What is Benchmarking? and What can it do for me?
In short, benchmarking is the practice by which one firm emulates the best
practices of another. As Peter Griffin explains in his article
To see an example of how benchmarking has worked for several firms in the arena of employee evaluation and feedback, take a peek at the AMSPA-prepared article on 360 Degree Feedback. While prepared using traditional case studies, this article gives a nice illustration of what benchmarking can do.
One of the best ways to get started down the benchmarking path is to do a little research and determine what's out there that might help you. This was traditionally done through a business library or journal review. More and more often, however, firms are making information available over the 'net. In so doing, they are providing access to a significantly larger audience which has begun to include many smaller firms which previously didn't have the time or access to perform more traditional research.
Our goal is to provide a "clearinghouse" of sites, each of which might serve as a good place to get started. We've done our best to give a quick review of each site, and let you know what which purposes we thought it might serve well. Our disclaimer is as follows: We are just regular folks, not 'net gurus. What we've done is what we feel other regular folks might do at the outset -- run a few searches, visit some sites, make lists of what looks good. Our hope is that these lists of 'what looks good' can save you a bit of work at the outset, and allow you to see the fruits of your labor all the sooner.
Happy hunting.
To check out a list of sites which we discovered in our research, give a click.
The second step in the benchmarking process (as outlined by Peter Griffin) is to find a suitable partner. In our work, we discovered a few matchmaking sites which looked promising, and we'd like to pass these along as well.
To check out a list of sites which offer the possibility for benchmarking matchmaking, give a click.
Additionally, as a paper "interface" for the above research, our group
prepared a quick guide,
-AMSPA '96