“Any problem facing an agency, no matter how complex it may seem,
is likely to have occurred elsewhere,
be it in the public, private, or nonprofit sector. Identifying and evaluating the solutions developed by these other organizations is a critical step in
project planning. These experiences can shed light on what works -- and what doesn’t -- in the earliest stages
of your project development."

Source: Conducting Best and Current Practices Research: A Starter Kit, Ophelia Eglene, Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, SUNY, 2000

In studying Six Sigma, one of the first principles students learn
is the importance of process metrics. Baseline, entitlement and
benchmark are all measurements to consider when attempting to
improve a process. The same concepts apply when you attempt
to improve your business as a whole.

Benchmarking is one of the best ways to learn from other
companies how to tackle specific problems. Benchmarking also
allows you to measure your company’s performance against
others to determine what is possible in the market. From this
sharing of information comes an opportunity to better serve
your customers and employees.

The Six Sigma community offers Deployment Leaders, Master
Black Belts and other practitioners a variety of ways to bench-
mark and share information.

Online Discussion Forums

Sometimes called Message Boards, these online discussions allow
you to tap into the collective experience of a group of Six Sigma
professionals. Post a question, comment or thought and get feed-
back from peers across a variety of industries and organizational
levels. Discussion forums serve benchmarking’s primary purpose,
which is to provide tried and tested best practice information from
people who have been there.

iSixSigma.com has one of the largest Six Sigma discussion forums
in the industry. More than 40,000 process improvement professionals
read the Web site each month, and the discussion forum is one of
the most popular areas. The site gets approximately 1,800 new
posts per month, filling the archives with ideas and feedback that
are available to any site user.

“I am amazed at the variety of professionals that use our online
discussion forums,” says Michael Cyger, founder of iSixSigma.com.
“We get posts from Black Belts, Master Black Belts, Deployment
Leaders and even industry gurus. They are all looking for new
ideas and information from their peers.”

While discussion forums are a great way to get a variety of feedback,
keep in mind that it’s important to define exactly what you’re looking
for. “I like to tell people that a thoughtful, well-worded question will
always get thoughtful, well-worded answers. The opposite tends to
hold true also,” says Cyger.

Industry Conferences

Access to industry experts and hundreds of your peers in desirable,
off-site locations would be one way to describe industry conferences.
In just two or three days, you can hear presentations from all walks
of Lean and Six Sigma. Typically these conferences bring in speakers
from companies that have had successful implementations, giving
you access to benchmarking from the best of the best. Conferences
also provide a good forum for learning about trends in the industry,
which offers another way to benchmark what your competition is
doing next.

Iindustry conferences offer quick hits of benchmarking data. Unlike
discussion forums, they do offer opportunities for face-to-face
networking and interaction with peers, which could provide avenues
into other methods of sustained information sharing.

To make the most of industry conferences, take advantage of
break out sessions with your peers. Most conferences offer
programs outside of the main agenda to learn about specific topics
or network with professionals in the same industry.

ISSSP offers Master Black Belt Circles at many Six Sigma and Lean
events. These invite-only sessions are devoted to one topic around
performance improvement, business strategy, or developing new skills.
They provide not only timely information, but also the opportunity
to meet and share information with other MBBs.

BMG's Deployment Leader Xchange Program

In an effort to provide opportunities for our clients to contact
each other, BMG facilitates a Deployment Leader Xchange
program, open to any current BMG customer. The program was
designed to provide introductions between deployment leaders
with similar interests across a variety of industries.

“For years, clients had been asking about what our other cus-
tomers were doing and what they were learning through their
deployment processes,” says Lynda Williams, the co-creator of
BMG’s Deployment Leader Xchange Program. “We just decided it
was time to bring our customers together to learn from each other.”

The BMG South Africa team kicked off its Xchange Program in July
with great success. “This session was about introducing clients
to each other; giving them an opportunity to meet, exchange best
practices, ideas and lessons learned, and discuss critical success
factors for their programs,” explains Raldu Nel, VP of Business
Development.

BMG provided all attendees with contact information to drive
more informal communications. “We didn’t want to be the gate-
keeper to their communications. We want our clients to be able
to contact each other directly when they have questions or issues
they want to discuss with their peers,” Nel says.

The Global Customer Summit

Another forum for benchmarking is BMG’s Global Customer Summit.
Now in its fifth year, the goal is to bring current BMG clients from
all industries and countries together to discuss their deployments
and learn from each other.

Similar to an industry conference, BMG develops a three-day
schedule of presentations, workshops and networking opportunities,
giving attendees ample time to discuss new methods, figure out
solutions to problems and gather new ideas. Throughout the event,
BMG’s clients can establish connections with other professionals
who have encountered similar challenges.

BMG also brings in keynote speakers from experts outside the
Six Sigma arena. This adds a new component to benchmarking
by providing insights from organizations with a different view.
Thought leaders in strategic planning, innovation and team building
provide attendees with new ideas they can incorporate into their
programs. Unlike traditional benchmarking, these speakers give
customers additional best practices to try.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Of course, for benchmarking to truly work, companies must be
willing to share their experiences with others. Concerns about
competitive intelligence and corporate espionage often prevent
business leaders from releasing benchmarking data. But if the goal
is to continually improve the customer experience, all organizations
benefit from pushing each other to come up with better ways to
do business. Learning from each other’s mistakes and successes only
speeds up that process, giving each new company an unanticipated
pitfall to avoid. After all, without key metrics to measure against,
how will you know if you’ve truly improved your business?