Managing a benchmarking exercise – Some general advice

• Decide whether to use existing pre-standards/benchmarks as starting point
• Develop an action plan for the data gathering, review it with higher education institutions in the partnership
• Appoint the benchmarking team, staff and the moderating institution
• Carry out the data collection (internally and externally) – questionnaires, site visits, peer reviews
• Develop an action plan with targets for improvement
• Implement the action plan and set new areas for benchmarking
  
  

Decide on a clear action plan and task allocation (who processes the data, who prepares the reports, etc.), a timetable with milestones, numbers of meetings (internally and with partners). All these will determine the volume of staff time needed and the budget.

For a collaborative benchmarking exercise involving several partners, it will be necessary either to appoint one university to act as coordinator for the whole exercise or to hire a consultant (or another type of organisation) to act as external moderator for the partners.

Inside each partner higher education institution, we recommend appointing one person to act as project manager to coordinate the inputs from various people, lead the team involved in the benchmarking exercise and liaise with senior management.

Benchmarking exercises take time. The timeframe depends on the nature and scale of the benchmarking exercise. Some benchmarking exercises are established as a one-off activity to look at one specific issue for a very limited period of time. In some cases these are then extended to look at other issues. But overall, benchmarking is most effective as a management tool when it is carried out on an ongoing basis.

A clear mode of operations to which partners abide must be agreed. This should include how to assure confidentiality and trust. A good practice is the Code of Conduct of the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) which addresses all sectors of business, education and government.