Benchmarking Mistakes: The Poisonous 'Apples-to-Apples'
Top executives and managers in other industries know it is not only acceptable, but necessary to benchmark with other industries to obtain process improvements. For example, a major hotel chain desires to improve guest services. This chain not only has other hotel chains to examine for comparisons, but also can and should look at theme parks or retail corporations. Instead of comparing hotels to hotels, the hotel’s guest service policies are compared with the guest service policies of theme parks, restaurants, and others. Valuable lessons are gleaned from this benchmarking process. While the industries may function very differently, their fundamental guest service processes are common and provide learning opportunities for all parties. Similarly, retailers have made major improvements in inventory acquisition, warehousing, distribution and tracking. Hospitals haven’t typically studied these processes, citing the “uniqueness” of the healthcare and hospital oper...