Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Benchmarking
A process for identifying good practices in external organizations, learning from them, and
adapting them to your Utility.
Supports: organizational learning, process improvement, culture change
LEVEL OF EFFORT
SIZE OF UTILITY
MED
SCALABLE
SCOPE OF WORK C 2
C2 = CONTEXT/CONTENT DEPENDENT
The first step of the benchmarking process is identifying the organization you want to learn
from. Consider: Who is the best at what? What is the standard in the Industry? Who is
setting or moving beyond that standard? The organizations a Utility would benchmark with
would generally be other utilities, although they may not be specific to the drinking water
industry.
The second step of the benchmarking process is to select a team of individuals who will
participate and build a sound methodology for the benchmarking process. The individuals
selected need to have an understanding of the area of focus, as well as an understanding of
how your organization does the process that is being benchmarked. It is also a good idea to
have some performance measures in hand to assess the potential effectiveness in your
organization of what is being externally benchmarked.
While benchmarking can be accomplished in many ways (via telephone or other virtual
exchange), the face-to-face approach can facilitate relationship building and learning, and offers
the opportunity for a question and answer exchange as thoughts emerge. However, note that
this is not just a site visit, but the collection of information about best practices and building an
understanding of how this best practice has been applied and why it was successful in their
situation (which may or may not correlate to the specific situation in which you will apply it).
The benchmarking process may be approached much like any other Utility project. For
example, develop a benchmarking plan that includes project objectives, scope, approach,
timeline and budget.
The following Code of Conduct that has been scripted by the International Benchmarking
Clearinghouse:
Don’t enter into any discussions that might be construed as illegal, for example,
discussing costs or prices (which might lead to allegations of price fixing). However, the
process of how you arrive at prices might be an acceptable conversation.
Don’t ask questions of another organization that you are not willing to answer yourself to
the same detail. Set the expectations of level of exchange early in the benchmarking
discussions.
Treat the information you receive with the same degree of care you treat information
proprietary to your organization. You may need to enter into a non-disclosure
agreement.
Only use the information you receive for the agreed-upon purpose.
Follow agreed-upon procedures; complying with the wishes and culture of the
organization you are benchmarking.
C-14
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