Operations: Two industry veterans share their insights on using Benchmarks & Best Practices

Kislik: People tend to look for the big number in the sky. If they find it, they then think they’ll know what to do to achieve it within their own organizations. That’s just not true. Some of what ends up getting benchmarked isn’t sufficiently defined as an activity. The units need to be comparable. For example, look at e-mails answered per hour. Are the e-mails closed-end, meaning they require merely factual answers, such as when will my order be shipped? Or are they open-ended questions, for example, how do I put two components together for this product?