Wednesday, September 19, 2007

What Is OSBC Benchmarking?

APQC was founded upon the belief that sharing best practices benefits all organizations and paves the way for breakthrough innovations. We think of it as worldwide continuous improvement. The Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative (OSBC) takes that thinking to the next level by providing free access to top-notch performance metrics.

So what are open standards? Simply put, they are universal definitions of core business processes, allowing seemingly dissimliar organizations to learn from one another at a process level. Our open standards are based on the Process Classification Framework, APQC's industry-neutral process taxonomy.

The Open Standards Benchmarking Collaborative provides an opportunity to compare your organization's process performance to that of others. Simply fill out a survey with your process data, and you will receive a custom report that compares your organization against our database and also includes comparisons against industry, regional, and size-by-revenue peers. These results are provided at no cost.

Why would we give away hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of metrics for free? APQC is a nonprofit organization, and we're dedicated to improving the productivity and quality of work around the world. The more organizations that participate in our research, the better we're able to fulfill our mission of disseminating best practices.

What kinds of processes does OSBC benchmark? We have a number of surveys within the human capital management, financial management, information technology, innovation, knowledge management, product development, and supply chain process areas. You are welcome to submit as many surveys as you'd like--you'll receive a custom report for each. You can even use OSBC for no-cost internal benchmarking; just have individual business units complete the same survey, and their reports will include the internal comparisons.

Learn more about OSBC research and visit the official OSBC FAQ.

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