Benchmarking is a powerful tool to help shared services organisations evaluate their current strengths and weaknesses, suggest opportunities for improvement, and provide insight on leading practices that can help drive those improvements. Metrics benchmarking allows shared services organisations to make meaningful comparisons with their peers and practice benchmarking gives shared services organisations insight on how to act on those comparisons to boost their own performance.

By using appropriate benchmarks to compare a shared services organisation’s performance and practices with those of others, identify gaps in performance, uncover and implement leading practices, and monitor and measure progress, shared services leaders can guide their organisations toward greater optimisation and better long-term results.

Beth Thiebault, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, offers insights into how benchmarking can improve performance as a contributing author in Chapter 13  of the IHRIM Press 2006 book, Common Sense: Shared Services for Human Resources, edited by Karen V. Beaman. Reprinted with permission from the publisher, IHRIM Journal.

Attachments
Optimisation: Benchmarking to improve performance (PDF, 519 KB)
IHRIM Press 2006 book, Chapter 13, Common Sense: Shared Services for Human Resources, 23 pages