benchmarking

What is benchmarking?

The process of comparing processes and performance against best practice in other universities.

Why should you benchmark?

Learn about new practices and better performance in other universities. Develop confidence about your own best practices. See the ’bigger picture’ across the university sector. Engage and motivate your colleagues in idea generation and becoming a leader in certain key areas.             

How do you benchmark?

Here is a four step approach (i) Plan, (ii) Do, (iii) Check, (iv) Act

Plan

Appoint a project team and clarify the scope and objectives of the benchmarking exercise. Identify other universities or organisations to benchmark against.

Do

Carry out desk based research to collect the data or visit the university or organisation. Visits allow for gathering of greater contextual information through formal and informal meetings and witnessing best practices. Be creative about who visits. Minimising costs allow more colleagues to attend the visit and share in the experience by seeking agreement to suspend normal expense rates and by selecting low cost transportation (e.g. share a mini bus).

Check

Identify best practice in your host universities and also weaknesses in your own processes and performance. Prioritise your list of possible ideas and actions based on cost, potential impact and potential risk associated with failing to emulate the best practice.

Act

Prepare your ideas list and action plan. Integrate with actions already agreed for other reasons through your operational plan. Prioritise all of your actions and agree a budget and implementation schedule. Delegate actions to colleagues to share the burden and meet regularly to discuss progress.

Financial Support

The VP for Innovation and Performance, through the Quality Office, offers a €2k grant towards your benchmarking expenses. Please seek prior approval for allocation of this budget via a simple email to the Quality Office and briefly outlining your plans. Once allocated the budget is available in the current financial year. You will then be asked to submit a normal expense claim against the Quality Office budget. You need to send a short benchmarking report outlining your results prior to the expense claim.

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