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The information technology revolution has undoubtedly been one of the most significant influences of human behaviour in the last 25 years. Individuals now shop, bank, socialise, email, research, work, play and even compare the cost of products and services over the internet.
Information in this new world is king and those who have it benefit ahead of those that do not. An increasing number of consumers are comparing, energy, insurance, and banking products over the internet. This is all with the aim of reducing their cost of living and providing the individual with an increased amount of disposable income. Yet you have to ask what equivalent is there for businesses?
Most businesses will monitor the cost of the products they are buying during operations and ascertain the true ‘value’ they are receiving, but how does a company link such expenditure to its overall performance and service quality? More importantly, are costs in line with competitors? Are you a quality provider, bulk provider or somewhere in between? Could you do what you do for less? To enhance performance businesses need to be fully aware of the exact nature of the competition around them. However, few companies can claim to have this knowledge due to a lack of credible information and data.
To add some perspective, engineers would not construct a bridge without knowing the strength of the materials they were utilising. Yet due to incomplete information many companies are entering into tender process without a full awareness of input costs such as administration, marketing, human resource, legal and other staffing requirements. This means they have few comparators when assessing their performance against competing bids.
In this respect ACE is continuing its efforts to provide such a service to its members. Our benchmarking programme has run for 5 years, providing the industry with a wide variety of metrics to help improve their businesses performance.
In 2010 ACE ran the benchmarking programme across Europe in conjunction with the European CEO conference. This allowed users of the programme to debate the issues and data that is captured as part of the project at the highest level. The event was held in high regard by all that attended, with the most successful year for the benchmarking programme to date.
2011 sees ACE continue to step up its game, developing the programme further in recognition of the challenges that face its members small medium and large members.
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