Strategic Benchmarking Essay

Pearce, J. A. II, & Robinson, R. B. (2009). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation, and control (11th ed.). [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-text]. New York: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved August 20, 2011, fr

In Mark Twain?s novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the main character, Tom, is best friends with Huck. Tom and Huck seem very similar. But of course, everyone has their differences. They both have many freedoms and experiences, which differ. Their friendship means different things to each kid. There is also the factor of experience and intelligence. The boys are similar and different in many ways, but I think that it does not effect their friendship.

Hewlett Packard (HP) decided to produce 1.3-inch disk drives to become the market leader in a new market and increase HP’s revenue. Although the market for 1.3-inch disk drives was still unclear and still developing, HP decided to organize a special team to develop this new product. This group was multi-talented, with the best engineers from every department in the company. The group also had many priorities for the company. However, things didn’t develop as the Kittyhawk team expected. They failed to sell the new product to the customer they planned. Even though some new customers were interested in this

Xerox operating units were disconnected, self-interested and in many ways siloed. Clendenin found that "the interests of systems managers in the various Xerox operating units did not always align with those of Xerox as a whole."

Fuji Xerox was the result of a joint venture between the American company Xerox and the Japanese company Fuji. It is considered the most successful joint venture in history between an American and a Japanese company. It was established in 1962 based on 50:50 partnerships with Rank Xerox, which later became part of Xerox Corporation in 1997. Although it was formed to facilitate distribution of Rank Xerox products by acting as its distributor but Fuji Xerox started to do extensive research, which helped it to develop its own xerographic machine and other equipments. In the year 1973, it produced 2200 photocopy machines. Currently Fuji Xerox kept on bringing innovations in their product, which resulted in the development of new color printing devices, and world first multi function printer/copier, which were created for and sold by Xerox Corporation. In 1982, Fuji Xerox further expanded its operations to different countries like Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Newzealand by acquiring distribution rights from Xerox Corporation. Fuji Xerox earned revenue of 3.6 billion which was 22% of Xerox Group revenue in1989 as a result its importance Xerox Group increased (Paul Allaire, 1992, pg 45).

Introduction- To be competitive, organizations must be both strategic and tactical to the nth degree, must be proactive rather than reactive, and must find a way to measure this easily and accurately. One way to accomplish this is through a Balanced Scorecard approach; a tool often viewed as one of the best tools that helps organizations translate strategy into performance. In general the BSA (Balanced Scorecard Approach) allows for a clear strategic and tactical directions for the organization, retains financial measurements in a summation along with their links to performance, and highlights an important and robust measurement system that links and integrates customers, stakeholders, processes, resources, and performance into single measurement strategy.

Both “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe has a dark side that arises from each narrator. Both short stories start with the reassurance of the narrator's sanity. This is especially ironic because both turn out to be completely mad. In the short stories both narrators have some sort of trigger that sets them off and exposes there mad man tendencies. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” Poe's narrator has an obsession with the old man's vulture of an eye. He speaks of it like a person itself while it is only just an eye upon the man's face. In the short story “The Black Cat” the narrator portrays himself as an average man with a wife and pets living in a house. As the story plunges further there is conflict between him and his

They understood the technology trends, evaluated its strengths and competencies and finally they assessed the target market requirements. After the study, they were able to give a sustainable competitive advantage, which provides value to customers, distinguish them from competitors and their strategy was difficult to copy. Xerox also adopted just –in-time (JIT) system as a way of doing business. To achieve the company’s goals, Xerox needs just-in-time deliveries to their customers.

Xerox has a rich heritage based on customer-focused and employee-centered values. These components help the organization to deliver both profitability and growth. The mission statement for Xerox is, “ To become change agents and innovators - using

The story "The fall of the house of the usher" by Edgar Allen Poe is about the Usher

Identify your problem areas - Because benchmarking can be applied to any business process or function, a range of research techniques may be required. They include: informal conversations with customers, employees, or suppliers; exploratory research techniques such as focus groups; or in-depth marketing research, quantitative research, surveys, questionnaires, re-engineering analysis, process mapping, quality control variance reports, or financial ratio analysis. Before embarking on comparison with other organizations it is essential that you know your own organization's function, processes; base lining performance provides a point against which improvement effort can be measured.

Lastly, benchmarking is a competitive business strategy where organizations compare their business processes and practices with other organizations that may simply do it better. Through benchmarking, organizations can determine how other businesses achieve high performance levels and how they can experience competitive advantages pertaining to customer service and the quality of their processes (Meybodi, 2013). Organizations have several different options when it comes to benchmarking, as they can compare business processes with competitors in their industry, successful organizations in other industries, and their own internal departments. Typically, businesses will benchmark other organization’s performance metrics that pertain to quality, time and cost (Meybodi, 2013). Organizations want to study the moves and decisions from the businesses that set the highest standards in the world. For example, organizations in the tech industry and start-up businesses aspiring to build dominant empires should benchmark the practices of Apple or Microsoft. Both of these companies have dominated the tech industry for the last few decades and have set the standard for being the absolute best.

Major advantage with this option is the fact that Xerox operates in the market it fully knows, dominates and controls. As a market leader, having gained clear edge over main competitor IBM, Xerox can consolidate its position with the introduction of innovative new product "Book-In-Time solution" that could significantly reduce the publishing costs.

Xerox Services is a multi-national company that currently operates several call centers which handle the customer service calls for many other Fortune 500 companies. Founded in 1906, it currently employs over 140,000 people and had over 21 million dollars in revenue for the 2013 fiscal year (Xerox, 2014). With operations in over 180 countries, Xerox Services is one of the largest business process outsourcing companies in the world. Structured into many different smaller entities based on the industry it serves, the call center operations portion of this business is the backbone of Xerox’s services for the last 40 years (Chesbrough, & Rosenbloom, 2002). Xerox currently operates several hundred call centers that handle both incoming and outgoing customer service and sales calls for its vast amount of clients.

In healthcare benchmarks are used to help organizations understand what their strengths and weaknesses are. It also allows organizations to improve their competitive advantage by creating a continuous improvement and increase competitive standards. Many organizations also feel that benchmarks help to better satisfy the needs for quality and cost and establishing new standards and goals. Another key factor is that it promotes changes and delivers improvement in quality, productivity and efficiency. It is very cost effective and time efficient and creates a variety of ideas that can be utilized by the organization. All organizations should have some form of benchmarks. This will help ensure with the growth and improvements