Supply Chain Benchmarking To Gain Cost Saving Efficiency
Want better supply chain performance backed by data, not guesswork? Benchmarking can give you a clear, objective picture of your supply chain. Find out how by talking to one of our benchmarking consultants now.
Where You’ve Seen Us
How We Can Help
Benchmarking Success Services
Warehouse Benchmarking
Benchmark the performance of your warehouse against similar operations. Compare service levels, operating costs and performance KPIs.
3PL Benchmarking
Specially designed for 3PL operators to determine how well multiple clients are being served from a single warehouse by benchmarking service levels/costs.
Transport Benchmarking
Benchmark your vehicle fleet against other transport operators by vehicle type to find out if you are operating your fleet at best-in-class performance levels.
Supply Chain Peer Groups
Compare your supply chain performance directly with businesses of a similar size and sector. Peer group benchmarking cuts through industry averages to show you exactly where you stand against the companies that matter most.
Beer Game Simulation
Our facilitated simulation lets your team experience the real dynamics of supply chain decision-making (like the costly bullwhip effect) in a single day. All the learning, none of the real-world risk.
The Process
What is Benchmarking?
Benchmarking is essentially comparing; comparing one against another. When we compare different levels of sophistication and performance in supply chains, we can identify particular levels that we think are important to achieve, or that represent typical performance levels for supply chains as a whole. Those levels are “benchmarks”. Of course, benchmarks and benchmarking can cover all kinds of different things, at work or elsewhere.
Suppose you wanted to be the fastest runner in the world, for example. The first thing you’d want to know is “what is the benchmark?” meaning “what speed do I have to beat to be the fastest?” You can benchmark for individuals and also for teams. You can also benchmark supply chains.
Sometimes benchmarks, like how fast you run, how high you jump, and so on are easy to identify. They are simple activities to measure and the figures are clear and meaningful. Elsewhere it’s more complex, as is often the case in business. It’s still just as important, though, if you want your business to improve, to know how you compare, and how good you have to be to be the best.
What You'll Get
How Can a Business Start Benchmarking?
You can start with the things organisations frequently want to benchmark. The first of these is “How good is my service?” In fact, it’s also a good idea to go further, because these days, service provision should typically be a competitive advantage for an organisation. So the questions are rather: “How good is my service today?” and “How good does it have to be to really differentiate my business compared to my competitors?”
A second one is then cost; For instance, “Is that level of service, whether current or planned, cost-effective?” This is a question that frustrates businesses if they only have data that is anecdotal and subjective, and lack the quantitative hard data that really tells them what’s going on. This is where the SCOR model can be a big help, because it defines formal, structured ways of capturing data, which can then be stored in a database to provide a better guarantee of accuracy.
Using SCOR to Benchmark the Supply Chain
SCOR is a method that’s helped businesses in many different areas, such as quality circles. In the general supply chain area, however, only a few really comprehensive databases exist for organisations to access. In fact, SCOR is actually an entire reference model for supply chain performance management and improvement, in which benchmarking plays just one part. You don’t need to apply the entire model however, to successfully benchmark your supply chain using SCOR.
The SCOR model is based on three “pillars”. These are the process modeling, performance measurement, and best practices pillars. The performance measurement pillar, which is the one used for benchmarking, is essentially a hierarchy of key performance indicators (KPIs), comprising more than 150 metrics organised into two levels.
Common Questions About Our Benchmarking Services
Do you only conduct benchmarking in the area of supply chain? What aspect of supply chain do you benchmark?
Benchmarking Success are specialists in the area of benchmarking the supply chains of organisations against comparable companies and/or supply chains. In addition to the service and cost aspects of supply chain performance, we are also able to benchmark specific areas of the supply chain, e.g. warehouse performance.
We believe our business is quite unique, how would you compare us with others?
Our benchmarking service goes to great lengths to ensure that a comparable dataset is achieved so that a true ‘apples to apples’ comparison can be made. We therefore are keen to accurately profile our customers existing supply chain and then find appropriate comparisons against the key elements of the supply chain. With over 800 datasets in our database we have a very high success rate in satisfying our customers desire to be assessed against a comparable group.
We have different streams in our supply chain, for example, we have different processes to handle “Make to Stock” products and “Make to Order” products. How would you take care of our case?
The supply chains included in our dataset are many and varied and include almost every conceivable combination of supply chain from the most complex to the simplest, and with a multitude of different processes and systems. It is very unlikely that we would not have come across a customer’s situation in the past.
You say that you have more than 800 supply chains in your database, how many of the dataset is up to date?
We encourage our customers to update their data regularly – at least every 2 years to ensure that we keep our data up to date and relevant.
Will you tell us the “name” of companies in which we would be compared against?
We are able to supply a sample listing of the companies that are included in the aggregated grouping of companies against which a customer’s supply chain is compared.
How much time and effort do we need for the data collection exercise? Who should we be expecting their involvement? Do we get your assistance during the data collection?
Our customers tell us that, on average, it takes 24 manhours to collect and input the required data into the questionnaire and this typically takes an elapsed period of 2-3 weeks to completions. This period varies though depending on access to the data and the resources allocated to this project. It is imperative that the data is accurate to ensure the integrity of our database, and so we make an allowance for one of our consultants to assist with this part of the project.
What if we do not have some of the data that you ask for?
Is the data is not available then we ask that you tick the “Do not know” box rather than making a guess.
After we complete the data collection, how long will it take you to process a report for us?
Because of the amount of data to be analysed and assessed and the detailed reporting provided to our customers, an allowance of up to 2 weeks needs to be made for the processing of the data and report preparation.
What should we be expecting from the report? Will the report tell us how we should improve?
The provided report includes a series of standard as well as tailored reports that measure and compare both cost performance and service performance. Based on these reports, areas for improvement in either service or costs or both are provided and presented along with a series of recommendations and ‘Pathway to Supply Chain excellence’.
How do you charge for the service?
Our fees are based on a fixed fee with the amount being dependent on which of the services and reports are requested.
The Process
What Working With BMS Actually Looks Like
Most supply chain managers already know something’s off. Costs feel too high, service levels aren’t where they should be. But because there’s no external reference point, it’s genuinely hard to know whether you have a real problem or just a perception problem.
The most common thing we hear: “We think we’re inefficient, but we don’t know by how much, or where.” Benchmarking answers that. Properly, with data, against operations that are actually comparable to yours.
What You'll Get
A clear, external reference point
We compare your DC’s costs, productivity and service levels against a database of comparable supply chain operations. That comparison tells you where you’re performing well and where you’re not
A KPI gap analysis
We identify the specific performance gaps between your current operation and best-in-class equivalents. Labour cost per unit, pick rates, space utilisation, occupancy costs are all benchmarked against operations of a similar size, sector and complexity.
A prioritised view of where to focus
Trying to fix everything at once usually means fixing nothing properly. We tell you what the highest-impact areas are, in order, so you know where to start and what realistic improvement looks like.
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