Benchmarking for Improvement - Loughborough …

1 Statistics in Practice Measuring & Managing 200230 Benchmarking for ImprovementLiz HartDirector of Information Services, Staffordshire University, UKAbstractThis presentation will examine Benchmarking in libraries to achieve Improvement inservices. Libraries can learn a lot from each other and Benchmarking provides astructured framework for making comparisons between organisations. This presentationwill provide a very brief overview of methodologies before progressing to provide somedetailed practical examples of how academic librarians have evaluated and improvedtheir services through Benchmarking . There will also be helpful examples of the potentialpitfalls involved in the process as well as ways of avoiding paper will be divided into three mainsections: Brief overview of purpose ofbenchmarking and background to thecurrent situation in the UK Benchmarking consortia.

2 Practical issuesin making them work to advantage Practical examples of benchmarkingwith their outcomesThe paper is entitled Benchmarking forImprovement , which raises the fundamentalquestion: why are you Benchmarking at all,if not for Improvement ? Well, for somelibraries it is because they are instructed todo so, by line managers or by governmentagencies, for example. The title of this paperalso puts an emphasis on the positive andpractical outcomes of Benchmarking , ratherthan the process itself, which can, if notcarefully managed, seem to become thepurpose of the is a growing recognition in Libraryand Information Services of the importanceof quality management principles andpractices which are helping to provide themeans to allow increased accountability,essential now in the academic sector, whilealso assisting in improving and enhancingeffective services (Lawes, 1993; Kinnell andGarrod, 1996).

3 Benchmarking is amethodology by which progress can beactively demonstrated over a period. It canalso be a catalyst for change particularly inkey areas such as the three E s :effectiveness, efficiency and economy(Gohlke, 1997). The purpose ofbenchmarking, for me, is to makeimprovements to the service provided toclients / patrons and to be that catalyst Oakland (1993) defines the purpose ofbenchmarking usefully as follows: Measurement and Benchmarking arenot separate sciences or unique themesof quality management, but ratherstrategic approaches to getting the bestout of people, processes, plant andprogrammes .This definition is helpful because it impliesthat the behavioural and changemanagement aspects of the benchmarkingmethodology rank equally, if not higher,than the plant and process experienceStephen Town Director of InformationServices at Cranfield University and awell-known speaker in this area, estimatesthat within the UK Higher Education sector40% of UK Higher Education libraries areinvolved in Benchmarking in some involvement varies considerably fromBenchmarking for ImprovementStatistics in Practice Measuring & Managing 200231well-documented case studies, such as thosesupplied by SCONUL.

4 To unstructured andinformal Benchmarking undertaken due topersonal contact, geographical location orhistorical factors. One, which is welldocumented, is the SCONUL Pilots Project(Town, 1998) which took place from1997 1999. This resulted in a SCONUL manual of methods being produced whichwas designed to be helpful to the beginner aswell as providing practical than list the various examples andprojects here, I prefer to concentrate on theoutcomes / findings of the work conclusions were possible aboutbenchmarking in the UK between1993 2002?Issues arising from the UKexperience The requirement for time, commitmentand effort has been balanced by a clearwillingness to engage with the processand make that necessary commitment Ethics, confidentiality and information and outcomes,which are not necessarily alwayspositive, is a difficult matter and onewhich requires openness betweeninstitutions and fellow professionals Staff (and user / patron)

5 Involvement andcommitment is essential and difficult toachieve in all cases Process mapping is very important toensuring comparability, as it is acommon method of undertaking unitcosting or Activity Based Costing Measures of comparison are difficultbetween different institutional processesbut this can be mitigated with goodenvironmental data Good project management and trainingis absolutely essential to success Embedding Benchmarking into aninstitutional service quality framework isimportant to achieve real and seen tobe measurable progress over time Methodologies in the literature(Oakland, 1993, for example) do work inpractice in librariesMethodologyThe methodology with which I have themost experience is that outlined by Oakland(1993).

6 This is the methodology which liesat the heart of the work undertaken by theFour Universities BenchmarkingConsortium, (including my own) whoformed their Consortium in 1999. It wouldbe useful to examine this methodologybriefly in the context of our experience overthe last three years. While there are15 stages in Oakland s methodology, theycan be adapted to meet individual andpractical far the most important first group ofseven stages is Plan:1. Select the processes to be benchmarked2. Identify appropriate benchmarks3. Collect environment data about eachinstitution to be involved. In practicewithin a Consortium arrangement thiscan be undertaken once and then, withconsistent updating, applied to allsubsequent work.

7 It is, however, anessential piece of work and identifies, forexample, number of sites, access points,variations in usage patterns data ensures the validityof the comparisons being made. Bartonand Blagden (1998) have established thatenvironmental or contextual data isessential to facilitating the interpretationof the data obtained from benchmarkingprocesses accurately. It underpins allbenchmarking by ensuring like iscompared with like , provides a vitalframework for the connection of anyresults and clearly defines theoperational context of all for Improvement32 Statistics in Practice Measuring & Managing 20024. Identify the team.

8 Again in the exampleof Consortium working, this team wouldusually have worked together before orhave a membership which changed byless than 50%. This consistency is veryuseful in terms of the time and effortinvolved in such Decide on the data collectionmethodology. This is an interesting areabecause of the need to explore differenttechniques and tools. Over time, certainof these techniques and tools arediscarded usually for reasons Project planning and timescales. Soundproject management is from the Four UniversitiesBenchmarking Consortium clearlydemonstrates that Benchmarking doesnot work well without commitment,understanding and participation of staffand users.

9 From a project managementperspective, the major issues we havediscovered are: Establishing critical success factors Ensuring the support of seniormanagement at all levels Ensuring resources are available tomeet project requirements Embedding the process into routineoperations, action plans andmanagement meetings Promoting a sense of awareness andownership amongst all staff (whomay well otherwise feel threatenedas their work is evaluated) Publicity: newsletter, bulletins, staffmeetings Training (though effectively thisoverlaps with publicity) Clear project management in order toensure all four institutions areappropriately co-ordinated togetherOf all the issues outlined above the mostuseful and important in both selling the Benchmarking methodology and alsobeing able to effectively accessoutcomes are the critical success brief example would be helpful hereand one of the areas which have beenconsistently benchmarked over a periodby the Four Universities BenchmarkingConsortium are Advice the outset, it was agreed that thekey critical success factor for an AdviceDesk Service would be satisfiedcustomers.

10 At the same time, the groupinvolved in this project had to defineclearly the important balance betweenthe impact of the service set against theimmediate outputs, or what the servicecould deliver in what ) delightful process in terms of immediate access to help;situation (easy to find); environment(comfortable, non-threatening)b) against the right or requiredinformation presented in the these discussions, a range ofrelated factors emerged: Reliable and consistent systems Competent and committed staff Value for money (Unit costing /Activity Based Costing) Equality of service (across all sites) Promotion of service to users /customers Documentation to back up theone-to-one service provision, and toreinforce the information The seventh stage of Oakland s Plangroup is to implement the data for ImprovementStatistics in Practice Measuring & Managing 200233 The second group of Oakland s 15 stages areAction:8.