ITIL CSI – Benchmarking the Organization

Choose any organization and it's quite possible that there are two or more claiming to be at the top of their industry. Their ads are often brandished with claims of beating the rest of the competitors, or that they deliver the best service there is compared to other organizations.

However, how can we really know if they are telling the truth?

It's easy to claim unverified facts, but as it turns out everything can be made more transparent these days - since many companies are urged to undergo a process called benchmarking.

Benchmarking is the process that compares businesses against their other competitors, in which they are evaluated and analysed via different metrics.

Benchmarking, or what is also referred to as “best process benchmarking” or “process benchmarking” is the act of evaluating a certain business against the standardized metrics of the best practice available, and that usually includes analysing a company's budget spending, workaround time and the quality and the satisfaction of its customers.

A benchmark can be a possible start for great change for the company.

Usually when a business chooses to undergo the process of benchmarking, problem areas can be clearly identified, and this can be a signal to start positive alterations in the flawed services.

With the growing number of competitors that are vying to be number one, it is best to see for yourself which processes are in need of a major face lift. It is really important to undergo a self assessment evaluation, so that you wont give your competitors the ammunition to topple you.

Instead of adopting the whole “paradigm blindness” where a business ignores any possible signs or problems in their companies, it is best to surrender to the fact that no single enterprise is infallible.

A regular self assessment for the whole company is a great practice to keep.

To be able to say without default to your customers that you truly are at the top of your game, and that you deliver services at an optimum level is a blessing to have. To benchmark regularly is to be able to fix the flaws and to improve the quality of the company and team members' performance that will overall positively reflect the productivity of the business.


There are several categories of benchmarking in the business:

Internal benchmarking

Why not start small and identify the problem areas of your company first-hand. Try assessing the productivity rate of several services and service levels of your company and compare them against each other. Create a baseline over each test, so that you can mark if there was an improvement, or if there are areas that needs your careful attention. The baseline can indicate which services outperforms or fails in a system.


Comparing your business against other organizations

Evaluate your productivity rate as it is set against the results of other organizations.


Compare your results against the standard industry metrics provided by outside organizations

Check if you can measure against a preformed data provided by an external organization.


Compare the different systems/departments of the company

Compare and contrast the different performance metrics and results of the various systems or departments in the company.

To benchmark a company is, in many ways, like leveraging aspects of ITIL's Continual Service Improvement (CSI).

As CSI monitors the various processes and services of a company to gain perspective on which operations are efficient, benchmarking certainly shares this same principle at its heart.

Both CSI and benchmarking are focussed on finding the problem areas of a company, and they inspire a signal of change for the business. With the two processes at hand, progress can be more easily achieved.