Workshop Dates - Venue:

Thur 22 & Fri 23 April, 2010 – Venue – TBC, SYDNEY

9AM - 5PM Day 1, 9am - 4.30PM Day 2

Workshop Outline:

Overview of Benchmarking

Understanding your business and strategically choosing and positioning a benchmarking project.

Methodology Framework for Benchmarking

How to go about Benchmarking in Detail

Planning and Analysis
Learning and Sharing including identifying benchmarking partners and best practices
Recommendations
Implementation of Improvements

Next Steps

Benchmarking Code of Conduct protects confidentiality & privacy

This Building Business Capability through Benchmarking - training workshop is designed to strengthen your readiness and capability to deliver more value to customers, partners and other stakeholders through improvement projects and benchmarking. This training program will give you the understanding, ‘know how’ and practical support through actual case studies, simulated real projects and help desk support. You will do practical and real project work. Processes for benchmark data collection, benchmarking partner selection, analysis and presentation of benchmark reports, site visit guidelines, templates and tools will lead you to deliver your own benchmarking project with your customers/partners & stakeholders when you return to your desk!

A SPECIALLY TAILORED COURSE CAN ALSO BE PROVIDED IN-HOUSE AT YOUR PLACE.

Outcomes:

Through benchmarking, people partner in different organisations and industries so that they can rapidly improve their organisations through shared learning and partnerships. The bases of this sharing are your own strategic imperatives for your organisation’s vision and values, competitive advantage and improved customer services. During this course you will be guided to:

Understand the link between benchmarking and your organisational systems, strategic plan and structure
Prioritise your strategic imperatives for attaining your vision, implementing your strategic objectives and accelerated improvement through benchmarking
Identify your benchmarking topic and scope to implement your strategic plan and maximise your competitive advantage
Understand how to apply the fundamental benchmarking methodology and how it can be tailored to suit your specific needs
Identify benchmarking partner organisations in different industries (non- competitors)
Understand how to share and learn innovations with them under a Benchmarking Code of Conduct for confidentiality

Understand how to accelerate the implementation of your strategic objectives and truly get ahead of your competitors by learning new innovations and ways of doing things from other industries.

Some testimonials:

“I thought your course was absolutely brilliant, and can't wait to implement what I have learnt” – Angela Robinson, Auckland City Council.
“The facilitator is very business savvy which added value to the program. You have a lot of experience & can use examples/recent case studies to demonstrate the theory. The process is well thought out you have provided useful & practical tools.

This course not only helps to guide organisations on how to improve rapidly by not going through the pain of reinventing the wheel that someone else has already invented, but also dispels some of the myths about benchmarking. It is not just about comparing performance results – it is about implementing your vision and closing performance gaps.

This 2-day intensive course aims to provide the participants with practical knowledge, frameworks, methodologies, tools and templates for you to take away on how to plan and undertake Benchmarking as a strategic and operational tool to accelerate improvement through innovative knowledge exchange. Participants will learn what to do and what not to do when initiating and implementing a benchmarking program. Participants will also learn from real life case studies and by participating in simulated benchmarking on real topics/projects.

Participants will have the opportunity to learn techniques and steps of benchmarking such as:

Relevant components of the Benchmarking Partnerships’ 9 Pillars for Vastly Improved and Sustainable Results
1. Right KPIs
2. Process Innovation
3. Leadership of Business Excellence
4. Customer Centricity
5. Strategy to Action & Results
6. Management Framework & Assessment
7. Doing Benchmarking Well
8. Lean Strategy
9. People Engagement for Business Change & Improvement

Select and improve the few critical hard and cultural measures that track progress towards your Vision and which impact efficiency, effectiveness and competitive advantage
Understand and prioritise your performance gaps for improvement
Develop a business case to support implementation of recommendations
Learn how to track and validate expected improvement
Change Management and People Engagement for effective implementation and sustaining the changes

This course is about how to use benchmarking for dramatic large step improvements and innovations and to formulate and deploy your strategic plans and to increase your competitive advantage. The course is therefore suitable for both public and private sectors.

Sign Up Today!

WHY YOU CANNOT MISS THIS COURSE

Through this course, participants will learn to:

UNDERSTAND what benchmarking is and what it isn’t
IDENTIFY why you would consider undertaking benchmarking, including strategic imperatives
POSITION benchmarking in the context of other improvement tools
KNOW how to establish benchmarking in the context of what is most important for you and your strategic imperatives – how benchmarking can help to establish, drive and deliver your strategies
DETERMINE a benchmarking project to maximize progress towards your Vision and for areas which need improvement
IDENTIFY potential benchmarking partners
COLLECT and analyse benchmarking data
IDENTIFY, learn and share best practices
MAKE recommendations, implement improvements and review progress
NETWORK ideas and harvest best practice

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

This programme is designed for managerial professionals in any organisation or industry who want to rapidly improve your organizations’ practices, enhance customer service or improve competitive advantage.

This course is valuable for Senior Managers and Executives who are involved in:

Business Management Strategic Planning Quality Improvement Operational Efficiency Performance Management Organisational Development Performance Measurement Business Excellence

While you will benefit considerably by participating as an individual, maximum advantage will be gained from the practical exercises by attending as a small team – TEAM DISCOUNTS APPLY. You will leave the course well positioned to commence your own benchmarking project on what is important for you.

Other feedback from previous international participants: - What pleased you most about the Program?

The exchanges/dialogues between the instructor and participants into real practical steps.
Given me a clear idea of what Benchmarking is and what it’s not.
Broadening of knowledge about benchmarking concept, principles and how to do it in my workplace.
This program has given me the correct understanding about the benchmarking, how to do it and I believe that it will give great value for myself and also the company I work with when I get back to work!
Putting Benchmarking into perspective with all the other tools and business improvement initiatives to choose from.
It is a workshop that encourages active participation from all of us which enables a faster learning process!
The reflection and learning and sharing sessions leads me to have a greater insight of how other industries solve the same type of problem.
The benchmarking process: the planning and analysis, learning and sharing, recommendation and implementation stages.
Enables me to understand better about the concept and application of the benchmarking.
Interactivity of the class and small group of participants.

	PROGRAM

Day 1 –Wednesday 10 March
9.00am	Registration - arrival coffee / tea.

9.10am	Welcome, Introductions, Program, facilitating key issues for participants to focus the program on participant’s expectations.

9.45am	Overview of Building Business Capability through Benchmarking- Bruce Searles &/or Anton Benc, Managing Partners, Benchmarking Partnerships. Bruce/Anton will lead participants through a shared understanding of Benchmarking and ‘bringing to life’ principles, tools and case study examples: What is Benchmarking and what it is Not. Types of benchmarking Benchmarking your business in context – the strategic imperative Benchmarking as an improvement tool – what should you do benchmarking on? Relationship to other improvement tools The relationship between benchmarking and strategy for optimum improvement & competitive advantage including impact on organisational structure. When should benchmarking be undertaken How to get started and gaining buy-in – finding benchmarking partners Applicable methodologies and comparisons Having and applying a Code of Conduct Benefits Realisation and Case Study Examples Benchmarking amongst the 9 Pillars for operationalising Business Excellence This session includes morning tea and lunch.

1.30pm	How to go about Building Business Capability through Benchmarking – Planning Participants will experience systems modeling facilitated on a whiteboard of their business unit, linkages and alignment of each of their organisational plans and organizational goals. This modeling will also reveal the connections between outcomes, key customers/stakeholders, with core and support processes, input and suppliers, plus relationships. Participants will be guided through contemporary Benchmarking principles and tools to guide them to think and determine their own benchmarking project based on the strategic importance and urgency needs based on the earlier systems modeling exercise. Participants will then be guided through their simulated benchmarking project, to ensure the learning, exercises, knowledge exchange and feedback is ‘value-creating’ for each organisation to take away and implement an effective benchmarking project in your workplaces. Areas covered in this ‘Planning’ stage include: Systems thinking principles, systems modeling, and strategic positioning of your business unit Project identification, and project vision from a business/organisational strategic needs perspective Determining the scope and coverage of the benchmarking – what you need to learn Selecting a sponsor, buy-in, the brief and support including the ‘business case’ Communications planning Selecting, initiating and supporting the benchmarking team Team participation, building partner relationships, sponsor and process owner communications, Project planning Identification and selection of benchmarking partners in a range of different industries This topic selection and scoping (Planning) phase of the benchmarking training will identify and prioritise strategic imperatives for benchmarking linked to your strategic plan and or your business unit goals. An input to this is a need to improve KPIs like efficiency and effectiveness. In the later recommendations phase of the benchmarking, a project plan is developed including a business case to support implementation of recommendations derived from the sharing and learning phase of the benchmarking. The business case identifies the expected impact on performance results as a result of implementing the improvements. Benefits realisation through project management ensures the benefits are on track during implementation This session includes afternoon tea.

5.00pm	Close
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Day 2 –Thursday 11 March
9.00am	Reflections from Day 1, facilitated and knowledge capture by Bruce Searles &/OR Anton Benc.

9.20am	How to go about Building Business Capability through Benchmarking – ANALYSIS Bruce/Anton will continue to guide participants through the simulated benchmarking project, based on participants real benchmarking needs and project development identified in Day 1. A main focus in this analysis session, is ensuring your project key outcomes, outputs, processes and inputs are all aligned and connected - facilitated for each participant that will reveal the strategic and important KPI’s for your project to collect and analyse data upon. Areas covered in this ‘Analysis’ stage include: Selecting measures and data collection Working with partners and the ‘buy-in’ for partners to see value to participate with you! Data analysis and reporting the strengths(best practices), opportunities(your performance gaps) This session includes morning coffee.

11.45am	How to go about Building Business Capability through Benchmarking – LEARNING & SHARING The simulated participants’ benchmarking project continues. Areas covered in this ‘Learning & Sharing’ stage include: Recognising the participants learning needs from the analysis reports for targeting partners to share their strengths, including the process to share knowledge/ best practices. Engaging and connecting partners together to share including communications for sharing and logistics for sharing and learning Site visits, forums, workshop templates and ‘handy hints’ Templates and ‘handy hints for you to take away. Engaging other stakeholders as required and reporting from the lessons learnt. This session includes Lunch and networking.

2.30pm	How to go about Building Business Capability through Benchmarking – RECOMMENDATIONS & IMPLEMENTATION The simulated participants’ benchmarking project continues. Areas covered in this ‘Recommendations & Implementation’ stage include: Leadership of change management – best global practices Feedback and consultation with stakeholders for recommendations Recommendations business case/ project plan Monitoring and communications planning Transfer of knowledge through implementation Monitoring and review including benefits realisation Learn how a re-measure of the benchmark results during and following implementation will validate the expected Improvement, identify priorities where gaps have not been satisfactorily closed for project teams to further address. The process owners in these areas should be involved. Outputs and outcomes from strategy mapping, if measured before the benchmarking and then measured afterwards will give hard measure views of efficiencies and effectiveness. Some cultural/climate measures, usually perception data, with stakeholders is also recommended to provide the change management climate for effective implementation and sustaining the changes. This session includes feedback and further specific learning needs for each participant in their ‘Action Planning’, Afternoon Coffee and issuing of Certificates of completion.

4.00pm	Next Steps – Deploying your benchmarking project!

4.30pm	Close and transport co-ordin
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Registration Form

Topic: Building Business Capability through doing Benchmarking Well - Training
Training Workshop Date: Thur 22 & Fri 23 April, 2010. SYDNEY

Please fill out the form below to register for the Workshop, or, alternatively
FAX TO: Bruce Searles: (02) 9482 4093
Phone: 0418 267 794

Investment per person: $1590.00 inc GST – both days (includes GST). 5% discount for the 2nd person, 10% for the 3rd person, 15% for the 4th person & 20% for the 5th & subsequent persons who register together at the same time from the same organisation for this training course (Just write any additional names and roles in the space at the bottom of this form). Additional credit card charges of 3% for Visa and Mastercard and 5% for AMEX and Diners will be passed on to you. Invoice / receipt will be issued on registration.

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Cancellations must be received in writing. Full refund for 14 days prior to event. 50% refund for between 7-14 days prior. No refund for less than 7 days prior. * * Accommodation, travel, etc not included. Lunch, morning and afternoon teas included. Please notify us if you have specific dietary requirements.

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