The key to increasing your company’s success may lie in comparing apples to apples, according to a press release from Best Practices. The company believes that comparing apples to oranges may be an even more beneficial means of knowledge management.
As an example of an “apples to apples” comparison, the press release suggested evaluating two marketing departments located in different countries. The orange comes into the mix by comparing one of the marketing departments to, say, a finance department.
Best Practices cited two examples in which companies benefited from this sort of knowledge management.
“Lucent Technologies identified best individual engineer practices which boosted productivity levels by 10 percent in eight months and yielded six times the ROI after two years,” the press release stated. Also, “a unit of Xerox drove 152% to 328% improvement in country unit sales and over $200 million in new revenue by benchmarking the best practices of its operating countries.”
“Often, the secret to improving their business is already within their walls – it’s learning from their very best employees and divisions,” the press release said of potential Best Practice customers. Speaking directly to them, it urged, “As your company approaches 2007, consider the benefits of creating a knowledge sharing culture where successful employees, divisions, or plants share lessons learned’ with their colleagues to avoid reinventing the wheel.'”
The press release stated that, “to launch an apples to apples’ initiative, you’ll need to identify your employees, departments, or divisions that you consider to be high performers’ based on ROI, customer feedback, or revenues. Then carefully analyze their work process . . . to unlock the secrets to their success – which are often behavioral. Once you’ve unlocked this knowledge, champion it’s value with success stories . . .”
And if you should want to launch “an apples to oranges’ initiative,” Best Practices wants you to contact them for more information.
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Doug is a staff writer for murdok. Visit murdok for the latest eBusiness news.
