Oracle Enterprise Performance Management - The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions - page 101

Analyze
Once the data has been collected, it should be analyzed. Hopefully, you've
managed to secure the cooperation of one or more benchmarking part-
ners so that your analysis will be comparative rather than introspective.
The goal of data analysis is to identify any gaps in performance. Once
you find these, you will need to:
1. Identify the operational best practices and enables. In other words,
what are your partners doing right that you're not? Then you need to
find out exactly how they're doing it.
2. Formulate a strategy to close these gaps by identifying opportuni-
ties for improvement.
3. Develop an implementation plan for these improvements.
The analysis phase uses the outputs of the data collection phase, i.e., the
questionnaires, interviews, observations, etc. It is during this phase that
process mapping and the development of requisite process performance
measurements is performed.
Process performance measurements should be:
1. Tied to customer expectations
2. Aligned with strategic objectives
3. Clearly reflective of the process and not influenced by other factors
4. Monitored over time
Stewart and Mohamed (2001) suggest a metric template that enables the
organization to clearly define a measurement and then track its perfor-
mance. Table 3.3 details a measurement description card format for a typi-
cal process metric, while Table 3.4 shows the reported results.
Adapt
Once the plan has been formulated and receives approval from management,
it will be implemented in this phase. Traditional project management tech-
niques should be used to control, monitor, and report on the project. It is also
during this phase that the continuous improvement plan is developed. In this
plan, new benchmarking opportunities should be identified and pursued.