for J. William Bennett

William Wrigley, Jr. (1861-1932) once said "When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary."  Without experiential deliberation there can be no change. Without change there can be no progress.  Doing something "the way its always been done" or finding no fault in a faulty process, is as common today as it was in Wrigley's day. Not addressing such issues can render your business unnecessary.

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J. William Bennett

Benchmarking has been around since before the Greek and Roman days.  Webster defines a benchmarks as "1: a point of reference from which measurements may be made; 2: something that serves as a standard by which others may be measured or judged; 3: a standardized problem or test that serves as a basis for evaluation or comparison".

IT Best Practice models are tied closely to benchmarks.  A benchmark measurement is not necessarily a good or optimum measurement, it can simply be a stake in the ground, so to speak.  It tells us where we are today.  Some benchmarks are optimum performance metrics (e.g. Six Sigma quality).  They tell us what the goal is for an industry or component. 

Before embarking on a benchmark we need to determine: What are our goals?  How do the goals break down in to measurable data?  What data metrics do I need to collect to measure progress to those goals?

Linkage to enterprise architecture, IT systems management (ITSM), service level objectives (SLO), total cost of ownership (TCO),... you name it, there are few areas of IT in which a benchmark measurement is not valuable. When it comes to any type of IT consolidation, an in-scope cost benchmark is paramount to success.

As a member of KPMG Peat Marwick's Advanced Technology Group (ATG) from 1993 to 1995, I was introduced to IT cost analysis and best practice benchmarking in a serious way.  The Big 6 consulting firms (now down to Big 5) were in major competition and pressure to make benchmark metrics relevant to specific enterprise issues was intense. 

Prior to my joining the KPMG practice, the actual workflow of a data center was not a significant  component of their benchmark analysis.  The benchmarks were based solely on costs.  How the client could actually impact those costs, e.g. solutions coming out of a benchmark, were few.  I introduced the KPMG benchmark process to the principles of IT systems management (ITSM).  The study of work flows through problem management, change management, security management, performance management, and so on, helped KPMG make the benchmark relevant to numerous IT projects. 

Benchmarks were integral parts of the following projects on which I later became deeply involved:

1. Prudential Insurance Consolidation - Consolidating 4 IT centers into 2 required very reliable metrics on current operations and their costs. [Letter from Prudential CSO)
2. Hertz Corporation Business Process Analysis - Outsourced to ISSC (now IBM Global Services) - process improvement (BPR) initiatives needed specific content and definition for client satisfaction and cost management. [Letter from IBM Principle]
3. State Farm Insurance - Consolidation of 28 data centers into 3 newly built centers required several benchmarks be taken and several more se set for confirmation of goals.  [Letter from project executive]

In later years I was exposed to performance modeling tools [HyPerformix IPS], application architecture modeling [Popkin SA] and various conceptual methodologies that could all contribute to enabling enterprise best practice benchmark metrics.

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