Procurement Professional is the official publication of CIPS Australasia

#88 - Organisations should benchmark against standards - not each other

30 Oct 2009

The Buyer fell into conversation with a project manager from a well known organisation the other day who was very enthusiastic about benchmarking their procurement processes against other similar organisations.

They were spruiking the fantastic job they were doing without realising that both organisations doing the benchmarking are at best mediocre and, at worst, poor procurement outfits.

Surely the point of benchmarking is to compare to standards, not each other? “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king” said Tom Waits and, maybe, Erasmus.  When everyone compares themselves to the standards then the standards become stronger. And then organisations can easily buddy-up with others  to help each other strengthen the comparative weak spots.

The Buyer – posted 30 October 2009

The views of THE BUYER are personal and are not necessarily those of Procurement Professional magazine, BTTB Marketing nor CIPS.