^The APQC Blog

Of course the headline’s promise is a vast overstatement. And as a result, the credible advice I share with you below will be a letdown, which is ironically the point of this blog.

While there are certainly notable exceptions, the IT consulting marketplace has had more than its share of engagements that overpromised and under-delivered. Examples of disappointed companies were seemingly everywhere at APQC’s 2012 Process Conference (held in Houston in late October).

Here at APQC, we are very excited to announce that we’re among 10 winners of the 2012 North American Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) award. This is our eighth time being recognized for our organizational learning practices and outstanding customer value. Even cooler, we were also admitted to the 2012 Americas MAKE Hall of Fame. Many of our members and the best-practice organizations we’ve studied are also on the North American winner list, including ConocoPhillips, Ecopetrol, Fluor, IBM, and Microsoft.

In my last blog post I highlighted APQC’s recently released collection of key procurement benchmarks. This time I wanted to highlight our content featuring logistics benchmarks.

A common theme among senior finance executives and subject matter experts regarding the close-to-disclose process has emerged. Many large organizations, particularly those that have significantly grown globally over the past decade, could stand to improve in one or all of the following four areas:

If you’re in charge of designing knowledge management tools and approaches for your organization, you know you need to pick ones that employees will actually use. Otherwise, your shiny new process or software package may end up gathering dust, not providing any value. But how do you figure out which tools and approaches are most likely to fit into employees’ work processes and help them achieve their objectives?

When we talk about quality, the conversation often focuses on production and manufacturing. We discuss commonalities in what it means and how to assess it. Things like rework, scrap, and defects are common quality measures, but they are limited. The focus is only on reducing expenditures caused by not meeting expectations (e.g., contractual, customer perceptions, regulations). These measures are the compass that guides many organizations. But quality is much more complicated. Creating a culture that focuses on quality is even more challenging.

 The STEM shortage (the deficit of science, technology, engineering, and mathematical talent) has been a reoccurring topic in my blog posts. Recently, I had the opportunity to guest blog about STEM talent on the website of Kelly Outsourcing & Consulting Group (KellyOCG), writing about 3 Effective Strategies for Retaining STEM Talent.

Making sure your benchmarking has real return on investment is not easy. Most of our projects start with someone saying, "My boss told me we had to do benchmarking. Leadership wants to know how we compare to similar organizations."  This request is based on a fear that the organization is missing something that others already know and are using to create better value for customers.  As Chris Gardner pointed out in his last blog, there is a missed opportunity simply due to the fact that this fear is based in reality.

APQC’s latest supply chain content allows you to compare your organization’s procurement performance with that of other companies in your industry. Our Key Procurement Benchmarks collection highlights the performance of organizations in the consumer products/packaged goods, electronics, industrial products, petroleum/chemical, and retail and wholesale industries.

Recently, several in-depth articles that review shared services center (SSC) performance with headquarter (HQ) and business unit (BU) performance were updated with new benchmarking data. According to APQC’s Open Standard Benchmarking in accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, and general accounting and reporting, SSCs outperform HQ and BU locations.