“Benchmarking is the practice of being humble enough to admit that someone else is better at something and wise enough to try and learn how to match and even surpass them at it”
Benchmarks are targets we strive to hit, to reach; we choose an objective that represents some measure of success to us and work to manage our processes to reach this objective.
Organisations can use benchmarking to identify internal opportunities for improvement. You can use comparison as an opportunity to learn. It requires acceptance that there is room for improvement. A mentality of “there is no way to improve" or “we don’t need to improve” will fail any benchmarking effort.
Michael Bieger (CRS Global Fleet Manager) organised a Working Group attended by 5 other organisations on June 22 at the 2021 Annual Fleet Forum Conference. During the working group, the participants recognised that their organisations are getting better at capturing fleet management and road safety data and are eager to learn from each other’s performance.
Working Group participants are keen to start benchmarking, with a focus on road safety and cost efficiency.
Benchmarking only works if organisations share their data with each other. To make data sharing successful, benchmarking participants need to;
Create a trusted environment in which data can be shared, for examply by anonymising the data;
Look at differences between practices and performance and seek to understand these differences with the intention of learning.
First Road Safety Benchmarking Exercise in Humanitarian Sector
In 2020 Fleet Forum started the benchmark project, and together with our members WHO, GOAL, OSCE, UNDSS, UNICEF, ICRC and Heineken we worked to determine the first set of indicators to use to gain insight into road safety and to learn from good practices.
Setting benchmarks should not only lead to a comparison of road safety data across members but more importantly Fleet Forum would like the project to lead to a culture where benchmarking participants can learn what organisational differences lead to improved road safety results.
After the conference, with the support of UPS, Fleet Forum will invite its members to the first Benchmark for Road Safety Exercise. This will include a breakdown on the creation of effective benchmarking, topics related to benchmarking, the steps of the benchmarking process, and answering any questions you may have. Contact Fleet Forum to set up the exercise for your organisation.
For an overview of the project, visit Fleet Forum website.
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