Benchmarking is a common practice for comparing an organization’s performance against the standard performance of other companies, especially competitors, in a particular industry. However, benchmarking may also be used to make performance comparisons against the performance standards of similar business units or departments within the organization. Walmart provides reports that allow managers to compare results from their individual stores (primarily) against regional and company-wide performance standards. The same benchmarking process may even be used within a single business unit (i.e., store), to help managers set and exceed performance goals based on that individual unit’s historical performance standards.
Use course content and additional external and internal (Walmart) research to complete the following:
Review the information in the Seasonal Average Sales, Average Inventory, and Turnover Report. Each of the metrics represents an opportunity, since each of the metrics showed improvement over the past season. Choose one of the metrics (Average Sales, Average Inventory, or Turnover).
-For the chosen metric, set a benchmark of performance for the coming season and explain how you set the benchmark.
-For the chosen metric, set a new performance goal for the coming season and explain the action(s) you will take to meet that goal.
Review the information in the Paint Department Last Season Total Dollar Sales Report. The poor performance in the Paint Department represents a risk, since Total Sales were lower than the previous season.
-Set a new performance goal for the coming season and explain how you set the goal.
-Identify one factor (internal or external) that could have caused the poor performance in the Paint Department last season and explain what action(s) you could take to overcome that factor.
-Briefly explain one advantage and one disadvantage of using internal benchmarking as opposed to external benchmarking.
