bm320 Benchmarking - how it works

bm320 is built around a simple to use web-application and a secure SQL-Server database. Members agree which measures and performance indicators it would be useful to compare, and use the web-application to record details of their own performance and produce comparative reports.

The comparative reports underpin benchmarking meetings by providing the focus and basis for many of the discussions. Each meeting tends to concentrate on one or two issues which have been highlighted during a previous discussion, with members taking responsibility for preparing and leading a discussion where they have particular knowledge and experience, or perhaps where their performance appears to be much better than the rest of the group.

The meetings are a key part of membership of the benchmarking clubs, providing the opportunity to meet up with colleagues from similar organisations facing similar challenges, to network, share ideas and to learn from each other. Members meet quarterly and update their comparative data on-line annually.

Benchmarking groups may be entirely self-managing, sharing the responsibilities between them, or they may use Skills & Projects to provide meeting support, facilitation or preparation and presentation of the reports.

Our service can be of benefit to individual housing associations that are looking to benchmark with similar organisations as well as existing benchmarking clubs who want some external support to improve their focus on performance and good practice.

In October 2008 we carried out an evaluation of the system with all members. Click here to download a copy of all the evaluation responses. (PDF Format).

If you would like to find out more, please contact us. We would be happy to put you in touch with one of our existing members if you would like to discuss how the system works for them.