Benchmarking in water supply services: the lessons learnt Available to Purchase

This paper reports the main findings arising from carrying out three benchmarking projects in the areas of customer services, operations and laboratory services in the North West Water part of the Regulated Utility Division of United Utilities PLC. The study has pinpointed a number of success factors including the fact that each of the benchmarking projects related to key business processes and this ensured that they had a strategic focus. Considerable time was spent in mapping and understanding internal processes before external partners were contacted. A great degree of professionalism was devoted to the manner in which potential benchmarking partners were approached and key performance indicators for the projects were identified. The paper also examines the difficulties and pitfalls which have been encountered, including, inadequate project definition, the scope of the benchmarking project being too large, unrealistic assumptions of senior managers, failure to communicate the benchmarking plan, the lack of an effective contingency plan and the benchmarking team failing to draw on resources outside of the team.