SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the launch of a comprehensive performance benchmarking program for Indian companies in association with the Indian School of Business. Performance benchmarking from SAP empowers organizations to strategically analyze the impact of SAP on their businesses and understand the value of adopting best practice business processes. To date, more than 8,500 customers globally have realized value from SAP benchmarking and best practices program.
Organizations across a wide range of industries that have adopted best practices are realizing a significant advantage over their competitors. For example, findings show three-times lower costs for a top-performing versus a low-performing finance organization, 32% improvement in effectiveness for top-performing shared services organizations versus those without shared services, and 2.4 times higher materials savings for top-performing sourcing organizations than average sourcing organizations.
The Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, conducted a research survey to understand how performance benchmarking can be leveraged by Indian companies. “It is very apparent that India Inc. understands the need and significance of benchmarking,” said Prof. Deepa Mani, assistant professor of Information Systems, Indian School of Business. “According to the respondents, more than 80 percent agreed that they see benefits from understanding their position vis-à-vis the industry, while 76 percent of respondents confirmed that benchmarking would guide them to set their strategic direction.”
Launched in 2004 in the areas of Human Capital Management, Finance, and Supplier Relationship Management & Procurement, the benchmarking program has expanded to include more than 30 business processes including Supply Chain Planning, Manufacturing, New Product Development and Introduction, Customer Contact Centers, and Governance, Risk, and Compliance. SAP offers more than 30 types of tailored benchmarking and best-practice surveys that can capture up to 700 KPIs and more than 1,000 different subset of best practices.
Participants of the benchmarking program receive many valuable benefits in addition to determining the impact of SAP on their business. They are able to internally explore the linkage between IT and business metrics, quantify the value of adopting best practices, and compare their use of SAP with that of their competitors and peers. Participants also have the ability to recognize company best practices and industry trends over time as each benchmarking initiative is ongoing and continuously updated with additional data points.
“Indian businesses are on an aggressive global growth path and want to be the best in the world. They not only want to adopt but define the global best practices.” said Alok Goyal, chief operating officer, SAP India. “Our research shows that 87 percent of companies do a very thorough job at building their business case, but only 8-10% of the companies retain their focus on value post implementation. More than 150 companies covering more than 20 industries in India have already leveraged this program to extract more value out of SAP.”
