Rekabetçi Kıyaslama Yöntemi Ve Bir Otomotiv Firmasının Satış Sonrası Hizmet Sistemine Uygulaması

Abstract

Rekabetçi kıyaslama sürecinde rekabet sadece doğrudan rakiplerle değil, aynı endüstri dalında veya herhangi bir sektörde örnek gösterilen bir şirketle girişilen mücadeledir. Rekabetçi kıyaslama bir seferlik bir proje değildir. İş çevresinin sürekli değişmesi sonucu şekillenen rekabet Rekabetçi kıyaslama bulgularının yeniden gözden geçirilerek hedef çıtasının yükseltilmesine neden olur. Rekabetçi kıyaslama bulguları en iyi uygulamaların göstergesi olduğu sürece kısa ve uzun dönem planlar için hareket noktası olurlar. Başkalarının nasıl başardıkları Rekabetçi kıyaslama çalışması sonrası Stratejik Kalite Hedeflerinin ortaya konmasında yönlendirici olmaktadır. Buna pazar ile ilgili hedefler de dahildir. Rekabetçi kıyaslama çalışması sadece içinde bulunan endüstri dalının değil, diğer alanlardaki en uygulamaları da rakip olarak kabul ettiği için vizyonun ve uzun dönem planların oluşturulmasında geniş bir bakış açısı sağlar. Rekabete dayalı rekabetçi kıyaslamada kuruluşun doğrudan rakibi olan kuruluşa ait ürünler, hizmetler ve iş süreçleri mevzu bahistir. Amaç rakiplerin ürünleri, süreçleri ve iş alamnda ulaştığı sonuçlar hakkında belirli bilgilerin elde edilmesi ve sonra bunların kendi kuruluşundakilerle karşılaştırılmasıdır. Fonksiyonel Kıyaslama kuruluşun doğrudan rakibi olan veya olmayan kuruluşların ürünlerinin, hizmetlerinin ve süreçlerinin incelenmesini ele alır. Amaç kıyaslama uygulamasına gidilecek belirli bir konuda mükemmel olduğu herkesçe kabul edilen herhangi bir kuruluştaki en iyi uygulamaları öğrenmektir. Rekabetçi kıyaslama çalışmalarında tecrübeli şirketler, Toplam Kalite programının yerleştirilmesi ile Kıyaslama arasında birbirine bağlı bir etkileşim tespit etmişlerdir. Bunun ilk nedeni kalite inisiyatifi ile yönlendirilen bir değişim, Kıyaslama çalışmaları için bir başlangıç teşkil eder. Toplam Kalite Yönetimi tekniklerinin hepsinde olduğu gibi kıyaslama çalışmasının sonunda ortaya çıkacak analiz sonuçları, bulgular ve öneriler öncelikle Vlll üst yönetim tarafından kabul görmelidir. Üst yönetim bu konudaki kararlılığı önemlidir ve bu sağlandıktan sonra iyileştirmeye ve hareket planlarının hazırlanmasına başlanabilir. Rekabetçi kıyaslamada amaç sektörde olsun veya olmasın ilgili süreçte üstün performans gösteren kuruluşların ve uygulamalarının saptanması ve bu uygulamaların adaptasyonu ile pazarda uzun dönem rekabet üstünlüğünün sağlanmasıdır.

Competition in Benchmarking concept is done not only with direct competitors but also with best in class organizations either in the same industry or in an other industry. For that reason, Benchmarking is a different study from Competition Analysis. In competition analysis outputs of your study are competitors products or services features and prices but Benchmarking is involved in how that product or service is designed, produced, distributed and finally how customers are made delighted. Benchmarking is not a do once project. Due to continuous improvement in technology and market, a natural result of the first competition is shaped out even every day. Therefore result of Benchmarking study must be calibrated periodically and targets must be revised thereafter. A company carrying out a benchmarking project must know itself very well before comparing its performance levels. Unless internal datas are not available, collecting datas from outside world would be random and would mislead the target of the project as well. In competitive Benchmarking, products or services or business processes of direct competitors are evaluated and reflect of their way of doing these to business results are examined, compared with the organizations current results. When findings from competitors do not represent best in practices, they are but important as being related with customers' potential suppliers and even share holders. Functional Benchmarking is an other land of Benchmarking study where you aim to learn from best in class companies named as in their industry practices. After evaluating their superior performance results by adapting such practices into organization to be a market leader in the long term, gaining competitive advantage is aimed. For a Benchmarking team, a partner is not only a direct competitor but can also be in a different industry, This helps to have a wide point of view on clearing the vision and setting long term plans. Therefore Benchmarking team must link results of the la study directly with the organization's Strategic Quality Planning effort. It is unavoidable that study results will effect overall strategies and targets. A generic glance at Benchmarking process will in two stages, practices and measurements. Practices reflect the way how it is done, and measurements are the metric results when it is done. Determining the gap by just considering metric results will mislead the study therefore by looking at practices behind this measurement, will help to answers "How's" Just to simplify, metric results are tools to ask "How" questions. Benchmarking Process is a n-step process model. To use a process model during the study will help the team to define a common language. So every team member will know where they are and what they will do on the subject step. Support of Quality Counsel is very important in a Benchmarking project. Like applying all total quality tools, final success can be obtained starting from the top management, they will believe first and then support their staff accordingly. Therefore a Benchmarking project must be lead by Quality Counsel. Members will highlight the points to be improved. Those points can be chosen among critical success factors. Before selecting the topic of Benchmarking process, customers of Benchmarking process must be defined. Customer of this project will clarify what kind of knowledge is needed. Based on this need, Benchmarking project will lighten the future of the company as well such long term affective projects must be allocated in monetary and human sources. This allocation together with legal support must be done by customer of that project. Critical Success factors are the indicators of a company if it is successful or not. To be long standing in the market is based on a Quality point of view and companies' strength. If a company is strong at these key processes, it is in front of the other companies in the industry to be leader in the market. And to be successful on the key business processes is based on confirming customer needs and expectations. XI Critical Success factors are the processes, functions and procedures that will maximize to reach future targets. First of all the word success must be defined clearly. In today's management success is the ability to win and having customer loyalty. Critical Success factors are quantitative measures on quality, cost and cycle time. They can be evaluated both long and short term. Benchmarking project is a team project. Building up the team, orienting and managing them are the major steps in the process. All members will have responsibilities in the team. Having a lot to do, experience of team members and the need of process customer are indicators of how team concept is important. Having build the team up, second step of the process is training before communicating with the partner. If the team is not trained well, this communication will damage all the mutual relation planned to have. After Benchmarking project team is trained, they should prepare a project plan. This plan can include all the activities to be done, as well as expected return on the project. One of the most important thing pointed out by most author is that, this project plan is better to have budget. This project plan must be approved by the Quality Consul and distributed among related departments which will take role in the project. These departments taking action in the project will be affected in two ways, they will either participate as a team member in the team or with the results gained by the Benchmarking team will affect their business results in the end. Such results can even affect external customers as well. Therefore in the coming sections, communication of results with in the entire organization is also discussed. Concept of being a competitor is somehow very far what it is meant in competitive analysis study. In traditional management, competitors were enemies, but in a Benchmarking partnership a mutual information transfer is essential. Xll Another important concept in a typical Benchmarking project is information. Considering all kind of information that can be collected either from a corporation or a person can be named as even a competitor. A company can reach at different sort of information in different sort of areas. But to collect related, reliable information is a team member's responsibility. New wellcomer companies at a Benchmarking project sometimes fall into difficulties in collecting information. If the team members are not experienced enough such unbased information can mislead the study. Three to five companies to be selected as a partner is advised in the literature. Time, project sources can sometimes be effective in determining the number of partners. After partners and sources of information are clearly identified, information collecting method comes next. Complexity of information will be a limitation as well as the project budget. To be successful at this step, a good way of information collection method design is important. If the partner is a direct competitor, one of the main target of collecting information is learning in which key points is the competitor good at. In other words strength of the competitor. The target of the Benchmarking study is somehow to compare competitors current and future performance with our own operations and the answers to the chain of questions. Where is the competitor good at? How much is the competitor good at? How is the competitor good at? Will help adapting of best practices into the own company. Another important point to be underlined is the future trend of best practices. This will conclude by gaining a future reflective database that can be also used to raise the jump height if the partner is a direct competitor. If the team has chosen great amount of partner candidates, the cheapest and easiest way of data collection is surveys. A good way of data collection where the Xlll questions to be answered is relatively easy but can be insufficient when the team aims to collect information on the process itself. Company and site visits are the second way of data collection method where you can reach deeper information. Such visits also help in understanding the culture of the organization. It is sometimes difficult to get appointment and it is an expensive way as well. Analyzing and reporting of datas come next. In this step Total Quality Management tools can be used. Current performance levels of two organizations compared first and gap in between is analyzed and how the partner has done is understood. Each Benchmarking team must report their findings to top management. These reports will be a database for the future Benchmarking projects. Findings for a change over will need a great support within the organization. These findings will sometimes directly affect people in the process. Therefore communicating of findings is another important issue at the end. Internal wall newspapers and leaflets can be used. When the analysis is completed, team announces the findings. They also determine the gap these findings must be turned into action plans before adapting. These action plans can be divided into operational plans and small projects related to them. Sometimes take over teams can be built up to apply action plans. Process owner, a couple of workers affected from the Benchmarking team findings can be members of this bus team. Take over team must report about the change regularly. This report must include new target measures and can be plotted into time graphs. Findings are to be recalibrated in the time interval. The answer to the when to calibrate question can be found in customer satisfaction surveys. Partner must be monitored. Within time new industry leader can be formed. New competitors can born in the market. Technological parameters will be a measure as well. XIV Business circumstances is in sudden improvement. In this rapid turning world, change is unavoidable. Companies that wants to be long standing in the market must be ready to change. A way of that is Benchmarking.