Benchmarking Process: Evaluation And Implementation For TalkTalk Company Essay.

Using an organisation of your choice, evaluate the reasons why the organisation would be interested in the ‘benchmarking’ process. In addition, discuss the steps that this organisation could undertake in order to implement benchmarking practices, including the difficulties it may face doing this. Finally, recommend ways to mitigate the risks and difficulties that the organisation may face.

The Need for Benchmarking Process in TalkTalk

 Benchmarking can be referred to a tool or a process that provides an organization the insight of its operational journey along with a comparative study of its strongest rival or the leader in the industry. Moreover, the process helps in enhancing the competitive advantage of a company by highlighting the performance of the best in the industry. However, benchmarking process is associated with few problems & issues that come its way during its implementation in a Company (Rolstadas 2013).

 In this assignment, TalkTalk in UK is the company, which needs to undergo the benchmarking process as per the researcher point of view. Moreover, the requirement of the benchmarking process is cited with few supportive evidences in the light of few of the thoughts of some authors. TalkTalk is one of the leading companies in UK, which has brought a revolution in the communication & the broadband sector with its unmatched tariff plans. However, various reasons are there that are stopping the Company in becoming a leading mobile & broadband service operator in UK. The TalkTalk Company challenges the dominion of BT but the sheer faiths of BT customers because of its loyal service quality have so far not provided a sufficient space to the TalkTalk Company.

This assignment covers the need of a benchmarking process in the TalkTalk Company with the help of few supportive evidences from some established author’s voice. Moreover, it also takes into account the implementation processes and the probable difficulties for the same.

TalkTalk group was founded as a subsidiary to the Carphone Warehouses in the year 2003. However, it was demerged from the Carphone Warehouses and became a standalone company in the year 2010. The Company did capture the strong attention of a large customer base in UK with its low cost offerings in no time. However, it felt miserably on the service part and in relation to this, the customer satisfaction poll carried by uSwitch showed an even miserable remark for the Company. TalkTalk Company was at the joint bottom place with the Orange Company for customer satisfaction quality. Nonetheless, customer service is such an effective feat, which contributes in the enhancement of business operation of a company by adding more and more customers with the passage of time. Customer service is essential for any company as without it no company can ever survive in the market. TalkTalk Company needs to reassess its customer service quality in order to gain the market share as losing out on customers signify losing out on potential and existing customers.

Challenges Faced by TalkTalk in Becoming a Leading Mobile and Broadband Service Provider

TalkTalk Company is way behind to the BT in terms of customer service and broadband speed. To the researcher, the customer service and the broadband speed are the two most contributing factors in the performance of a telecom company (Singh, Grover and Singh 2013). Such service providers lure customers by providing speed in their broadband services, which the customers want every time because the world has become a place of the internet. Moreover, an increased usage of the broadband for various purposes such as online tutorials, entertainment, news and many more have enhanced its importance for various groups of people such as youths. Further, for a Company that also operates in the telecom sector, it is very important to have an improved customer service and broadband speed as well. Nevertheless, customer service is the one most effective weapon that provides a solidify foundation to a company in the market 

 The entry level packages of BT offers a faster speed than TalkTalk. However, both are offering the same limit of a maximum attainable speed, which is hypothetically equal to 17 mbps. BT is a winner in some other parts also such as better call plans; extra services and many more but to the researcher, the customer service and the broadband speed is the most effective contributor in an improved business performance (btplc.com 2017). The use of broadband has even suppressed the importance of basic calls to a significant level (Zhu 2014). Moreover, several platforms such as messenger, whatsapp, imo and many others applications are providing both voice & video calling facilities respectively. However, it has not completely overshadowed the importance of basic mode of calls; it rather has diminished the importance to a notable limit. Nevertheless, the youth generations in irrespective of countries are very much susceptible towards the usage of broadband (Bogetoft 2013). The new form of education such as an online tutorial has enhanced the broadband usage to meet with the changed nature of educational style. Moreover, the usages of YouTube to have access with some tutorial platform for the educational purpose have become widely popular among the educational background people. The benefits are not limited only to the tutorial level; it rather has a broader scope than this such as entertaining contents, news contents and many more (Pekovic and Micunovic 2013). The world has gone online and ever since it has done so, it has increased the value of internet service or broadband service providers as speed is a criteria that creates value to a service provider.

Why Customer Service and Broadband Speed Matter for TalkTalk

 Various evidences are there that shows the requirement of a benchmarking process to the TalkTalk Company. As stated by Camp, “A continuous measurement of the products, services and performances of the competitive company or of the best in the industry does provide leadership recognition to the Company that is implementing the benchmarking process” (Zairi 2012). Kleine held the benchmarking process as an excellent tool for the identification of performance goal or any improvement (Kahan 2013). Moreover, several other thoughts are there in support of the implementation of a benchmarking process for such an organization, which is struggling with some of the most important core sectors of a business operation. According to APQC, “benchmarking is an important process, which allows one Company to analyze the business operations of other competitors (Chung et al. 2015).” In the view of Evans, “measuring own performances against best in the industry helps in calculating the place for the improvement for the Company, which adopts the benchmarking process” (Goetsch and Davis 2014). Based on irrespective of the thoughts of different established authors, it can well be illustrated that the benchmarking process is of utmost importance to such companies that has not performed up to the expected level. However, benchmarking process only gives an idea about the strategies and processes that the competitor Company or the best in industry is using. Moreover, the successful effect of a benchmarking process on the performance of the target company relies heavily on the execution of the same derived outcomes (Oakland 2014).  

 Benchmarking process is of two kinds such as internal benchmarking and external benchmarking. Internal benchmarking refers to an internal analysis of the business operation of the company. Moreover, external benchmarking refers to a comparative study of various features of the competitive companies such as performance benchmarking, process benchmarking and strategic benchmarking (Conti 2012).

 Performance metrics can be obtained from different graphical representation on the comparative studies of market behaviours of different companies. Moreover, annual reports of the companies, online contents on the performances and many more can be taken as a supportive material in researching the performance metrics of different companies. It is useful in grabbing an idea on the performance behaviour of different companies in market (Kerzner 2013).

 This kind of benchmarking illustrates the specific process that the competitor companies or the best in industries are following. Moreover, it helps in analyzing the ideas that are helping other companies in fulfilling their specific task. It also gives a measure of the available resources in the Company, which are needed to be utilised in order to achieve the same feat (Griffin 2013).

Types of Benchmarking: Internal and External

 Strategic Benchmarking is one of the most effective of all the three benchmarking processes that are mentioned above. Moreover, it helps in gathering necessary information regarding the various strategic planning of the competitive company or the leading in the industry. Strategic benchmarking helps in finding the inner fault in the strategy making of the Company. Nevertheless, it allows the selection of a path that was never known to it (Spenley 2012).

 The benchmarking process is very effective in constructing and changing the business operation of a company. Moreover, it has potential in it to produce an insight of a company’s operation as well as it also adds new dimensions to the operation derived from the benchmarking process on the competitor Company. However, a successful implementation of a benchmarking process is very important for achieving the success for the Company (Orlova and Afonin 2015).

 The execution of the benchmarking process depends on three factors such as adoption, adaptation and improvement. An adoption is a process that governs the research making on the competitor companies through various available modes such as online business articles, annual reports on the Company and many more. Moreover, these all resources help in collecting necessary information such as its strategic planning, process strategies, business performance and many more on the insight of the competitor Company or the top in industry. To the TalkTalk Company, the external benchmarking process on BT is essential to win a competitive edge in the market. The TalkTalk Company requires an understanding of the core features of the biggest telecom company of UK that are enabling BT in moulding a huge customer in their favour (www.talktalkgroup.com 2017). Moreover, the execution might work wonder in favour of such a Company, which is lacking in customer service part (Reitmann, Gillissen and Schultz 2016). It is only providing satisfaction to customers that would enable this organization to bounce back and be a market leader.

 Adaptation is the next step that comes after adoption in the benchmarking process, which is related with the implementation of the acquired information because of the benchmarking process on the competitor Company. The TalkTalk Company requires an understanding of their efficiency level, which is extremely decisive in adapting the outcome of the benchmarking process on BT (www.talktalkgroup.com 2017). Moreover, the two core sectors that need a quick repairing are the customer service and the broadband speed. Nevertheless, broadband speed is related to some kind of technological processing, which requires an efficient team of IT experts. However, customer service is more of a quality service, which is influenced by varying domains of operations of the Company (Bro?ek, Paw?owska and Wieczór 2012). Any problem regarding the service of providing broadband facilities needs to be channelized to the IT department where those people assess it and then quickly dela with problems, thus enhancing the service quality.

Performance Benchmarking: Obtaining Performance Metrics of Different Companies

 Improvement is the last but the most important part of a benchmarking process as it allows the necessary changes to take place in the concerned organization. Moreover, a successful implementation of the information that is collected by conducting the benchmarking process on the BT Company has its own importance. Moreover, to achieve the desired outcome, the collected information need to be implemented and observed to check whether any changes is required. A continuous conduction and evaluation of the benchmarking process is of utter urgency for the TalkTalk Company to maximise the outcome in the business operation. Nevertheless, an improved customer service along with an enhanced broadband speed needs to be achieved by the TalkTalk Company to produce a strong reply to the BT Company to attain a maximum success (Karas 2016).

 Some authorial works do indicate few of the problems that might occur while implementing the benchmarking process in the Company. In this context, the works of Abusneina and its groups in the year 1993 did propose a problem that might happen while implementing the benchmarking process in the Company. Abusneina and its groups hinted towards the external environments of a country such as political, economical and social factors that tend to hamper the economical development of an organization. It gives birth to a necessity that if the Company really want to preserve the cultural, social and political environment of the country or it is really looking for a benchmarking process (Pekovic and Micunovic 2013).

Lack of awareness on some of the technical flaws is one of those problems, which can prevent the Company in going for the required change with the help of benchmarking process. Moreover, the effect of some kinds of malware attacks on its routers in the year 2016 did hamper more than 360,000 customers as the internet connection was disturbed. It simply tells about their unaware move in relation to technical glitch. The problem with TalkTalk is that if they do not improve on their customer service quality, their customers would shift their base to some other companies offering same service.

The IT infrastructure of the TalkTalk UK requires a huge amount of investment for including various fresh IT talents. However, a big investment on the changes needs a proper realization of its importance otherwise; a healthy investment is not possible from the TalkTalk Company (Zhu 2014).

 One of the problems that have prevented the TalkTalk UK from attaining a same level of success as that of BT Company is its lacklustre performance in the security level of the router. Moreover, in the year 2016, the router was complained to have affected by the Mirai malware that has hampered the internet service in more than 360,000 households. The one point of recommendation based on the experiences gathered by Abusneina & its groups in the year 1993 is about the improvement of economical & political background of the TalkTalk Company that is preventing an improvement of its IT infrastructure. Moreover, the failure of its IT infrastructure was revealed in their malware related router infection. The IT infrastructure of the TalkTalk UK Company need to be more advanced in order to meet with the rising threat for the IT department of the Company. To bring the required changes, the management needs to realize the urgency of incepting the benchmarking process by benchmarking with the BT Company as no other Company in UK can set a better example to the TalkTalk Company.

Process Benchmarking: Analyzing the Work Processes of Competitive Companies

Conclusion

The benchmarking process is one such effective process that needs to be incepted on a continuous basis. Moreover, in the present world, an extreme competition is there and to maintain a healthy competitive edge for a Company, it needs to use certain established facts that could actually change its business operation. Nevertheless, benchmarking process inception finds its strong foothold in companies. A benchmarking process is carried out by benchmarking with other competitors or the leading in industry. However, benchmarking can never guarantee of producing an effective results in all cases as it depends heavily on the management of the Company that requires the benchmarking process. Moreover, the political, social and economical scenario of a country does affect the implementation of the benchmarking process by providing an unfavourable external environment to it. In this assignment, the TalkTalk UK Company was highlighted as the Company that requires the benchmarking process. The basic reasons behind the urgency of incepting the benchmarking process is the lower than standard performance of its customer service and a comparatively lower broadband speed. Nevertheless, TalkTalk has created a revolution in the broadband and calling sector by bringing the cheapest offerings. To a Company of TalkTalk stature, an improved customer service might do wonder by producing a quality offering along with a cheaper broadband and call rates. However, benchmarking process does not hold any guarantee of producing the desired goal as it require a significant change in the management, which is related to the staffing of an enhanced number of IT experts. Moreover, it is very tough to regain the lost reputation for a Company in the market. BT is the leading Company in UK in terms of a large customer base and good customer service. Moreover, to the researcher, these are the reasons that have motivated for a feeling to benchmark the TalkTalk UK with the BT Company. NO other Company could produce a better example to the TalkTalk Company than the BT.

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