Service company Eurapco provides benchmarking for six
financial services firms each operating in a different European
country. The firms have formed a partnership for mutual self-help
and self-improvement.
Eurapco acts as a project management company, covering areas of
common practice such as security and purchasing. One of its
activities is benchmarking IT operations. The objective is to
establish best practice and the best ways in which member companies
can learn from each other.
Eurapco uses two benchmarking processes. The CPI (Continuous
Performance Improvement) service, run by The Corporate IT Forum, is
initiated by CIOs. The other involves a consultancy, BCG, and is
directed towards strategic objectives, initiated by chief
executives.
Implementing a common approach has been a major challenge,
according to Eurapco project manager Thomas Spantig. "Our main
problems were, first, language; second, costing structures; and
third, achieving a common approach with the controllers. In all
projects in a pan-European alliance there is a language
problem.
"With budget and costing structures, they found they were using
the same term to mean different things," he says. This did not
always become apparent before considerable work had been done.
Another problem was convincing the controllers within each
organisation not to fight for a 100% correct table of all detailed
figures. "It took a lot of time to get the right control, and then
to get the figures, and from there to get to the whole picture,"
Spantig says.
Eurapco's plan is to continue the CPI benchmarking process on an
annual basis. So far the work has concentrated on the operational
side: work is currently in progress to extend it to cover
development as well. Eurapco has run workshops to hammer out a
common measurement method, and hopes to reach an agreement on a
basis for proceeding by next year.