VMS vs Conventional Benchmarks

Nothing that anybody ever measured would ever be the same again.

Daniel Kehlmann, from "Die Vermessung der Welt" ("Measuring the World")

Benchmarks are used to determine comparative values for a real system. The path to comparative values depends entirely on the objective you're trying to achieve.

In the early 1980s benchmarks were used primarily in the field of technology. A new generation of processors was defined by a comparison of its actual performance with that of its predecessors. In terms of methodology, the process was restricted to technical assessments.

In the 1990s, when companies wanted to compare costs and performance parameters, peer group benchmarking was popularized by the Gartner Group. In order to allow for company specifics, the first task was to define those companies with which other comparisons were valid. Typically, the choice fell on one's own industry.

The first disadvantage of this process is the arbitrary choice of the partner being compared. For example, while services industries introduced exact costings to the industry using SAP software, the benchmark peer group deliberately puts on the blinkers.

A second critical disadvantage of the process is its strong fixation with costs. It is virtually a pre-requisite that companies of a peer group must have the same processes in order to compare them. All that has to be done then is to distinguish between the cost structures. Since then, benchmarking has often (and incorrectly) been equated with simply looking at costs.

VMS Develops a Completely New Benchmark Process

In developing its DNA-level benchmark, VMS put an end to these limitations.

DNA-level means that the processes used are ascertained by measurement and are included in the benchmarking in detail – a kind of genetic analysis, if you will.

The result is an accurate comparison of different companies. Where their processes are similar, technical or administrative processes should also be similar; where the processes deviate - either industry-specific or individually, this difference is identified and reported.

The analysis of the VMS DNA-level benchmark is accurate in its detail and precision to a degree never achieved before, which makes it possible to obtain practically-oriented results direct from a benchmark for the first time.