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Aim of this paper is to set some cost benchmarks for the cost of processing an insurance application and processing a claim.

Activity‐based costing (ABC) model. The ABC model was applied to a unified business process and set the benchmarks for the cost of processing an application and a claim.

The average cost per application is approximately AUD221 and the cost of processing a claim is AUD260. The cost of support functions is higher in the case of application processing and back office direct costs are higher in the case of claim processing.

The success of benchmarking exercises depends on the cooperation of the benchmarking partners. Furthermore, the benchmarks can be more accurate when ABC is applied to the business processes. Most insurance providers are yet to adopt the ABC model.

This paper introduces the breakdown of the processing costs for general insurance. The breakdown is given on the basis of direct and indirect costs as well as front office, back office and support function costs. To the best of author's knowledge this is the first application of process benchmarking to the insurance industry.

Reflects on a three‐year project examining the evolving nature of “best practice” benchmarking in UK‐based organisations. The findings describe the current state of benchmarking and some of its advantages across a wide variety of public and private sector organisations. Also investigates the disincentives to benchmarking activity experienced by practising benchmarkers, as well as the factors which inhibit the initial take‐up of this technique. In addition, the notion that a maturity curve exists for organisations engaged in benchmarking is explored.

The article examines the attitudes and experiences of senior workplace trade union representatives, from the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union, against the TUC’s six principles of partnership. The findings suggest some acceptance of the ideological aspects of partnership, such as the need to move away from adversarial cultures and understand the impact of market imperatives and pressures on the firm. The results reveal little support, however, for improvements in job security, transparency and involvement and the quality of working life (the TUC’s so‐called “acid test” of partnership). Against a backdrop of job insecurity and widespread work intensification, the article argues that the material and organisational basis to partnership appears to be undermining various attitudinal changes within the thinking of trade union representatives regarding their roles and relations at work.

This paper aims to examine the changing attitudes to diagnostic benchmarking tools of UK business advisors over the last five years, during a period of considerable restructuring in business support, aimed at focusing support on small business and start‐ups.

The authors reviewed business support from the advisor's and client's perspective prior and during this restructuring and conducted a follow up study to that carried out in 2000, allowing direct comparisons to be made with the earlier results. Quantitative advisor demographic data was also collected for comparison.

The authors conclude that though business link has been restructured towards start‐ups and small businesses and that advisors knowledge of the benchmarking has improved, the tools available to advisors have not changed to reflect this and cannot be used by the majority of the advisors' clients. As a result the use of diagnostic benchmarking tools, as a proportion of total business support, has dropped over the previous five years.

In order to give some structured best practice support to immature businesses and pre‐start‐ups new business support tools need to be developed that recognise the change in client maturity that has taken place.

This paper presents an approach by which potential benchmarking partners in the service sector can be matched together more efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to decide which organisations are appropriate partners based on their distinctive characteristics and problems with service management.

In the research presented in this paper, cluster analysis and other statistical analyses were applied to data from a survey of managers in service organisations with the aim of identifying groups of services related to each other in their distinctive characteristics and the problems they face.

The research found that it is possible to identify hidden “relationships” that allow superficially different services to be grouped together. The identified relationships are based on similarities in the problems which the companies face and their distinctive characteristics. Operating in a different area of activity increases the chance that a service provider will be willing to enter into a partnership and greater potential innovation value from best practice. Cluster analysis was used to identify three groups of services in the research sample which could be benchmarking partners for each other.

The research studied only a selective group of nine services in different areas of activity. A statistical survey of 388 organisations in one country verified the methodology in terms of statistical significance and the potential for successful identification and adoption of best practice within a group of related services created using the proposed procedure has also been confirmed. The real value of the approach can only be determined by its repeated use to establish benchmarking partnerships and the success of such partnerships, which can be defined as the adoption of innovative best practice.

The approach described in this paper could make it easier to develop non-competitive benchmarking in the service sector and increase the probability of success in identifying and transferring best practices between organisations in benchmarking partnerships established using it.

One of the first steps in collaborative benchmarking is to establish a partnership with a similar non-competing organisation. The procedure for this step is still not adequately defined. This paper contributes to the theoretical foundations and practical applications of research by setting out an original method for identifying suitable partners in non-competing sectors of the service industries. This will improve the prospects for successful partnership and greater innovativeness in best practice.

Process benchmarking partnerships are emerging as a research tool to help small firms to build a competitive advantage against larger rivals. Managers are now beginning to appreciate the need to benchmark the strategically relevant processes in their value chain. Process benchmarking begins with exploratory qualitative research to determine the core processes to be benchmarked. Quantitative research then follows, using an audit methodology and involving the collection of the costs of core processes from benchmark partners on a standardised computer spreadsheet. Each partner receives the results of statistical analysis comparing the firm’s own cost structure to the average of the benchmark partners in each core process. Strategic planning decisions can then be made about how to generate greater customer value by eliminating excess capacity, outsourcing and modifying existing processes. This paper describes a process benchmarking partnership conducted across four Australian building societies to illustrate the strategic benefits of this research methodology for firms in the new millennium.

Successful benchmarking exchanges require co‐operation from both the prospective benchmarker and the host benchmarkee. Adopting the viewpoint of a host company provides valuable insight into how to make benchmarking partnerships more effective, both for benchmarkers and benchmarkees. Provides specific ideas on how to structure benchmarking exchanges effectively based on in‐depth interviews with nine experienced host companies and survey data from 31 experienced host companies. Provides a generic process flow for handling benchmarking requests and discusses critical issues to be addressed in adding value towards a mutually productive benchmarking exchange.

Partnership arrangements in industry have increased in interest because of the perceived business benefits that these alliances can bring to organisations. However, it has been claimed that it is important to align organisational cultures in order that these partnership arrangements are successful. This case study reports a benchmark assessment of employee and contractor safety climates in an offshore oil company that operated contractor partnership agreements in the North Sea. The study used a questionnaire in order to assess safety climates in terms of employees’ and contractors’ perceptions of safety management, workplace conditions and safety concerns. Factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to support the benchmark study in order to compare the employees’ and contractors’ beliefs in the organisation’s health and safety philosophy. The results obtained indicated that safety climates could be aligned in organisations that operate partnership agreements within a recognised health and safety management system. It is suggested that the approach presented is appropriate for benchmarking safety climates before and after partnership arrangements have been established in order to determine the level of cultural alignment that has been achieved.

Benchmarking techniques evolved from Xerox’s pioneering visit to Japan in the late 1970s. However, the application of the benchmarking concept to the banking industry did not take place until the late 1990s. Process benchmarking, in particular, is a tool that helps FIs to cut costs, improve productivity and integrate business processes. Although process benchmarking involves divulging what may be considered as sensitive or confidential information, forming de facto benchmarking partnerships with competitors allows participating institutions to compare cost and output advantages and disadvantages, when performing key processes involved in lending operations. This paper presents an application of process benchmarking to lending operations across Australia to highlight differences in costs involved in seemingly identical value chains.

This research is concerned with the validation of a maturity model for information technology outsourcing relationships. The paper aims to focus on this research.

This research is validating the cost, resource and partnership stages, respectively, as maturity stages in outsourcing relationships developed and proposed by Gottschalk and Solli‐Sæther.

First, stages of growth and benchmark variables were validated. Then, the evolving path of growth was examined. Limited support for the stage of growth model was found.

This paper suggests a broad range of organizational activities and structures to guide development from one stage of maturity to the next. To stimulate growth developments, individuals and organizations have to understand and experience transitional events in relationship maturity.

Validation procedure linking stages to benchmark variables is presented. Future empirical research should rephrase some of the authors benchmark variables as well as measurement issues concerned with stages of growth.