به سوی بهبود شاخص های تعیین معیار

Benchmarking is a process which continuously measures the products, services and operational practices of a given organisation to compare the organisation's performance and operational practices with a selected sample group. It is a good development tool because, in addition to creating a basis for comparison, it enforces a self-critical approach, indicating the points of operation the company must improve. Benchmarking is coming into increasing use in telecoms by management, regulators and international agencies like ITU and OECD, and offers potential for many useful applications. However, benchmarking must be used with caution, and its design as a tool of analysis must be thoughtfully considered in order to achieve accurate and meaningful indicators. The specific aspects of production, and the companies to be used for benchmarking comparison must be carefully selected. Some possibilities for developing dynamic benchmark indicators are explored.

In general, benchmarking is a useful tool for evaluating a company. But choosing the companies to be compared is a difficult task. Detailed comparison can be done only between identical enterprises working in very similar circumstances. In other situations the need for research, investment, the field of activity, the area covered by their services, etc., can be different and thus direct benchmarking can be misleading. Therefore, different companies can only be compared in financial terms. An integrated value for a 5–10 year period, and the tendencies in this time interval provides some support for evaluating and comparing the companies’ work and success. For management purposes, evaluation within the company can be useful. Internal benchmarking indicates the points where developments should be made, functions should be modified, and determines how the internal structure should be changed. It can produce confidential results, thus minimising potential harm from releasing unreliable conclusions to important interests. However, while benchmarking is important, it is also a precarious tool and for the field of telecom its application must be considered carefully. The type of offered services, and the density of subscribers must be taken into account among other influencing factors. Additionally, proper benchmarking is based not on actual value but on well-defined time periods. The investment period can be matched to operating period to see the return ratio. Furthermore, the differential calculus according to time interval provides more information than the usage of an actual value. It helps to evaluate the most important tendencies, and to compare different companies. A concluding note is the obvious observation that caution must be exercised when making decisions based on benchmarking evaluations by others.