If you use benchmarking, it's important to know its most powerful application is through ongoing examinations of how the most successful companies use and leverage communications, not just infrequent benchmarking to rubber-stamp programs.
In PR, benchmarking has often been the silent motivator. It's been used by some communicators to decide how to revamp job titles and roles and by others to determine how the Web should be used when the Internet was in its infancy with no clear leader. Today, however, benchmarking is providing concrete examples of the close alignment between communications and profits.
Xerox, for instance, a company often studied as a business model, includes its director of corporate communications and PR, Joseph Cahalan, on its strategic planning team for the entire company, PR NEWS has learned.
In this story, we focus on two corporate communications departments which use benchmarking, both formally and informally. The companies are Eastman Chemical Co., the Kingsport, Tenn.-headquartered Kodak spinoff with 16,000 employees, and Southern Company, the Atlanta-based powerhouse with $3 billion in assets which owns well-known subsidiary Georgia Power. Next week, we'll look at the benchmarking of three additional companies.
Eastman
Eastman's benchmarking philosophy is that there has to be a shared value on both sides (for both the company initiating the benchmarking and the company being benchmarked) before Eastman will participate, says Rod Irvin, director of corporate communications.
The company's querying strategy is to focus on a singe issue in a wide span of studies, rather than multi-faceted explorations that cross into various business units and result in an apples and oranges comparison of dissimilar issues.
Irvin is one of approximately 75 staffers handling communications and public affairs strategies for Eastman, a chemical company which continues to make forays into the global market and attributes more than one-third of its 1997 $4.7 billion in sales to interest abroad (1998 sales will be released this week). Part of analyzing and reinforcing its communication initiatives comes from its participation in Public Affairs Group studies.
Eastman uses informal benchmarking to track ways of reducing cycle time within PR. From the process of getting out press releases to financial information, the department has learned how to adhere to a more stringent timeline.
Eastman learned some of its lessons from Motorola, which cut its information dissemination process from several months to several days by making its shareholder materials less elegant and more functional.
Eastman also has examined companies as diverse as Federal Express and Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Probing these two provided tips on everything from how internal television networks are used to communicate with employees at multiple sites to determining number-of-employee-to-sales ratios, not a static number.
In benchmarking, Eastman uses trades, business newspapers and conferences to informally gauge how other companies use employee communications.
Southern Company
For Southern Company's approximate 40 communicators (including those in its Washington, D.C. office), benchmarking has been used for a range of reasons, according to Dub Taft, assistant to the VP/corporate communications. Its strategy has been to look at both competitors and those in other industries to uncover headcounts, staffing issues and efficiency.
It has become increasingly crucial to share this kind of information internally through updates and conversations, not necessarily written reports, since the company continues to transition. Nationwide, companies are looking at global leaders to learn how to integrate overseas operations into the corporate culture. (One of Southern Company's most recent major acquisitions was Cepa, the largest independent power provider in Asia.)
"We started looking at benchmarking about 10 years ago," says Taft. "The impetus was more cost-cutting and seeing how we compared with other utilities to ready for change (in the era of deregulation). We used this information to deal with downsizing." Although the company is growing, it has eliminated about 5,000 positions over a seven-year period.
It also used benchmarking to enhance its intranet, which now features daily news updates, guaranteeing that its 35,000 employees are privy to the same information accessed by shareholders, customers and the press. For instance, last week it informed employees about a subsidiary which had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
"We picked up some good information on looking at internal communications," adds Taft. "We're becoming less publications driven and fleshing out better electronic communications."
In a more recent effort, Southern Company has been part of breakthrough benchmarking study headed by Ronald Doades & Co., Short Hills, N.J. Not specific to an industry, the study includes other utility giants such as Hydro Quebec of Montreal and blue-chip contenders Pitney Bowes and General Electric.
Doades won't detail how much study participants paid but said it was upwards of $25,000 since the probe required that company executives visit one another's locations. "What we're finding from a strategic viewpoint is that, by and large, corporate communications is playing a fairly important role in the development and implementation of business strategy," adds Doades. He cites the Xerox example as a prime indication of that trend. (Doades & Co., 973/376-5805; Eastman Chemical, 423/229-4008; Southern Company, 404/506-0567)