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ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Enabling success: performance excellence

Tessa Retail benchmarked its customer returns process against a rival and copied its procedures exactly. Six months later, return costs had risen and staff morale had dropped, because Tessa's store layouts and IT systems differ greatly from the rival's. Which common benchmarking weakness does this best illustrate?

The case illustrates the risk of copying another organisation's practices without adapting them to local context. Benchmarking shows performance gaps and good practice, but differences in layout, systems and culture mean practices must be adapted. Direct imitation produced higher costs and lower morale at Tessa Retail.

  1. ABenchmarking only measures inputs and never outputs
  2. BAdopting another organisation's practices without adapting them to its own context and capabilitiesCorrect
  3. CBenchmarking partners always refuse to share information
  4. DBenchmarking leads automatically to a cost leadership strategy

Explanation

The failure came from copying practices without considering differences in context, systems and culture. Benchmarking identifies gaps and good practice, but the practices must be adapted. The other options are not supported by the scenario.

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