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BrandsZero Variance ZF Lemforder Corp. Zingaro & Company ZivaGuide Zocabella World Linksg Zomax Contact Centre Services Zorch Software Zurich Insurance Benchmarking Strategies In Accounting And Finance CHAPTER 1 BENCHMARKING OVERVIEW OBJECTIVES At the end of this chapter you will be able to: * Define Benchmarking. * Determine how Benchmarking can help you add value to your organization. * Understand how Benchmarking is integrated with the quality movement. * Understand why Benchmarking is important to accounting and financial managers. * Discuss the factors that have led to the growth of Benchmarking. * Discuss some of the major cases that have driven the growth of Benchmarking. * Review basic Benchmarking data in accounting areas. INTRODUCTION Executives are continually faced with the ongoing challenge of improving performance. From accounts payable clerks to chief financial officers, accounting and finance professionals are discovering new approaches to increasing efficiencies within their organizations. Benchmarking is a tool that identifies "Best Practices" by making process comparisons both inside and outside your organization. Competitive factors are driving the growth of Benchmarking. No longer is "Doing It Better Than Before" competitive. "Being The Best", is becoming the standard for every corporate function and process including accounting. This chapter is designed to give you an understanding of the background of Benchmarking and how it has evolved in organizations today. As an effective Benchmarker and promoter of Benchmarking concepts, you will need to be able to discuss some of the success stories from other companies and other industries. This chapter presents the overview of the process. Cases by Ford Motor Company and Xerox discuss how each has contributed to the growth of what we now call Benchmarking. In addition, this chapter presents the results of basic data gathering from benchmarking studies in accounting areas. WHAT IS BENCHMARKING? Using Benchmarking techniques, companies share non-public performance information to identify the operational processes that really work. They begin by measuring each other's operating data, identifying the best performer out of a group, then adapting the practices that make them the best. Benchmarking provides the participants with the guidance they need to make informed business decisions. Besides the need to improve many managers are using benchmarking to gain an understanding that they are doing everything that they can be doing for their organizations. Benchmarking creates a non-threatening environment to review all the possible areas for improvement. Benchmarking is both a project and a process. As a project it is a one time event; as a process it is continual and integrated into the daily operations of the organization. Team members get most of the value out of a study by understanding day to day operations. Leading organizations also involve front line management in the process. You will find Benchmarking to be a hunt for opportunities. Each organization, even the best, will always have some activities that fall short of highest performance. Measuring performance becomes the first step in the analysis we call Benchmarking. By identifying the gap between your performance and others, you can then peel back the layers of an organization to understand the processes that drive excellence. WHY BENCHMARK? Benchmarking Creates Value For The Organization Benchmarking, when used as a tool, creates value through four essential means: * Focusing the organization on key performance gaps. * Bringing in ideas from external organizations and identifying opportunities. * Rallying the organization around the findings to create a consensus to move forward. * Implementing ideas into your operations to yield better quality products and services. Most executives probably have a good understanding of their company's bottom line results. However, aggregate data can sometimes hide poor performance in one of the thousands of processes that make up today's corporation. For most, there is no baseline to determine relative performance. Benchmarking provides insight into where you are and where you can be. The leading companies typically ask—"If I am one of the best companies, why do I want to Benchmark?" The answer is twofold—first, it is not possible to know where you stand before you measure. Secondly, since all organizations are a mosaic of processes and functions, even the best companies can expect to find at least one area that can be improved. We will use Benchmarking to perform a more detailed study after identifying areas which have the largest performance gaps. We will develop measures that we can use to compare our performance. We will rank the cost and quality to best performers. Then we will adapt the practices from the best to improve our performance. Companies realize that in order to get information they have to give information. Most companies that Benchmark recognize that sharing information with other companies is useful because: * Many functions are really not strategic in nature. * Minimizing administrative costs does not jeopardize trade secrets. * Presentations at professional and trade associations do not give enough comparative performance information on which to evaluate alternatives. In most organizations, a significant untapped potential exists. Opportunities that are known to the organization usually do not pass internal political hurdles. At the same time, new ideas do not become known to the organization. Benchmarking allows you to accomplish at least three objectives: * Identify ideas. * Sell your ideas. * Make better decisions from a larger base of facts. In addition, Benchmarking looks outside one's environment to explore outside opportunities such as: * Practices in other countries that are viewed as innovative and appealing. * Hardware and software purchases (usually so complicated that decisions are frequently made in a vacuum). Initially, you can determine the magnitude of potential opportunities by reviewing public information. We will call this process competitive analysis. Competitive analysis can be performed using financial statements or reviewing public data sources. However, public information is only the first step in identifying the best performers. As you quickly realize, comparisons from financial statements can sometimes be misleading. Different accounting practices and company situations can cause published data to lack 100% comparability. Comparability can only be achieved when the analysis is driven to the core process level. Throughout the Benchmarking process, we will constantly be sifting through data from different companies to identify "Best Practices". An example of how a Benchmarking study can use competitive analysis to identify Selling, General and Administrative (SG&A) expenses as a key gap. This information can be obtained from public sources and can become the first step in assessing which area to Benchmark. Since process performance is masked at the SG&A level, then it will be necessary for us to analyze performance by breaking the area down into its functional components of accounting, finance, information systems, legal, marketing, sales, etc. From functions we begin to identify common activities. Eventually we drive down to the individual products and services of an organization. It is at this level that meaningful process differences can be identified and changes implemented. It is at this level that you can measure the efficiency of producing a paycheck or paycheck quality as defined in terms of timelines and accuracy. Benchmarking Helps You Size Your Staff Many use Benchmarking in connection with downsizing efforts instead of process improvement. "Percentage" cuts ("Let's take 25% out") frequently do not have the focus and do not improve underlying processes. "Cut the fat" becomes "cut to the bone" in some cases. Benchmarking can help tailor the sizing of an organization to its workload in order to maintain the quality of its products and services. You can use Benchmarking to substitute small organizational adjustments for big cuts. By providing a continual process of fine tuning, you may eliminate the need for large scale layoffs and promote organizational stability. Benchmarking Keeps You Competitive Global competitive pressures are forging new relationships among organizations. The increasingly intense competition from imports, initially based on low wage rates, has moved to include the quality arena. Without comparative information, companies in many industries will fall behind as the upstarts and foreign concerns erode market share and profitability. Today we hear those falling behind competitively blaming their market losses on "structural advantages" which is one way of saying "I can't do anything about it." If that were the case, Wal-Mart would not have challenged Sears in the retail field and Compaq would not have challenged IBM. If today's leaders continually improve themselves, they will be able to sustain their competitive advantage. The competitive threat is real. It is a war without tanks or troops. U.S. companies will compete in the global marketplace on quality and price. Accounting professionals are on the front lines. They will play roles in data gathering, analysis, and interpretation. They will also be challenged to improve their own operations. The message of Benchmarking is linked to the message of quality and cost. Over time, tomorrow's leaders will redefine the dimensions of quality and cost. Figure 1-2 shows how, it will be necessary for us to determine competitive leadership and implement the practices that will keep our organizations competitive. This process of measuring our performance is continual, not just a one shot effort. The chart shows performance today and the future direction of change for a group of competitors. As we see, leadership is defined as having the highest quality at the lowest cost. For most, this improvement will be achieved and leadership maintained. Others will get left behind or will actually slip. Benchmarking promotes an understanding of competitive standing and provides responses to maintain leadership. Benchmarking Links Corporate Performance to Customer Needs Benchmarking studies begin with the customer to define the needs for improvements to productivity, quality and cycle time. There are two classes of customers. First, corporations look at the needs of external customers. From this assessment, customer needs drive changes to products and services. Secondly, corporations have defined customers of internal products and services. Internal services now have customers, prices, and multiple sources. Internal suppliers get the same feedback from their customers as does the corporation to improve its products and services. Hhow we measure an organization's processes and the relationship these processes have with customers. Through Benchmarking, it is possible to define gaps in the products and services provided as well as approaches which will redefine customer supplier relationship. Benchmarking Promotes Total Quality Management (TQM) Quality means "doing it right the first time and every time after that." It also means using the best processes to get the job done. Finally, it is a cultural commitment to constant improvement. Benchmarking, as a tool, supports organizational efforts for continuous improvement. Many organizations use Benchmarking as a tool to generate findings leading to process improvement. For organizations with established TQM programs it is important to understand the relationship between the tools. Benchmarking studies can be performed as either stand alone studies or integrated within the TQM methodologies. Benchmarking supports the quality efforts of companies in at least six different ways by: * providing an adequate environment for organizational change through continuous improvement and "Best-In-Class" practices and results; * creating objective measures of performance which is driven by "Best-In-Class" targets instead of past performance; * supporting Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria (see Chapter 6); * providing a customer/external focus; * substantiating the need for improvement; and * establishing data-driven decision making processes. You will find that successful Benchmarking efforts are linked to the strategy of the corporation. Benchmarking programs recommend changes that impact productivity and quality. Linkage to strategy is an important element to the puzzle since it will be necessary to coordinate efforts to generate a singular corporate direction. Benchmarking efforts that do not lead to change have no value. BENCHMARKING IS A CONTINUOUS PROCESS Becoming one of tomorrow's leaders requires a long term commitment to improvement. Companies are constantly seeking higher and higher levels of performance. However, as organizations improve, competitors continue to redefine the term "Best". A Benchmarking program can fit into and feed annual organizational planning and budgeting cycles. The results of Benchmarking can be used as a guide for developing short term plans in the organization and therefore prioritize the issues facing the organization. Executives can then make more informed decisions based on the best opportunities. As we discussed, one objective of Benchmarking is to achieve a real breakthrough in performance. Through the identification of practices that contribute to improvements in efficiency as well as quality, it is possible to leap ahead of the competition and establish a new standard of performance. WHY BENCHMARKING IS IMPORTANT TO ACCOUNTING AND FINANCIAL MANAGERS Benchmarking is one of the tools that will enable accountants and other financial professionals to measure and identify performance gaps. Understanding the gaps enables management to better control the performance of the organization. This can provide a competitive edge over organizations that do not know how to find gaps and the resulting opportunities for improvement. There is a constant demand on accountants to decrease cost and improve the quality of their services. Corporations often view accounting as overhead and move to minimize its expenses. Benchmarking can help management to achieve true reductions in cost while improving the quality of accounting services. Accountants are also uniquely qualified to lead or participate in a Benchmarking program for the following reasons: * They regularly use analysis techniques. * They are accustomed to objective, quantifiable measures. * Accounting is often the language of business. Benchmarking provides accounting and financial management with the information to make more confident decisions on such issues as: * Staffing & Skill Mix. * Compensation Techniques. * Systems & Software Purchases. * Training. * Work Expectations. Benchmarking accounting and finance is similar to Benchmarking other areas. Each process is first looked at from a high level, then we will look at the smaller parts, which are each analyzed separately. Companies align their organizations to suit their business needs. The challenge for the Benchmarker is to build a common basis for comparisons. The basic structure used to define comparability between accounting and financial organizations. To benchmark a whole area, accounting, would be meaningless. Simply lining up the size of the two organizations would not consider business differences (e.g., company size, industry, etc.). Therefore, the analysis is performed at the next level. A process flowchart lays out all the functions of accounting. The table shows five; in reality there will be more. At that point, it will be possible to align the various common products and services of each organization and measurement can begin. The table shows some examples of typical measures. OVERCOMING RESISTANCE TO BENCHMARKING EFFORTS You will find that traditional barriers between departments and organizations tend to inhibit free flowing discussions about performance. Appraisal systems in the past have had the effect of punishing performance instead of providing incentives for higher levels of excellence. Territoriality has been difficult for most organizations to overcome. Your plans for Benchmarking should meet this challenge. In order to build acceptance for the process, organizations have adopted philosophies that promote cooperation. In the following chapters we will discuss: * clearly communicating the mission for the efforts; * providing tools for improved performance when improvement is identified; * developing wide participation in Benchmarking efforts to overcome the "not invented here" syndrome; and * training to develop a true understanding of the process. We look to Benchmarking as a means to identify opportunities throughout the organization. Organizations should be prepared to develop processes that incorporate participation across traditional boundaries. HISTORY OF BENCHMARKING To sell the idea of Benchmarking to those resisting, it's useful to turn to history. As you will see, Benchmarking is not really new. In business life, companies have gone to great extremes to find out where they stand competitively. The whole field of financial analysis has focused on determining the relative standing, and response, to competitor actions. Benchmarking, however, is not the old style competitive analysis that companies have done in the past. One story which continues to circulate relates to one company who would fly a helicopter over a competitor's plant to count the cars in the parking lot and measure the size of the building. You will find benchmarking analysis far more effective than any estimates gained from competitive sources. Today's Benchmarking activities are performed in the open with all parties directly involved. Clearly, this shift did not happen overnight. Traditional barriers among companies had to come down and the success of cooperation had to be demonstrated. Leaders like W. Edwards Deming set the stage for this new cooperation. In addition, formal processes like the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the Deming Prize promote the acceptance of shared performance. The Benchmarking activities we will discuss in this book play a major role in winning those awards. With increasing numbers of companies participating, the number of Benchmarking studies is growing rapidly. By the early 1980's, companies like Ford and Xerox were in financial trouble. Lack of progress in their basic product lines, coupled with lower cost products in the marketplace almost destroyed the two former giants in their industries. Both rushed to improve quality as quickly as possible. Ford began its efforts following the continuous process improvement philosophy known as Kaizen. Ford's measurement efforts led to breakthrough findings using the process that today has developed into Benchmarking. FORD COMPARES ITSELF TO MAZDA Background One of the earliest process improvement efforts began in 1980. A Ford Motor Company team visited Mazda, in Japan (a company in which Ford has a 25% interest). Their mission was to make an in-depth analysis of processes. Ford measured dozens of processes, and found that its accounts payable department had nearly 500 people in the United States while Mazda had only nine. A gap like this was just too hard to ignore. This initial measure was only the beginning of Ford's research because it was not possible to unilaterally revise the number of employees. The work load was just too great and by merely cutting back, work would not get done and suppliers would not get paid! Therefore, the underlying processes needed to be changed. From this very basic performance indicator, Ford began its search for the processes that would eliminate work that did not add value. As a first step, Ford identified further Benchmarks impacting accounts payable performance which assisted them in identifying three important business differences: Billing Training * Ford had more suppliers than Mazda. * Ford captured and matched more data elements on each payment transaction. * Ford's payments were triggered by invoices from its suppliers - Mazda's processes did not. The differences that these measures suggested led the Ford team to look further at process differences and potential opportunities. This objective was to not only meet the competition, but to generate ideas to exceed competitor performance. A few of the areas that they considered included: * Instituting a supplier review. * Re-engineering the requisitioning, receiving, and payment processes. * Automating the information flow between Ford and its suppliers. The timing of these efforts was critical. Ford, in the early 1980's, suffered from diminishing market share and was almost on the verge of financial crisis. The organization accepted the concept that radical change was necessary for survival. What Ford Did in Accounting, Purchasing, and Material Handling The first thing that Ford did not do is automatically automate poor operating practices. The team realized that the impact of automation alone would not account for the productivity difference. Mazda did not have more automation than Ford. Ford realized that additional research would more fully explain the differences. The Ford team looked into the whole process of requisitioning, receiving, and disbursements. They mapped out the basic business processes and found that Mazda was missing some steps. Japanese companies did not invoice each other! -- instead they paid when they received the goods. In the United States, the practice of invoicing has developed over several generations. Originally, it was considered a prompt for payment of late accounts. After a number of years, it has now developed into a routine and required document. They realized that eliminating invoices was not a practice that would be readily accepted by their vendors. Typical accounting controls in the United States require an adequate audit trail of events leading to the payment of a supplier. In the West, invoicing creates several tasks within accounting: * Someone has to prepare it. * Someone has to receive and route it. * Invoices require filing and storage. Second, the invoice must be reconciled to all the other documents: * Purchased quantities can differ. * Pricing may be inconsistent. * Τerms may vary. Finally, since there is always a follow-up step, Ford found that employees did not always strive to maintain simple or consistent terms. * They formulated various terms and conditions. * Suppliers misinterpreted terms. * Inconsistent business practices in the purchasing and material handling activities, with respect to pricing and receiving disciplines, required resolution in the accounting activities. Mechanically, Ford did not have a problem eliminating invoices, but it had to change its basic processes with its suppliers. Ford decided on a program of: * Redefining the terms of the relationship to move away from the need to invoice on a regular basis. * Standardize payment terms on a total supplier basis, rather than by individual purchase order. * Communicating with suppliers to assure them that sufficient controls continued to exist. * Instituting disciplined receiving practices for inventory and payment control purposes. * Ensuring that all the terms and conditions were on the purchase order and understandable by all parties. Ford modified the purchase terms with its suppliers. The usual "30-45 day payment upon shipment or receipt" was changed to "all bills paid at a fixed time based on the FOB term" (ownership transfer point). The result of these terms is to substitute, in writing, the same principles that Mazda used to pay its vendors. A built in payment delay assured that neither party would suffer or benefit from changing to the new process. Figure 1-5 visually describes this relationship. After changing terms, Ford communicated to its suppliers' accounting professionals that this change did not threaten the integrity of their accounting, but instead improved the efficiency of the operations. Some basic vendor changes were also required: * Basic information was required on the shipping document - P.O. #, quantities,etc. * Over-shipments and under-shipments would be required to be settled indepen-dently as close to the time of payment for the shipment involved. * Vendors would electronically provide advance shipment notice so that the receiving location had information regarding material in transit to their plant. What They Did In Operations Ford reduced the number of vendors by about 60-70%. This reduction resulted in closer working relations with each supplier and increased focus on an overall relationship which included the price, the quality of the product, and all the other factors that promote an effective relationship (delivery, availability, documentation, etc.). How It Impacted Purchasing In the "new" invoiceless environment, the purchase order becomes more important because it dictates the purchase price to be paid and the terms. The lack of a follow-up procedure means that the P.O. would have to be written with 100% accuracy or the wrong amount would be paid. The purchasing agents now own the whole process. What About Automation? Having worked out the details of the process, it could now be automated. Ford instituted Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) between suppliers and purchasing and receiving. On this basis, automated releasing can be done and tracked from the vendor to delivery dock. Suppliers can also inquire about the status of specific orders and can identify when they will be paid. The invoiceless system can be automated by using fewer data elements at each point of data capture. This cuts down the amount of time it takes to enter a transaction while improving the overall accuracy of the transaction. In a three-way match system, not tied to a specific contract at all times, it is possible to continually make errors in fields, thereby creating reconciliation problems. Results Ford Motor Company found that the results of Benchmarking were not achieved overnight. It has taken them over 10 years of effort to educate the suppliers to change their practices. In fact, changing to two-way matching was really an exercise of changing the environment, not changing internal practices, and has resulted in an 80% reduction in accounts payable staffing requirements. According to the Ford team that worked on the project, today they are as good as Mazda. Is Ford finished? No. Ford realized that there are other ways to improve building on this success, they have begun to explore other areas of improvement. XEROX BENCHMARKS L.L. BEAN Another commonly cited success story is the study that Xerox performed with L. L. Bean (1), a mail order clothing business. That study reviews the organization of the warehouse distribution and logistics function. To L. L. Bean, this is a critical function -- the ability to quickly ship a customer order is of paramount importance. To Xerox, the warehouse/logistics function was an afterthought, behind technology and marketing. In the early 1980's, when the study was conducted, Xerox was performing poorly. Competition from Japan was fierce and Xerox was faced with financial difficulty if it could not figure out how to compete. Benchmarking was still in its infancy and the concept that you would actually share information was foreign to most companies. Nonetheless, the potential benefits were there if the two would cooperate. The distribution and logistics function was also facing the effects of deterioration and was in need of reorganization. There was potential for the elimination of the bottleneck in the warehouse. Technology was thought to be a key, but there was insufficient data to confirm any of the theories. L. L. Bean was thought to have the best performance, but its function was manual! Xerox's order filling procedures were Benchmarked against L. L. Bean's and found to pose the greatest opportunity. Site visits were conducted. Through a series of follow-up interviews and site visits, Xerox determined that L. L. Bean organized its warehouse so that the fast moving inventory (shirts, promotional items, etc.) were located near the loading dock. This minimized the amount of time it took to pick an order and get it loaded on a truck. Additionally, incoming inventory was stored using an automated system for maximizing space more efficiently. Xerox took these findings and implemented them at their warehouses. Its overall order filling efficiency improved and costs were reduced. A LOOK AT RECENT STUDIES Healthcare financial management is rapidly finding itself in the same kind of competition as corporations in the United States. Healthcare is beginning to follow the same patterns of downsizing and reductions that have become common in other "protected" industries in the last ten years. The 1994 Healthcare Accounting and Finance Benchmarking Study: The healthcare accounting and finance study surveyed hospital and non-hospital organizations to gather statistics about key common performance measures. The survey was distributed to 1,000 hospital and non-hospital organizations. Approximately eighty organizations and forty hospitals returned the results for tabulation. The three major areas in this study focus on hospital and non-hospital accounting performance using measures of service cost, operational performance statistics and training costs. The study identified critical gaps and established ranges of expected performance. The purpose of this study was to develop the initial snapshot of measures. Using this data will require a "gap validation" phase to ensure that these statistics are adequate representations of comparable statistics for any individual organization. This study focused on gross measures as a tool for identifying gaps but did not look to explain the underlying causes for the gaps nor identify which processes could be used to close the gaps. General Ledger Hospitals generally have a longer error rate in accounting records than other companies. When comparing the total number of journal vouchers with errors, hospitals demonstrated the ability to record transactions better than commercial companies. The results suggest that if you require correction to more than 2% of your journal vouchers, that a significant gap exists and that you should look for changes to process. Days to Close Books Another benchmark for performance efficiency are the number of days it takes to close the books. Hospitals are slower than non-hospitals with the best organizations closing their books in 3-5 days. A significant driver for most companies is need. Need for the longest is usually defined as support for board meetings. Billing Measures On the surface, one would expect that hospital billing to be quite complex when compared to other industries. As shown in Figure 1-8, one measure is the percentage of effort dedicated to the billing function. Since the staff can vary, looking solely at the statistics will not explain the process differences. As we see, clearly many of the companies dedicated a larger percentage of their employees to billing. Since some of the companies tended to be small, this is not unusual. The results of this survey suggest that companies with more than 1% of the total hospital staff in billing processes should review their staffing and procedures. Billing Salary Cost A second measure of billing performance is a look at the salary cost per transaction. This measure is an indication of the total effort required to produce a bill. As Figure 1-9 shows, hospitals fared favorably against non-hospital organizations in total salary cost per billing transaction. The direct salary cost per bill was higher through the median while the upper range of companies spend a substantially greater amount of salary expense producing bills than the typical hospital. The results suggest that if a hospital is spending more than $5 per bill, that it should review the costs in this area. Billing Cycle Time Cycle time (minimum time to process a patient bill) can also indicate areas for improvement. This measure indicates how fast hospitals get their bills to their patients. Hospitals scored significantly worse than general industry in this measure. A few explanations could be the amount of lag time caused by physician attestations or the time to collect billing documents from different locations within the hospital. Recent Benchmarking studies suggest that there are practices to shorten these times. As Figure 1-10 shows, if the minimum time to process a bill is greater than twenty-four hours, this should be an area of focus. Billing Training In training staff, hospital billing departments generally spend less time in all its departments than do non-healthcare companies. Accounts Payable Accounts payable benchmarking can assist in decisions related to staffing and departmental structure. The areas of cost per transaction and organizational structure became the focus of this area. The first focus was the salary expense per accounts payable transaction. As we see, generally hospitals spend less than commercial companies in their costs per transaction. The results suggest that if a hospital's costs exceed $3 per accounts payable transaction, they should conduct a further review of the area. Cross Training Another area explored was cross training. Industrial companies tend to have more employees cross trained than hospitals. Hospitals should determine if opportunities to cross train employees can promote effectiveness. AP Supervisor Ratios A second focus of this area was the ratio of staff to supervisors. Staff to supervisor ratio can tell you if an area contains too many supervisors and not enough workers. Staff to supervisor ratio is also influenced by the size of the organization, with small organizations having a lower ratio due to their size. The data suggests that organizations that do not have at least a four to one ratio should review their staffing structure. SUMMARY Benchmarking is a continuous process which can ensure that the most innovative and efficient processes are being adopted throughout the organization. In this chapter, we focused on the importance of Benchmarking and how it can enhance performance measurement and evaluation skills. Many organizations have been adopting Benchmarking techniques in response to competition from home and abroad. These efforts have run in parallel with the Total Quality Management movement. Benchmarking is also impacting accounting and financial areas in the same way it has supported efforts in other areas. Benchmarking is especially important to accounting and financial managers since they are continually pressured to be more cost effective and maintain the highest standard of quality. The best way for Benchmarkers to understand the possibilities of the process is to understand what others have done in the past. The Ford and Xerox examples describe how organizations have approached the process in accounting and non-accounting areas. In addition, it is important to understand the world-wide competitive context that Benchmarking supports.


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You know how important it is to brush and floss properly when you're wearing braces — but what's the best way to do that? Let's start with the basic brushing tools: Either a soft-bristle brush or a bi-level brush (one that has shorter bristles in the middle and longer bristles at the edges) can be effective. Used carefully, an electric toothbrush can work just as well. But be sure the electric brush is set to a moderate power level, and don't let its vibrations cause the back of the brush to hit the braces!
You should brush with a fluoride toothpaste at least two times per day (preferably after meals), for at least two minutes each time. Remember to brush all of the tooth surfaces: the outside, the inside, and the chewing surfaces as well. Be especially careful to clean the areas between wires and teeth, and between brackets and gums — that's where food particles can easily become trapped.
Here's a suggested brushing technique: Beginning at the outside surfaces, place the tips of the bristles flat against your teeth, and use small circular motions to gently polish them clean. For areas between braces and gums, tilt the brush toward the gum line (down for the bottom teeth, up for the top) while keeping up the circular motions. Next, move on to the chewing surfaces of upper and lower teeth, using a firm back-and-forth motion. Finally, finish up by carefully brushing the inside surfaces of the teeth the same way you did the outside surfaces.
If you're having trouble cleaning the areas near brackets and wires, there are some special tools that may help. One is the interdental toothbrush, or proxabrush. It has a small tuft of bristles that stick up all around, like a pipe cleaner. Use it gently and carefully to clean the tiny spaces under wires and around bands and brackets.
Another special cleaning tool is the oral irrigator or "water pick." This device shoots a small stream of pressurized water at your teeth, which can help dislodge bits of food that become trapped in nooks and crannies. While it's easy to use, an oral irrigator isn't a substitute for a toothbrush or dental floss — but when used along with proper brushing and flossing techniques, it can be very effective.
To keep your teeth and gums clean and healthy, you need to floss at least once per day. But how do you get floss under the archwire of your braces? It's not so hard with the help of a floss threader. Using this device is somewhat like threading a needle: You pull one end of floss through the threader, and then push the threader — carrying with it the free end of the floss — under the archwire. Now grasp the floss on each end and slide it up and down the sides of both teeth, and all the way under the gums until you hear a squeaky sound. Finally, pull it out and use a new section of floss for the next area.
Ever wonder how effective your tooth-cleaning techniques really are? There's an accurate way to tell, using special vegetable dyes called "disclosing solutions" or "disclosing tablets." As they dissolve in the mouth, these dyes highlight plaque and food debris that brushing has missed. You can then easily remove the dyed spots — and you'll know for sure if your oral hygiene methods need a little "brushing up."
Keeping your teeth and gums healthy now is an investment in your future. It enables you to get the best results from your orthodontic treatment, and starts you toward a brighter smile that can last for a lifetime.
Caring for Teeth During Orthodontic Treatment Keeping your mouth and gums clean and healthy while undergoing orthodontic treatment can be challenging. Food and plaque can get stuck around braces. Even if you are wearing clear aligners, hygiene efficiency is more important than you might think as you could be more vulnerable to gum disease. It's important to keep on top of the situation so dental disease does not take hold. Dear Doctor magazine offers some tips... Read Article
The Magic of Orthodontics Proper alignment of the teeth is basic to "Smile Design." Their position dictates how they work together and affects the way you look and smile. Only orthodontic treatment can move teeth into the right position. Simply put, when things look right, they probably are right. Learn the basics of smile analysis and design and whether the magic of orthodontics will work for you... Read Article
Oral Hygiene Behavior — Dental Health for Life The best tools for maintaining your oral health and minimizing dental problems are a quality toothbrush, toothpaste, a roll of dental floss, approved mouthwash and good diet. This article details a winning game plan for oral health... Read Article


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