Benchmarking involves four steps: 1) forming a team to identify benchmarking targets and best practices, 2) collecting internal and external data, 3) analyzing data to identify performance gaps, and 4) preparing and implementing an action plan. ISO 9000 certification consists of quality management standards and guidelines that show a company's products meet world standards for quality management. Standards help ensure desirable product and service characteristics like quality, safety, and reliability. Environmental scanning analyzes large amounts of information to detect emerging trends, avoid surprises, and improve planning by understanding external forces of change. Competitive intelligence is a type of environmental scanning that provides managers with accurate information about competitors to support strategic decision making.

1. CHAPTER 4 : PLANNING TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
1. Benchmarking
What is BENCHMARKING?...
- The practice of using a measurable scale to compare key business operations with those of
successful organizations.
- The idea of bench marking is that manager can improve quality by analyzing and tehn copy the
methods of the leaders in various fields.
- It involves four steps:
1. Form a team to identify the following: benchmarking targets, “best practices” of other
organizations, and data collection methods.
2. Collect data from internal operations and external organizations.
3. Analyze data to identify performance gaps and determine their causes.
4. Prepare and implement an action plan to meet or exceed performance standards.
2. ISO 9000 Certification..
What is it?...
- It consists of standards and guidelines relating to quality management systems and related
supporting standards
- It is also used to show that its products meet world standards for quality management, a company
must gain ISO 9000 certification.
- The certificate attests that the company has met rigorous standards for quality and consistency as
defined by the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva.
- An organization should implement ISO 9000so that the organization's processes so that they
consistently turn out product that satisfies customers' expectations.
- Why standards matter ?:
- Standards make an enormous and positive contribution to most aspects of our lives.
- Standards ensure desirable characteristics of products and services such as quality,
environmental friendliness, safety, reliability, efficiency and interchangeability - and at an
economical cost.
- When products and services meet our expectations, we tend to take this for granted and be
unaware of the role of standards. However, when standards are absent, we soon notice. We
soon care when products turn out to be of poor quality, do not fit, are incompatible with
equipment that we already have, are unreliable or dangerous.
- When products, systems, machinery and devices work well and safely, it is often because they
meet standards. And the organization responsible for many thousands of the standards which
benefit the world is ISO.
3. Environmental scanning
i. An analysis of the external environment that involves screening large amounts of
information to detect emerging trends ( latest trends)
ii. Organizations scan the environment in order to understand the external forces of change so
that they may develop effective responses.

2. iii. They scan in order to avoid surprises, identify threats and opportunities, and improve long-
term and short-term planning.
4. Competetitive Intelligence
i. A type of environmental scanning that gives manager accurate information about
competitors.
ii. Gathering, analyzing about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the
environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions
for an organization.