One of ZADCO's principles is that “Performance Standards are set by Competitive Measure”. This requires that we look beyond our own organization to seek out and implement practices from the ‘best-in-class' performers, resulting in improved performance in selected business process areas.

Benchmarking helps us to identify what should be improved and how it can be improved. In principle, benchmarking can be carried out with any organization as long as it is applied to similar business processes to those under review. ZADCO's opportunities for conducting benchmarking exercises are extensive as shown below. Some examples aimed at functional assets include offshore lifting costs and plant operating costs. Others, on the people side, include leadership surveys.