The Hackett Group, Inc. has launched Quantum Leap, a game-changing digital benchmarking and performance improvement platform that dramatically speeds up the benchmarking process, enabling companies to intelligently assess performance gaps, frame world-class solutions, and ensure improvement success within general and administrative (G&A) areas such as corporate finance, procurement, human resources, and information technology.

The Hackett Group’s digital platform is backed by more than 13,000 business benchmarking studies, which offers insight into the successful behaviors and practices of leading organizations. With the goal of expediting clients quickly into performance analysis and improvement, the IP-as-a-service solution also monitors improvement initiatives and return on investment.

“Digital transformation is further increasing competitive pressures, making it more important than ever to be able to truly understand and optimize performance,” said Ted A. Fernandez, chairman and CEO of The Hackett Group. “The Hackett Group’s benchmarks have long been the standard for companies seeking to improve enterprise efficiency and effectiveness. They offer an unparalleled empirical starting point, enabling companies to see how their performance compares to both typical and world-class companies, identify exactly what changes need to be made and how, and what performance targets to shoot for.”

According to Anthony Snowball, global benchmarking practice leader, The Hackett Group, “While the value of benchmarking is unquestionable, it has historically been a labor-intensive process, making it very challenging for companies to repeat on a regular basis. However it’s a challenge worth solving for our clients. Our world-class research proves that benchmarking drives related improvement, and therefore repeating the discipline consistently identifies opportunities and improvements that yield benefit. Our data shows that companies benchmarking more than once in a four-year period noticed an eight-percent reduction in SG&A costs where those that did not benchmark repeatedly experienced an increase in cost over that same period.”

“Quantum Leap overcomes many of the obstacles companies have faced in leveraging benchmarking as part of a true continuous improvement process,” said Eric DiCianno, chief technical officer for The Hackett Group. “The platform makes it easy to quantify where performance gaps exist, determines how to address them, and then tracks progress and ROI of transformation on an ongoing basis. This offers our clients an exclusive and powerful advantage in executing their transformations.”

A key part of The Hackett Group’s mission is to aid clients in their pursuit of quantifiable benefits. The value of achieving world-class performance can yield reduction in SG&A costs of up to 45 percent, or $39 million/year (for a typical $1 billion company), reduction in annual sourcing costs of 22 percent or $20 million/year, and a 59 percent improvement in annual cash performance, netting $187 million/year in savings. Quantum Leap’s vision is to help clients achieve these benefits more quickly, and with less effort.

Quantum Leap does so by enabling end-to-end improvement, starting first with The Hackett Group’s world-class benchmarking capabilities. Improvement opportunities are defined, automatic solutions are generated to address performance gaps, and the platform’s initiative tracking and dashboarding capabilities drive accountability and ensure benefit realization.