Benchmarking – Capstan Advisors

Knowing where you are is only half of the picture. Are you paying too much for services? Are your internal costs running too high? How do the costs of your portfolio and the productivity of your staffs and vendors compare to peer group companies?

Whether Benchmarking is a standalone project or an integral part of your current state assessment, Capstan delivers the analysis to assess your portfolio, your service provider and your own internal productivity.

Capstan partners pioneered the early efforts of the banking industry to benchmark portfolio costs and labor productivity in the mid-1990s. We have continued to conduct benchmarking programs for a variety of clients and industries since then.

Benchmarking is a key work step in many of our services from Sourcing Strategy to Contract Renegotiations, as well as a key component of Governance Services.

EXPERIENCE

After a merger of energy companies, Capstan was retained to do a process maturity assessment for all CRE functions, benchmark facilities management productivity and cost metrics, and renegotiate legacy outsourcing contracts. The work resulted in a plan for consolidation of internal teams and an RFP process to select one service provider to support the combined portfolio.

Tools

Capstan’s library of tools for this service includes:

Portfolio Expense Database

Our Portfolio Expense Database is used to compare operating expenses per square foot and per employee within a company’s portfolio to market indices by geographic region. In addition to our database from client engagements, we use BenchCore, BOMA, IREM, and IFMA data and make adjustments for differences in property types, geographies and scope of services.

Service Provider Contract Database

The Service Provider Contract Database is used to compare client outsourced contracts to recently bid and negotiated contracts collected by Capstan. We track salaries by position, benefit burden rates, management fees, markups, rebates and other contract terms in our database, as well as key business terms such as insurance and termination clauses. Comparisons are shared with the client only on a no-name basis.

Labor Productivity Database

A Labor Productivity Database is used to compare metrics such as work orders completed per day by a facilities engineer or the number of leases managed by a lease administrator. Productivity benchmarks are available from industry publications and from our Capstan data base of metrics and KPIs in client contracts and materials. Capstan also conducts custom surveys and analysis to gather the best data possible.