Best practice

What is best practice?

Best practice means finding - and using - the best ways of working to achieve your business objectives. It involves keeping up to date with the ways that successful businesses operate - in your sector and others - and measuring your ways of working against those used by the market leaders.

Best practice through benchmarking

Applying best practice means learning from and through the experience of others. One way of doing this is through benchmarking, which allows you to compare your business with other successful businesses to highlight areas where your business could improve.

For more information, see our guide on how to measure performance and set targets.

Best practice through standards

Standards are fixed specifications or benchmarks, which are established by independent bodies such as the British Standards Institution (BSI). BSI develops both technical and management standards:

technical standards are precise specifications against which a business can measure the quality of its product, service or processes
management standards are models for achieving best business and organisational practice

Applying the appropriate standards to your business will enable you to apply best practice across the organisation, and to work against objective criteria to achieve manufacturing or service quality.

See our guide on how to make best use of standards.

What are the benefits to my business?

A best practice strategy can help your business to:

become more competitive
increase sales and develop new markets
reduce costs and become more efficient
improve the skills of your workforce
use technology more effectively
reduce waste and improve quality
respond more quickly to innovations in your sector

Subjects covered in this guide

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