American Productivity and Quality Center

Research Projects and Benchmarking: APQC conducts research on what drives high performance inside specific processes that are core to organizational viability and found in both public and private sectors. This includes providing methodologies, know-how, data, infrastructure, oversight and management. As part of its research program, APQC maintains both qualitative and quantitative repositories, question libraries, and taxonomies that are accessed via apqc.org by hundreds of thousands of individuals each year. Continued on Schedule O In order to provide valid, reliable and trusted quantitative data at no additional cost to our members and the public at large, APQC maintains the Open Standard Benchmarking repository. The repository includes a library of industry process frameworks, maturity models and over 3,600 corresponding performance measures that cover activities and tasks performed in organizations throughout the world. The benchmarking repository houses data provided from over 50,000 organizations making up over 3,600 corresponding performance measures and 4,500,000 data points from which the benchmarks are derived and then provided back out to the public. APQC estimates that its reach within member organizations is over 38 million individuals that have access to and available use of the research findings and services we provide. Participants in this body of research complete detailed data collection instruments; data is then validated, analysis is performed and detailed reports are created reflecting the participating entities' gaps in performance against the data sets and their unique areas of improvement identified in order to reach optimal performance levels. Reporting includes performance gaps, trends, drivers behind high performance, and best practice insights. Reports are provided through Open Standards Benchmarking at no cost to the user and are valued at over $5,000 per report.In order to provide qualitative best practice information, APQC conducts hundreds of research projects annually that are designed to collect best practices and codify performance characteristics of high performing organizations in such a way that they can be shared broadly. The APQC Resource Library includes more than 6,300 content items and grows at a rate of 20% per year, including best practice reports, case studies, white papers, specific process trends and corresponding best practices, metrics, tools and templates.Additional dissemination of APQC's content, including Process Classification Frameworks, Maturity Models and Benchmarks, is done through partnerships with management consulting firms and trade and industry associations. Both management consulting firms and associations have a much broader reach, touching more individuals through their work than APQC is capable of achieving. Through these partnerships APQC is able to provide data to millions of individuals who ultimately apply the data for the purpose of improving in areas such as generating higher productivity, improved quality of products and services and deriving cost savings inside organizations at no additional cost to the end user. Further dissemination is conducted via the publishing of reports, publications, white papers, speaking engagements and web-based events designed to share knowledge broadly.

Conferences and Events: A variety of conferences and events are held each year to teach methods for improving productivity and quality, share benchmarks and best practices and enable attendees to improve using proven methodologies and demonstrated results. Thousands of members and non-members benefit annually by attending open seminars, web events, conferences, trainings and other public forums designed to facilitate improvement of individuals, their organizations and the industries they represent.

Member Services: Development and ongoing maintenance of Process Classification Frameworks, research methodologies, infrastructure to support broad data collection and dissemination of benchmarks and best practices used to improve productivity and quality across public and private sectors. APQC maintains databases and provides easy access to the public of over 3,600 process measures, over 4,500,000 benchmark data points, 19 Industry Process Classification Frameworks and 1 Cross Industry Process Classification Framework, 46 industry maturity models, over 6,000 best practices and numerous methodologies, tools and templates that reflect the needs of public and private sectors throughout the world. Additionally, APQC provides support and customized data and frameworks to meet the needs of its members.

Education: The education group within APQC is involved in transforming education across the United States and throughout the world by addressing waste and inefficiencies throughout the educational system. The group focuses on helping K-12 and Higher Education leaders, superintendents, principals, faculty and administrators identify and implement best practices that will result in more available resources to dedicate to student achievement. Through the Education Group, APQC teaches thousands of educators how to be more efficient and effective. The Education Group has helped over 120 districts save over $120M on completed projects. All findings and project exemplars are collected and then stored in a searchable database available to educators throughout the country. Additional dissemination occurs when findings are presented and discussed in detail at education conferences throughout the world.

Information Services: APQC provides research assistance for individuals at no additional cost via APQC's "Ask Us" program that searches APQC databases for the appropriate information and then provides it back to the requestor. In addition, Information Services maintains the nation's largest publicly accessible research library of quality and productivity materials, including research reports of current productivity.