Alvarez & Marsal and the American Productivity and Quality Center recently announced the formation of a collaborative performance improvement effort.

The Business Consulting Group of Alvarez & Marsal and APQC will offer benchmarking advisory services to companies that participate in PowerMARQ, APQC’s comprehensive database of standardized processes used by clients to identify common measures, assess performance against competitors, and improve performance and efficiency. The benchmarking advisory sessions, jointly led by A&M’s senior team of business consultants and APQC’s measurement experts, identify improvement opportunities based on the PowerMARQ performance report and develop steps to close performance gaps.

“APQC is a leader in providing sophisticated benchmarking programs that enable businesses to measure business performance against peer groups,” says Jeff Smith, a managing director of A&M’s Business Consulting Group. “Through this collaboration, companies that participate in the benchmarking process will be able to put the data to work immediately. They can now take advantage of the practical experience our team of consultants brings to charting a path forward and adopt best practices that improve or enhance performance for meaningful results.”

APQC reports it is equally pleased with the new partnership.

“Customers need three things to improve their operations: a thorough understanding of their industry, standard and reliable benchmarks and metrics for comparative gap analysis and a solid implementation methodology,” says Lisa Higgins, APQC COO. “The Business Consulting Group of Alvarez & Marsal’s respective areas of expertise complement APQC’s PowerMARQ offering and will offer a new level of knowledge and service.”

For more information, visit www.apqc.org.