BARRIERS AND ENABLERS

4.5. Enabling cost benchmarking data collection and sharing – Options

Data collection and sharing is an integral part of the cost benchmarking option selection. Some preliminary overarching considerations are identified in this regard for a cost benchmarking strategic business case in Table 4.9.

Table 4.9: Preliminary considerations informing cost benchmarking, data collection and sharing options

Summary options for cost benchmarking, including data collection and sharing

This assessment explores a range of generic options for data collection and sharing. The options examined range from doing nothing to introducing cost benchmarking arrangements of increasing sophistication and degree of organisation. The options include examples where organisations capture and maintain their own data, and options with an industry-wide, managed service, governed by an independent institution. The outcomes of this analysis are summarised as Options A to F in Table 4.10. 3 A more detailed description of these options is set out in Appendix B.3.

All of these options offer a range of potential advantages and drawbacks. It should be noted that the costs of these options were only assessed in general, relative terms. All of these options will also need to be assessed under competition law, as this issue was not considered in detail as part of this preliminary assessment. Lastly, it should be noted that for all these options, the removal of the initial barriers to benchmarking is assumed. Thus, a more in-depth and thorough analysis of options than was possible in this preliminary review would be needed before proceeding with the choice of any one particular option for implementation. A preliminary period of stakeholder and market consultation should be included as part of a phased roadmap to identify and implement cost benchmarking.

3.The tables are presented in ascending order of complexity with a relative cost ranking from low (green) to high (red). The options are characterised according to a “red, amber, green” (RAG) coding, describing the expected success of the option in removal of the barriers, (red = not removed; amber = partly removed; green = removed).