Taylor's "scientific management" now sits alongside more recent inventions such as benchmarking, business process re-engineering and scenario planning.For the past 12 years, Bain & Company, a firm of consultants, has asked companies around the world how much they use such tools, and how satisfied they are with them.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index, an independent benchmarking business developed at the University of Michigan, concluded that the industry improved 3% in 2013 to a rating of 69 on a 100-point scale.
In what the organization says has become "the premier benchmark for businesses to gauge their success on LGBT inclusion against competitors," the annual survey assesses corporate treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees at hundreds of the largest and most successful American companies.
The use of ERP systems is closely associated with business engineering (BE), which focuses on decades of research to benchmark optimal business practices.
AnandTech is not alone in the benchmark review business; sites including The Tech Report and Tom's Hardware have a similar obsession with performance data, though smaller followings.
Tools include stakeholder dialogue, benchmarking, assessing business impacts and using scenarios.
But benchmarking your business means a lot more than tracking revenues, gross margins and debt ratios.
While they try to close in on the cost price of their fossil benchmarks, their business case is not necessarily stronger than that of biogas, especially because they do not receive subsidies.
What's exciting is seeing these companies grow into their own - and make use of machine learning to strengthen relationships with consumers and set new benchmarks for business results.
Nicky Amos is the programme director of the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare.
