Even the best-run companies can suffer from too much navel gazing. At least that’s the thinking of the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence, which works to bring an outside perspective to management, efficiency and more.

The TNCPE is an offshoot of the Baldridge Performance Excellence Program, which was created by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. It was formed through a partnership between the governor’s office, the state’s Dept. of Economic and Community Development and area business leaders.

The TNCPE provides its assessments at a set cost to public or private entities through an ever-expanding corps of volunteers, whose businesses range from health care and manufacturing to government and nonprofits.

As it approaches its 20th anniversary, the TNCPE is working to expand its fairly broad fan base. Almost 1,200 organizations have gone through the TNCPE assessment process, and it recently honored 28 more organizations at its annual awards for their achievements during the 2011 process.

At the heart of the TNCPE is its assessment system, which uses volunteer scorers to grade a company’s various systems and operations. Their feedback helps the organizations improve, which in turn boosts the local and regional, says Katie Rawls, president and CEO.

“At this point we have trained more than 2,000 people who serve as volunteer assessors,” Rawls says. “They not only help the businesses they assess, but they also take what they learn at each site back to their own organizations. It really does build on itself.”

The TNCPE generates its operating revenue from memberships, as well as the fees charged for assessments and their related site visits. Those are on a sliding scale, with smaller companies and startups paying as little as $500 and companies with more than 5,000 employees being charged around $12,000.

“It all depends on the size of the company, and the complexity of the assessment,” Rawls says. “There are four levels of assessments, and they range in depth. We are able to ascertain what a company needs before we go in, so they know what the cost is going to be.”

The remainder of TNCPE’s income is generated through training and workshops, as well as the annual Excellence in Tennessee Conference, where it honors the companies that have come through its assessment process.

Participants in the process say it’s all about improving their own operations, and the experience offered by TNCPE brings value that makes the expense, even in a slow economy, worth it.

“When I came in 2001, the airport did not have a strategic business plan,” says Raul Regalado, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority. “We needed to bring more business practices to a governmental organization, and so we began that process.

“As we began to look at strategic objectives, performance metrics and other things businesses use in this regard, I had conversations with people who had undergone Six Sigma and Baldridge certification, and TNCPE was recommended to us. Since they were right here in Nashville, we were able to quickly get some assistance from them.”

The airport authority has been using TNCPE processes and recommendations for five years, and has been recognized at the state level for its achievements. It now is working through the application process for national recognition, and will continue to utilize the metrics and processes it has picked up along the way.

“This is not a one-time effort,” Regalado says. “If you want to improve the organization, you commit to a long-term journey and use the resources and methodology you learn to continually improve the management of the organization. I am comfortable with where we are and what we have accomplished, even in an economically challenging time, but continual improvement is what it’s all about.”

CAT Financial is another longtime TNCPE client, and it is one of only four companies to go on and win the Baldridge National Quality Award. For CAT, the step-by-step approach provided through the program has been valuable, says Jim Duensing, vice president and CFO.

“CAT has always been process-focused, and the TNCPE criteria for performance excellence provided us with a great platform to have a more cohesive assessment of our business,” Duensing says.

“That let us gauge our progress and ultimately work toward our selection as an excellence-award recipient back in 1999. We won the national award in 2003, and we think that really came from our desire to improve our business by working with the criteria that was available through them.”

The assessment platform is valuable because it quickly identifies key areas for improvement, he adds.

“If you can see where the opportunities exist, then you can move on those. That very quickly can lead to higher employee and customer satisfaction and increased market share,” he says. “And that is usually followed by profitability. At least that’s how it has come together for us, and so we feel that it is a very high-quality format for improvement.”

Next up for TNCPE will be examiner training, which will take place this summer. About 175 people will go through the three-day process, and then fan out to companies that have applied for an assessment. They, in turn, will hopefully spur additional volunteers and corporate engagement, Rawls says.

“One of the hallmarks of this program is continuous improvement, and so we try to evaluate ourselves just like we ask our applicants to evaluate themselves,” she says. “At the end of each assessment cycle, we sit down and talk about what went well, and what needs to improve. We also continually cycle the people involved with our board, so everybody really is kept on their toes.”