BENCHMARKING

Courtesy: Professor Satish Ailawadi
( can be contacted at ailawadi24@yahoo.com)

Definitions of benchmarking

(1)“A continuous systematic process for evaluating the products, services and work of organizations that are recognized as representing best practices for the purpose of organizational improvement.”

(2)“ A continuous search for, and application of , significantly better practices that lead to superior competitive performance.”

(3)“A disciplined process that begins with a thorough search to identify best-practice-organizations, continues with the careful study of one’s own practices and performance, progresses through systematic site visits and interviews, and concludes with an analysis of results, development of recommendations and implementation”.

(4) “Benchmarking is an external focus on internal activities, functions, or operations in order to achieve continuous improvement.”

(5) “Benchmarking is systematic and continuous measurement process – a process of continuously measuring and comparing an organizations business processes against process leaders anywhere in the world to gain information which will help the organizations to take action to improve performance.”

Why Benchmarking ?

•Successful companies in every industry engage in a variety of practices, which lead to achievement of high level of performance.

•Benchmarking has become one of the most important tools of business management in corporate that attempts to gain and maintain competitive advantage.

•The central essence of benchmarking is about learning how to improve business activity, processes, and management.

The Benchmarking Process

•Benchmarking involves looking outside a particular business, organization, industry, region or country to examine how others achieve their performance levels and to understand the processes they use.

•Thus, benchmarking helps explain the processes behind excellent performance.When lessons learnt from benchmarking exercise are applied appropriately, they facilitate improved performance in critical functions within an organization or in key areas of the business environment



Types of Benchmarking