Introduction to bench marketing
If a company is to be successful, it needs to evaluate its performance in a consistent manner.
In order to do so, businesses need to set standards for themselves, and measure their processes and performance against recognized, industry leaders or against best practices from other industries, which operate in a similar environment.
This is commonly referred to as benchmarking, in management parlance.
The benchmarking process is relatively uncomplicated. Some knowledge and a practical dent is all that is needed to make such a process, a success.
Therefore, for the benefit of corporate executives, students and the interested general populace; the key steps in the benchmarking process are highlighted below.
A Step-by-Step Approach to Benchmarking
Following are the steps involved in benchmarking process:

(1) Planning:
Prior to engaging in benchmarking, it is imperative that corporate stakeholders identify the activities that need to be benchmarked.
For instance, the processes that merit such consideration would generally be core activities that have the potential to give the business in question, a competitive edge.
Such processes would generally command a high cost, volume or value. For the optimal results of benchmarking to be reaped, the inputs and outputs need to be re-defined; the activities chosen should be measurable and thereby easily comparable, and thus the benchmarking metrics needs to be arrived at.
Prior to engaging in the benchmarking process, the total process flow needs to be given due consideration. For instance, improving one core competency at the detriment to another proves to be of little use.
Therefore, many choose to document such processes in detail (a process flow chart is deemed to be ideal for this purpose), so that omissions and errors are minimized; thus enabling the company to obtain a clearer