What is Benchmarking?

"Benchmarking is the practice of comparing a company's performance against others. It can be used to help clarify where you stand, relative to others, in those practices which matter most in your area of business. The technique can also be used to help companies become as good, or better than the best in the world in the most important aspects of their operations.

Benchmarking is the process of determining who is the very best, who sets the standard, and what that standard is. In baseball, you could argue that seven consecutive World Series Championships made the New York Yankees the benchmark. If we were to benchmark "world conquest", what objetive measure would we use to compare Julius Caesar to Adolph Hitler; Gengis Khan to Napoleon? Which of them was the epitome, and why?

" Benchmarking is about finding who is the best sales organization? The most responsive customer service department? The leanest manufacturing operation? And how do we quantify that standard?and try to copy or improve their technics wich ones will be apply on the industries in orden to get a bigger portion of the market

Selected words:
-Epitome
-Clarify
-Apply

http://www.mas.dti.gov.uk/content/resources/categories/qaa/QAA_Benchmark5.html http://management.about.com/cs/benchmarking/a/Benchmarking.htm