Benchmarking: Roadmap to best practices

Fierce competition, globalization and the development of new information and communication technologies have constrained organizations to continuously search for and adopt new configurations/practices for survival. Benchmarking is a practical approach, which has proved to be very effective in helping individual companies evaluate their competitive position vis-a-vis other best performers. This paper provides an overview of developments and trends in benchmarking and includes references to various types of benchmarking. It is attempted to provide a simple benchmarking process model for an individual organization by carrying out organized search for best practices. The paper enlists benefits of benchmarking including discussion on select benchmarking success stories. The paper concludes that benchmarking is a powerful approach for bringing improvements in any organizational area and transforming it into a world-class organization.