y various authors and organisations.

Advocates of benchmarking argue that the activity brings about newness and innovative ways of managing operations, which encourages employee empowerment and teamwork, improves quality and is customer focused. It establishes goals that raise productivity levels within an organisation so that they become equal to or better than competition, thus providing a competitive advantage to improve an organisation's market share a

Benchmarking was introduced as we know it now in 1979 by Xerox. The company had a problem with the product sales because of the Japanese competitors. To solve this problem Xerox decided to compare their product quality and features to Japanese products. Ever since the process of implementing the best practices with the help of comparison is referred to as benchmarking.

Benchmarking starts with the premise that whatever processes an organisation feels require a level of improvement, there are many organisations already achieving world-class performance. Therefore, rather than attempting to develop processes that are of best practice performance from scratch, benchmarking provides organisations with the opportunity to improve processes based upon something that is already being done elsewhere.

At this point, it is necessary to highlight that benchmarking does always not indicate the need to search outside the organisation for best practices; benchmarking is generally defined at three different levels; Internal benchmarking, External benchmarking and Best practice benchmarking.

This refers to comparing processes and practices within an organisation or division, who are based at the same or a different location. So, for example, if one branch of a travel agent chain has received particularly positive customer feedback for their customer service, managers from other branches, and the organisation as a whole, could benefit significantly by identifying and implementing customer service processes that are the same, or similar to the highest performing branch.

Whatever type of benchmarking an organisation chooses to implement, it is logical that a sound methodology must be employed for implementation to be successful.

Since benchmarking first became popular in the late eighties, many methodologies have been proposed by various authors and organisations.

Advocates of benchmarking argue that the activity brings about newness and innovative ways of managing operations, which encourages employee empowerment and teamwork, improves quality and is customer focused. It establishes goals that raise productivity levels within an organisation so that they become equal to or better than competition, thus providing a competitive advantage to improve an organisation's market share an

level of improvement, there are many organisations already achieving world-class performance. Therefore, rather than attempting to develop processes that are of best practice performance from scratch, benchmarking provides organisations with the opportunity to improve processes based upon something that is already being done elsewhere.

At this point, it is necessary to highlight that benchmarking does always not indicate the need to search outside the organisation for best practices; benchmarking is generally defined at three different levels; Internal benchmarking, External benchmarking and Best practice benchmarking.

This refers to comparing processes and practices within an organisation or division, who are based at the same or a different location. So, for example, if one branch of a travel agent chain has received particularly positive customer feedback for their customer service, managers from other branches, and the organisation as a whole, could benefit significantly by identifying and implementing customer service processes that are the same, or similar to the highest performing branch.

Whatever type of benchmarking an organisation chooses to implement, it is logical that a sound methodology must be employed for implementation to be successful.

Since benchmarking first became popular in the late eighties, many methodologies have been proposed by various authors and organisations.

Advocates of benchmarking argue that the activity brings about newness and innovative ways of managing operations, which encourages employee empowerment and teamwork, improves quality and is customer focused. It establishes goals that raise productivity levels within an organisation so that they become equal to or better than competition, thus providing a competitive advantage to improve an organisation's market share a

nisation for best practices; benchmarking is generally defined at three different levels; Internal benchmarking, External benchmarking and Best practice benchmarking.

This refers to comparing processes and practices within an organisation or division, who are based at the same or a different location. So, for example, if one branch of a travel agent chain has received particularly positive customer feedback for their customer service, managers from other branches, and the organisation as a whole, could benefit significantly by identifying and implementing customer service processes that are the same, or similar to the highest performing branch.

Whatever type of benchmarking an organisation chooses to implement, it is logical that a sound methodology must be employed for implementation to be successful.

Since benchmarking first became popular in the late eighties, many methodologies have been proposed by various authors and organisations.

Advocates of benchmarking argue that the activity brings about newness and innovative ways of managing operations, which encourages employee empowerment and teamwork, improves quality and is customer focused. It establishes goals that raise productivity levels within an organisation so that they become equal to or better than competition, thus providing a competitive advantage to improve an organisation's market share a

ranches, and the organisation as a whole, could benefit significantly by identifying and implementing customer service processes that are the same, or similar to the highest performing branch.

Whatever type of benchmarking an organisation chooses to implement, it is logical that a sound methodology must be employed for implementation to be successful.

Since benchmarking first became popular in the late eighties, many methodologies have been proposed by various authors and organisations.

Advocates of benchmarking argue that the activity brings about newness and innovative ways of managing operations, which encourages employee empowerment and teamwork, improves quality and is customer focused. It establishes goals that raise productivity levels within an organisation so that they become equal to or better than competition, thus providing a competitive advantage to improve an organisation's market share a

y various authors and organisations.

Advocates of benchmarking argue that the activity brings about newness and innovative ways of managing operations, which encourages employee empowerment and teamwork, improves quality and is customer focused. It establishes goals that raise productivity levels within an organisation so that they become equal to or better than competition, thus providing a competitive advantage to improve an organisation's market share and position. Unlike other performance improvement methods, benchmarking is special because it often involves comparison with external organisations rather than a stand-alone internal analysis. Other common approaches to performance improvement include Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and, within Europe, adherence to International Quality Standards (ISO9000).

Benchmarking operates on a comparative basis to identify improvements; comparing what is currently done in an organisation to what could be done to maximise performance and productivity, to achieve continuous, incremental improvements.

Some argue that the philosophies behind benchmarking and BPR are diametrically opposed positions and therefore cannot be integrated; benchmarking is reflective of Japanese "Kaizen" philosophy. Kaizen philosophy follows the Japanese belief that improvements should be made one step at a time, incrementally to minimise cost, reduce risk and ensure the performance is continually improving. This is contrary to the argument put forward by advocates of BPR who suggest that change should be rapid and "breakthrough" to achieve results, suggesting that the two methods cannot possibly work together harmoniously as an integrated method.