Benchmarking is an essential improvement tool that can be used on a continual basis to identify the best of the best.  Benchmarking assists in the comparison of your current process against the best practices of the highest or elite performers.  The best performer may reside within your department, division, company, competitor, or an entirely different industry.  When used correctly, benchmarking identifies who is performing your business process at a high level, how they are doing it and which of those practices can be adapted for your own organization.

Try using these 5 steps to implement a benchmarking process and improve performance at your organization:

1. Determine the operational process to be benchmarked and identify key measurement variables.
2. Select the organization that has the best performing process and obtain data from that organization about its process.
3. Measure internal performance.
4. Compare results and analyze differences.
5. Implement changes.