The aim of the benchmarking method is to create good conditions for the identification and new generation of competitive advantages of one’s own company in the market. In this context, benchmarking is applied in many different areas with different methods and objectives.
Benchmarking is most successful as a continuous, systematic process to assess and improve companies’ products, services and work processes.
More specifically, product benchmarking measures the individual attributes of products against a suitable reference point and compares them with the company’s own product portfolio. To this end, a company’s products are compared with those of other internal business units (internal benchmarking) and companies in the same or different industries (external benchmarking) on the basis of specific indicators.
Among other things, the benchmark represents the current market leader in a product segment. Through the comparison, potentials for incremental innovations for the own product are derived by means of a potential analysis in order to improve the own position on the market. To perform benchmarking, you need sufficient knowledge about the alternative products, processes and procedures.
The advantage of this method is that one’s own activities or products can be evaluated against a defined yardstick and thus concrete recommendations for improvement can be derived.