Benchmarking is perhaps one of the terms with a more ambiguous and changing depending on whom you ask, but that should not get away from the understanding of this and that is why today explain what is benchmarking and what it is used in companies.

Without trying to make an official definition just to begin with a dot, benchmarking can be defined as a philosophy of Japanese origin (from Xerox), which analyzes the competition to learn their strengths and use them in our own activities. Note that this means at no time violate intellectual property rules.

Benchmarking is, in other words, establish a benchmark and take advantage of it. How? Noting what has made ​​the company stand out or be better than ours in the industry. Sometimes the benchmarking is used as a marketing technique, which is responsible for comparing the quality, price or other characteristics of a service or product that offers direct competition.

Benchmarking does not always have to be a comparison against the other, and even can develop within different departments of a company. While there is no recipe on how to become the best company, benchmarking can be a good guide of where to start, and therefore we would like to mention Robert Camp, who was perhaps the first person to describe steps of how to perform Benchmarking. It is clear that not all steps are mandatory, depending on the company can vary the amount.

1. Define product feature or want to compare.
2. Study in detail the process of our organization.
3. Find who or who are the best compared with the preceding paragraph.
4. Collect detailed information provided corroborating the veracity of it.
5. Analyze the data.
6. Implement the best techniques in an appropriate manner (not always possible to change everything overnight.)
7. Monitoring results.

And finally, never forget that a process can always be improved.

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