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The American Productivity & Quality Center defines benchmarking as:

"'the process of identifying, understanding, and adapting outstanding practices and processes from organizations anywhere in the world to help your organization improve its performance."

Your approach to benchmarking will depend on the resources you have available and how quickly you need the information.  The table below describes the types of resources you should use, depending on the time you have available.

Benchmarking can be fraught with potential problems, ranging from simple misunderstandings to serious legal problems. To minimize the likelihood of these types of difficulties, the International Benchmarking Clearinghouse developed a simple Code-of-Conduct.  The Code-of-Conduct includes the following topics:

• Legality
• Exchange
• Confidentiality
• Use of information
• Contact
• Preparation
• Completion
• Understanding

Ultimately, acceptable practices for benchmarking are summed up in its Golden Rule: treat your partner and their information the way you’d like them to treat you and yours.

If you are looking for a methodology and framework for your own solution benchmarking, the Reengineering Design Toolkit provides guidelines, checklists and templates.  You are presented with strategies for learning from your customers, from your competitors and from your employees.

Benchmarking and best practices in BPR and Change Management are available from the learning center.  There are two Best Practices reports that provide lessons learned from 327 and 254 companies respectively.

BPR Benchmarking Report

Change Management Benchmarking Report

Read more:

Benchmarking - Uncovering Best Practices and Learning From Others

Best Practices in BPR - Executive Summary

Reengineering Design Toolkit

Best Practices in Business Process Reengineering and Process Design Benchmarking Report - this report gives team members, project leaders and executive sponsors a first-hand account of what is working and what is not, combining data from three benchmarking studies to present the most accurate, up-to-date picture of process redesign and reengineering projects as well as insight into the evolution of business process design.

The Reengineering Toolkit: contains the tools and techniques to help you create a benchmarking program and effectively learn from competitors and non-competitors.