The use of process modelling in benchmarking

The increasing interest in benchmarking as a tool for achieving radical improvements in a business’ competitive performance has encouraged many companies to attempt a comparison of their performance to that of others. This has been attempted in two main ways. Companies who compare their performance to that of their competitors restrict their potential operating improvements to a position of equality with the competitor, who may by then have moved on. Those companies attempting to look into other industries to gain real originality may fail if they do not focus on activities which are directly comparable. This paper looks at the need to identify the correct activities to study and proposes a modelling technique which can help the company to establish a baseline for comparison.