With growing competition and optimization in methods of doing business, it has become necessary that companies benchmark their position. Companies are facing tough competition from rivals and peers and this has become a daily affair. So, in order to outdo their competitors, it is very important that companies benchmark their strengths and weaknesses. Benchmarking is viewed as a scrutiny process that a company undergoes so as to better understand where they stand in the industry. Since the last 20 years, benchmarking has remained prominent.

Benchmarking is very much prevalent among the Indian companies and the reason for it is that it is just another survey and it requires expense for conducting a survey. So, there are concerns over ROI. Also the conservative nature of Indian companies also prevents them from getting benchmarked. Just a few names like the Tata and its steel subsidiary, Infosys, Tisco etc. practiced benchmarking in the last decade.

Indian SME businesses have taken an aggressive stand for treading on global growth path. There is the urge to emerge as the best in the world. There is a craze to define the global best practices. In a survey conducted by the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, it has been analyzed how performance benchmarking can help leverage Indian companies in global platform. Eighty percent of the respondents agreed that it is good to know one’s position and 76% said that bench-marking would guide them to set a strategic direction of their business.

Another comprehensive benchmarking program is being launched by SAP India, a subsidiary of SAP AG with association with ISB. This will help establish linkage between IT and business metrics. Industry trends and best practices can also be ascertained by participating companies. It is found that more than 150 companies that include 20 companies in India have leveraged their program using SAP results. In India SAP is going to be the first provider of enterprise benchmarking application software. Harvard Business School (U.S.), Malaysian Productivity Corporation, Best Practice Institute (U.S.) and Global Benchmarking Network are among the others that do benchmarking for companies across the globe.

United Kingdom benchmarking Index Program, the Japan MITI, the American and Productivity Centre (APQC) are famous benchmarking centers of the world. European countries too have started using benchmarking as an important tool for performance improvement.