The term“benchmarks” refers to processes and results that represent best practices and performance for similar activities, inside or outside an organization〖BF〗’s〖BFQ〗 industryOrganizations engage in benchmarking as a process to understand the current dimensions of world-class performance and to achieve discontinuous (non-incremental) or breakthrough improvement
Benchmarks are one form ofparative data Otherparative data organizations might use include industry data collected by a third party (frequently industry averages),data onpetitors’ performance, andparisons with similar organizations in the same geographic area