Benchmarking is an ongoing, systematic process of measuring and comparing an organization's operations, practices, and performance against other organization within and outside of an industry, including evaluation the "best practices" of other organizations.

Benchmarks are external standards of comparison that managers can use to monitor internal processes and technologies to ensure outstanding performance and task execution.

A process of comparing one set of measurements to another. This compartison may be made for various reasons, such as to compare one organization's efficiency to another's.

Competitive benchmarking, defining strengths and weaknesses of compettors, is fundamental to the development of realistic strategy alternatives.