Benchmarking is the process of comparing the performance of one organisation to the performance of others. It is a powerful tool for strategic management as it reveals how effective the organisation is in relation to industry norms and best practice, and therefore highlights opportunities for improvement. Benchmarking challenges businesses to implement new and better strategies that have led to the superior performance of others.

In today's competitive markets where margins are narrowing and there is an ever-increasing desire to deliver better value to customers, IT organisations need to exploit all opportunities to optimise their effectiveness. Benchmarking can help to:

• reduce costs
• improve efficiency and quality
• speed up delivery
• assess the proposals and performance of external suppliers

Typically organisations use a third party such as QuantiMetrics who can independently measure their performance against many organisations, across many different sectors.