Essentially, benchmarking is a tool. This tool can be employed in several areas as an indicator of business profit margins, investment returns, market cycles, sales, and costs. Benchmarking can also be used to access product development, services, customer responsiveness and even in how a business might improve products and other forms of service. Generally, there are two forms of benchmarking involved including internal and external benchmarking processes.
Finally, benchmarking is generally treated in a rather structured manner where a particular model might form the development of a step-by-step process. The idea of structured processes is to provide an objective process by where a business can clearly see where its progress is headed. With this idea in mind, a business can assess changes, variations of those changes, and even tailor the process to fit business expectations. The following examples of several businesses will give an idea of the process on general terms, and within the examples shown.
10 Benchmarked Companies
Longs Drugs
Company background
Longs Drugs is a pharmacy chain store located in the west coast of the United States. Brothers Thomas and Joseph Long founded it in 1938, with their first store in Oakland California. Longs Drugs currently has over 500 stores located in California, Colorado, Nevada, Washington, and Hawaii; and is headquartered in Walnut Creek, California.
On February 28, 2007 Longs Drugs announced that it would be closing 23 stores in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, and would be exiting those markets entirely, because the company did not have a sufficient store base in any of those states to compete with its larger competitors Walgreens, Rite Aide, and CVS Pharmacy. ...