Farrukh Idrees - Fellow of the University of Bradford, U.K. Pakistan

This paper responds to call in literature to advance research into benchmarking narratives for holistic Competitive Advantage (CA) by acknowledging the areas of weakness in presenting a comprehensive role of benchmarking for CA; Defending better contribution of process benchmarking for gaining financial excellence as compared to the role of performance one. Key benchmarking roles for gaining CA in an organisation are identified through cross industrial literature review to making better focus of benchmarking efforts. Benchmarking definition with common pitfalls is clarified along with a recommended general implementation methodology. Pre and post impact of benchmarking on performance of different organisations is mentioned. Its role for CA has been put forward under two sections A) General benchmarking role in three perspectives i.e. Knowledge sharing, facilitating appraisal process and usage of excellence models are presented. B) Role of process benchmarking is compared with performance one towards CA through financial results. Research can be used in multi dimensions; Alignment of company’s benchmarking strategy with it's corporate one for organisational cohesiveness; Customised scorecard with specific measures can be derived for performance monitoring of the strategy; Process benchmarking is recommended to generate better financial results; A customer oriented company can be developed by keeping in view their (customer's) importance in developing and deploying the strategy; Roles of benchmarking models are generic and cross industrially applicable. Further research can be done to identify its organisational level, industry, size & sector (public or private) specific role/benefits/methodology. Too, specific relationship/ weightage can be developed among variables of roles of benchmarking models.

Benchmarking, Competitive Advantage, Process Benchmarking, Performance Benchmarking