This is a technique that with which it is discovering what they do well (your business sector or other) leaders, and then tries to adapt that knowledge to our company (for his detractors, basically consists of copy!) However, it is much more than that. I remember that when I was young (not so many years ago!) had the idea that the Japanese copied. What did well Japan after World War II however, was lifting a country demolished and almost medieval in some aspects, becoming the second economic power. For this reason, in addition to applying benchmarking, hired two American specialists in quality, Deming and Juran, they taught them about total quality aspects, and everything that adapted it to their way of doing things. And the result is that today Japan is one of the leading countries in technology.

The Japanese followed other oriental dragons, as Korea of the South, which nowadays already begins to be also pointers, or Taiwan. The next one will be China, which is still in the stage of copying, but in some industries is beginning to emerge. In addition to this small review at the international level (which would do us no harm to note in Spain, that we are not reference almost nothing), the benchmarking can be applied in our businesses in several ways:-observing best practices that performs the competition (or, again, companies from other sectors). -Obtaining such information through our employees – about other companies in which they have been or who know by other means-. -For customers and vendors (though you must be careful with this information, that due to interests that may have perhaps is not at all certain or accurate).

-Can be a cooperative benchmarking, exchanging information on best practices with companies that are not our competition. -Collect information in various sources, such as press and magazines, Internet, fairs and exhibitions, etc. The benchmarking also can be an interesting technique personally, i.e. how professionals can have certain models of action in classmates, acquaintances, famous people in certain areas observing and analyzing those facets that make them stand out in their fields of activity also you can learn a lot, and improve. For example, I remember the case of a colleague who was very good in the preparation of reports. And not only because it was fast, but it was very rare that he wrong, even handling a huge amount of data. The secret of its success was that it was making a series of checks before delivering the report and estimated a series of ratios to verify the reasonableness of the information. Something as simple or as complicated – how that allowed him to detect anomalies, and as a result, be almost foolproof. And is a technique that all those who regularly prepare reports can apply with relative ease, and with great benefit.