Benchmarking involves:

comparing the best practices in one industry against the best practices in another industry

studying how a company's competitive capabilities stack up against the competitive capabilities of

selected companies known to have world$-$class competitive capabilities

checking whether a company has achieved more of its financial and strategic objectives over the past

five years relative to its direct competitors

comparing how different companies perform various value chain activities and then making cross$-$

company comparisons of the costs and effectiveness of these activities

studying whether a company's resource strengths are more$/$less powerful than the resource strengths of

rival companies